Castro explained this to Erich Honecker, communist dictator of East Germany, by saying that Siad Barre was " above all a chauvinist ".

Unable to stop the growing civil unrest, Erich Honecker was forced to resign in October, and on 9 November, East German authorities unexpectedly allowed East German citizens to enter West Berlin and West Germany.

Honecker was pressured to resign from office and the new government committed itself to reunification with West Germany.

Wollweber resigned in 1957 after clashes with Ulbricht and Erich Honecker, and was succeeded by his deputy, Erich Mielke.

* In 1971, Erich Honecker was chosen to lead East Germany, a role he would fill for the whole of the 1970s and 1980s.

Erich Honecker (; 25 August 1912 – 29 May 1994 ) was a German communist politician who led the German Democratic Republic as General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1971 until 1989, serving as Head of State as well after Willi Stoph's relinquishment of that post in 1976.

Following the definite end of the Cold War, Honecker refused all but cosmetic changes and was ousted by the party in late 1989 and removed from power.

Honecker was born on Max-Braun-Straße in Neunkirchen, now Saarland, as the son of Wilhelm Honecker, a coal miner and political activist, who in 1905 had married Caroline Catharina Weidenhof.

At the end of the war, Honecker resumed activity in the party under leader Walter Ulbricht, and, in 1946, became one of the first members of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany ( Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED ), which was formed by the merger of the KPD and the Social Democratic Party ( SPD ) in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany.

Honecker was a candidate member for the secretariat of the Central Committee in 1950 ; by 1958, he had become a full member of the Politbüro.

In 1961, Honecker, as the Central Committee secretary for security matters, was in charge of the building of the Berlin Wall.

More attention was placed on the availability of consumer goods, and the construction of new housing was accelerated, with Honecker promising to " settle the housing problem as an issue of social relevance ".

Gorbachev grew to dislike Honecker, and by 1988 was lumping Honecker, along with Bulgaria's Todor Zhivkov, Czechoslovakia's Gustáv Husák and Romania's Nicolae Ceaușescu as a " Gang of Four "— a group of inflexible hardliners unwilling to make necessary reforms.

Honecker was recovering from bladder cancer, leaving his colleagues unable to act decisively.

Honecker was back in charge by September, and immediately had to deal with a new refugee problem.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Honecker took refuge in the Chilean embassy in Moscow, but was extradited by the Yeltsin administration to Germany in 1992.

When the trial formally opened in early 1993, Honecker was released due to ill health and on 13 January of that year moved to Chile to live with his daughter Sonja, her Chilean husband Leo Yáñez, and their son Roberto.

It is claimed that Honecker was addicted to game hunting and was directly involved in the over-hunting of a number of native game species.

The New Economic System was not very popular within the party, however, and from 1965 onwards opposition grew, mainly under the direction of Erich Honecker and with tacit support of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.

On 3 May 1971 Ulbricht was forced to resign from virtually all of his public functions ' due to reasons of poor health ' and was replaced – with the consent of the Soviets – by Erich Honecker.

Margot Honecker served for more than 20 years as the GDR Minister for People's Education.

Krenz had been approached several months earlier about ousting Honecker, but was reluctant to move against a man he called " my foster father and political teacher.

* The quest for Christa Wolf an interview with Hanns-Bruno Kammertöns and Stephan Lebert about private chats with Honecker, a German society in check mate, the influence of Goethe, the shortcomings of Brecht, and the lasting effects of Utopia at signandsight. com.

Honecker: " I collect ( ich sammele ) all the jokes about me.

Discussions with Margot Honecker, in which Honecker speaks about the history of the GDR from her perspective.

Honecker got another rude shock at the GDR's 40th anniversary gala in September, when several hundred members of the Free German Youth — the SED's supposed future vanguard — began chanting, " Gorby, help us!

Related to the takeover of the council's chairmanship by Honecker is the fact that after 1977 the number of individuals who were simultaneously members of the council and of the SED's Central Committee Secretariat increased.

In foreign relations, Honecker renounced the objective of a unified Germany and adopted the " defensive " position of ideological Abgrenzung ( demarcation ).

In June 1989 Interflug introduced the first Western-built aircraft in the form of three Airbus A310s as its director at the time, Dr. Klaus Henkes, successfully appealed to the then leader of the GDR, SED General Secretary Erich Honecker, to purchase Western aircraft in order to position Interflug as a modern airline.

In 1963 Margot Honecker, after a period as acting minister, officially took up the position as Minster of Education in the GDR ().

Honecker reiterated earlier positions on the relationship between the two German states, stressing that they were two sovereign states that had developed along different lines since World War II, and that their differences had to be respected by both sides as they continued efforts toward peaceful coexistence despite membership in antagonistic alliances.

Honecker faced a growing crisis at home, with massive anti-government demonstrations in Leipzig and other East German cities.

File: BerlinWall01b. jpg | Mural on the Berlin Wall at the East Side Gallery featuring Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker riding together in a Trabant ( Spring 2002 ).

Erich Honecker, watched by his mentor Walter Ulbricht at the 5th Party Congress, 1958

During his report at the seventh party congress in 1967, Erich Honecker had called for a return to an orthodox Socialist economic system, away from the recently instituted New Economic System.

Following the riots in the GDR in October 1989, including those in East Berlin and Leipzig, on 18 October 1989, at a special Politbüro meeting, Honecker was forced to resign ; he was replaced by Egon Krenz.

Erich Honecker ( East Germany | GDR, left ) and Helmut Schmidt ( West Germany | FRG ) at the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe held in Helsinki in 1975

Other Communist countries with leaders in their 70s or 80s have included Albania ( First Secretary Enver Hoxha was 76 at death ), Czechoslovakia ( President Gustáv Husák was 76 at his resignation ), East Germany ( General Secretary and head of state Erich Honecker was 77 when forced out ), Hungary ( General Secretary János Kádár was 75 when forced out ), Laos ( President Nouhak Phoumsavanh was 83 at retirement ), North Korea ( President Kim Il-sung was 82 at death ), Romania ( General Secretary and President Nicolae Ceauşescu was 70 when he was killed ), Vietnam ( President Truong Chinh was 80 at retirement ), Yugoslavia ( President Josip Broz Tito was 87 at death ).

* ' Early in the morning, Honecker arrives at his office and opens his window.

" Honecker works, and then at noon he heads to the window and says: " Good day, dear Sun!

On the occasion of a state visit in June 1972 by Erich Honecker, Fidel Castro renamed the island in honour of German Communist politician and activist Ernst Thälmann, the leader of the Communist Party of Germany ( KPD ) during much of the Weimar Republic, whom was imprisoned without trial after the rise of the Nazi Party, and after eleven years of solitary confinement was shot by order of Adolf Hitler at Buchenwald concentration camp.

She met her future husband, Erich Honecker, at FDJ meetings when he was the director of the Freie Deutsche Jugend.