Erich Honecker (August 25, 1912 - May 29, 1994). German Communist and leader of the German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, DDR) from 1971 until 1989.
Born in Neunkirchen, in the Saar, the son of a politically militant coal miner. He joined the youth section (Jugendverband) of the Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands, KPD) in 1926. In 1929 he joined the KPD and went to Moscow to study at the International Lenin School. He returned to Germany in 1931 and when the Nazis came to power Honecker was arrested in 1935. In 1937 he was sentenced to ten years for Communist party activities and he remained in captivity until the end of World War II.
At the end of the war he joined the Communist activists under Walter Ulbricht. In 1946 Honecker was one of the first members of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED), made up of the old KPD and the Social Democrats of eastern Germany. Following a sweeping victory in the October 1946 elections he took his place amongst the SED leadership in the short-lived parliament. The German Democratic Republic was proclaimed on October 7, 1949 with the adoption of a new constitution. In a political system similiar to that of the Soviet Union he was a candidate member for the secretariat of the Central Committee in 1950 and full member in 1958. In 1961 he was in charge of the building of the Berlin Wall.
In 1971, Honecker initiated a political power struggle that led, with Soviet support, to Honecker became the new leader.
During the 1980s, when Mikhail Gorbachev began his reforms Honecker remained a hard-line Communist. But popular protest led to his resignation on October 18, 1989. From 1989 until 1993, Honecker avoided prosecution over his Cold War crimes, specifically the 192 deaths of those trying to escape over the Berlin Wall. He initially remained in a Soviet military hospital in Berlin before leaving for Moscow. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union he was returned to Germany in 1992. But when he did come to trial in 1993 he was released due to ill-health and moved to Chile. He died of liver cancer on May 29, 1994.