Ddr erich honecker biography
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On 29 October 1976, Erich Honecker was elected Chairman of the State Council of the DDR by the People's Chamber. He thus held the most important offices in the country, such as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the SED, Chairman of the National Defence Council and finally, from 1976, Chairman of the State Council of the DDR in personal union. Domestically, Honecker was at the zenith of his power. But how did the »little Saarlander« get into these influential positions? To answer this question, it is first necessary to take a look at Honecker's past.
Honecker's political commitment as early as the age of 10
Erich Honecker was born on 25 August 1912 in the Saarland district town of Neunkirchen. Growing up in the modest circumstances of a working-class family, Honecker became a member of the local communist youth group at the age of 10. Further career steps in the Weimar Republic were membership in the Communist Youth League of Germa
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Erich Honecker's arrest: 25 years later
Erich Honecker became a communist at 10 years old. At that tender age, and under the influence of his socialist father, he joined the communist youth organization "Young Spartacus League" in 1922. From 1929 onward he was a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). When Adolf Hitler began persecuting communists, Honecker took on the alias Martin Tjaden, which he used while working and organizing underground communist youth meetings. But the alias was not enough to protect him from the Gestapo, the secret police of the National Socialist government. They arrested him on December 4, 1935, and two years later a Nazi court sentenced him to 10 years in prison for the charge of preparing to commit treason. It was not to be the last time that Honecker would be jailed in the course of his tumultuous life.
In power until the wall came down
After the end of the Second World War Honecker enjoyed a long period of great power. He began his p
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The Fall: The End Of Honecker, follows the story of the man who led the German Democratic Republic from 1971 until its collapse in 1989, before escaping judicial prosecution for human rights abuses and his alleged involvement in the deaths of 192 East Germans who were ansträngande to escape to a new life in the West.
It will be shown at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge on Monday, 21 May, and will be followed bygd a discussion with the director, Eric Friedler.
Although Honecker han själv died in 1994, the documentary has created a sensation in Germany, because of an interview it features with his widow, Margot. Now 84, the former first lady of the GDR broke a 20-year silence when she consented to an interview with Friedler. What she had to say has stupefied many Germans. Honecker is shown remorselessly defending the regime, idealising the “lost nation” and describing its död eller bortgång as “a tragedy”.
Of those who were killed trying to reach the West, she comments: “There w