Erich Honecker (German: ['e:RIc 'honeka]; 25 August 1912 - 29 May 1994) was a German politician who, as the General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party, led the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) from 1971 until the weeks preceding the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. From 1976 onward he was also the country's official head of state as chairman of the State Council following Willi Stoph's relinquishment of the post. Honecker's political career began in the 1930s when he became an official of the Communist Party of Germany, a position for which he was imprisoned during the Nazi era. Following World War II, he was freed and soon relaunched his political activities, founding the youth organisation the Free German Youth in 1946 and serving as the group's chairman until 1955.
Childhood and youth
Honecker was born in Neunkirchen, in what is now Saarland, as the son of Wilhelm Honecker (1881-1969), a coal miner and political activist, who had married Caroline Catharina Weidenhof (1883-1963) in 1905. The couple had six children together: Katharina (Kathe, 1906-1925), Wilhelm (Willi, 1907-1944), Frieda (1909-1974), Erich, Gertrud (1917-2010) and Karl-Robert (1923-1947). Erich, their fourth child, was born on 25 August 1912 during the period in which the family resided on Max-Braun-Strasse, before later moving to Kuchenbergstrasse 88 in the present-day Neunkirchen city district of Wiebelskirchen.  After World War I, the Territory of the Saar Basin was occupied by France. This change from the strict rule of Baron von Stumm to French military occupation provided the backdrop for what Wilhelm Honecker understood as proletarian exploitation, and introduced young Erich to communism. After his tenth birthday in 1922, Erich Honecker became a member of the Spartacus League's children's group in Wiebelskirchen. Aged 14 he entered the KJVD, the Young Communist League of Germany, for whom he later served the organisation's leader of Saarland from 1931.  Honecker did not find an apprenticeship immediately after leaving school, but instead worked for a farmer in Pomerania for almost two years. In 1928 he returned to Wiebelskirchen and began a traineeship as a roofer with his uncle, but quit to attend the International Lenin School in Moscow and Magnitogorsk after the KJVD hand-picked him for a course of study there. There, sharing a room with Anton Ackermann, he studied under the cover name "Fritz Malter".
What happened during Erich Honecker's childhood and youth years?
After World War I, the Territory of the Saar Basin was occupied by France.
After World War I, the Territory of the Saar Basin was occupied by France.