History of Germany (1945–90) eventually hundreds of thousands of people in several cities—particularly in Leipzig—continued to grow. On 7 October, the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited Berlin to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the establishment of East Germany and urged the East German leadership to pursue reform, without success. The movement of civil resistance against the East German regime—both the emigration and the demonstrations—continued unabated. On 18 October, Erich Honecker was forced to resign as head of the SED and as head of state and was replaced by Egon Krenz. But the exodus continued unabated, and pressure for political reform mounted. On 4 November,
Erich Mückenberger chairman of the German-Soviet Friendship Society. In 1980, he was elected as the head of the SED parliamentary group in the "Volkskammer" (the national parliament of the GDR). Mückenberger remained in the SED politburo until November 1989. Mückenberger was expelled from the Socialist Unity Party of Germany/Party of Democratic Socialism on November 21, 1990. Following the German reunification, Mückenberger was put on trial for shootings at the Berlin Wall, a process that Mückenberger himself dubbed as 'victors' justice'. Mückenberger was allowed to withdraw from the trial in 1996, due to ill health. Erich Mückenberger Erich Mückenberger (1910 in Chemnitz –