Erich Mielke demonstrations politically and giving "every DDR citizen the right to travel." On 17 October 1989, Mielke and the rest of the GDR's Politburo met to follow Gorbachev's demand, voiced in August, for Erich Honecker be removed as General Secretary of the SED and State Council chairman. Suspecting that Honecker's personal bodyguards might try to arrest the members of the Central Committee when they met to vote Honecker out in favour of Egon Krenz, Mielke saw to it that Stasi agents were stationed near the meeting room. While deliberations were underway, Mielke told Honecker that "we simply cannot start shooting with
Vilm of the GDR, they used it as a private retreat for high functionaries, including the GDR heads of state Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker. Two days before the end of the GDR, on 1 October 1990, the government designated the island and surrounding seas as a landscape protection area of central importance with the designation "southeast-southwest-Rügen biosphere reserve". This and other protected areas could not by law be transferred to the Federal Republic of Germany directly; instead the GDR had to sign them over to an individual who could then sign them over to the Bundesrepublik Deutschland. This is how