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
Erich Honecker a new and just society. And we want to always remain loyal to these things". On 29 May 1994, he died of liver cancer at the age of 81 in a terraced house in the La Reina district of Santiago. His funeral, arranged by the Communist Party of Chile, was conducted the following day at central cemetery in Santiago. Honecker was married three times. After being liberated from prison in 1945 he married the prison warden Charlotte Schanuel (née Drost), nine years his senior, on 23 December 1946. She died suddenly from a brain tumour in June 1947. Details of