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 Grützner Chamber ("Volkskammer") as an SED member from 1958 till 1989. In 1967 he was called to be a member of the "Commission to develop a socialist constitution for the German Democratic Republic" under the leadership of Walter Ulbricht. As well as that, between 1958 and 1963, and again between 1976 and 1989, he was a member of the Budget and Finance Committee. Grützner came to be seen as a member of Ulbricht's inner circle, which meant that when, in 1971, national leadership passed from Walter Ulbricht to Erich Honecker, Erich Grützner's political career ground to a conclusion. From 1960 till