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 between Dirk and Leonardo, Stein suspecting that her son might have been kidnapped at three years old by Stasi agents for Honecker's younger daughter. Honecker's daughter, (who divorced Leonardo in 1993) grandson and granddaughter still live in Santiago. Like his predecessor Walter Ulbricht, Honecker ruled with neither charisma nor oratory power. His speeches at party conferences and at diplomatic events showed his awkward and wooden style of delivery, which was parodied by satirists outside East Germany. In his time as General Secretary his stance was described as an “almost sinister, unstudied immovability”. The 1983 Udo Lindenberg song “Sonderzug nach Pankow”,