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 Honecker Spartacus League's children's group in Wiebelskirchen. Aged 14 he entered the KJVD, the Young Communist League of Germany, for whom he later served the organisation's leader of Saarland from 1931. Honecker did not find an apprenticeship immediately after leaving school, but instead worked for a farmer in Pomerania for almost two years. In 1928 he returned to Wiebelskirchen and began a traineeship as a roofer with his uncle, but quit to attend the International Lenin School in Moscow and Magnitogorsk after the KJVD hand-picked him for a course of study there. There, sharing a room with Anton Ackermann, he studied