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 this marriage were not revealed until 2003, well after his death. By the time of her death, Honecker was already romantically involved with the Free German Youth official Edith Baumann, whom he met on a trip to Moscow. With her he had a daughter, Erika (b. 1950), who later gave him his granddaughter Anke. Sources differ on whether Honecker and Baumann married in 1947 or 1949, but in 1952 he fathered an illegitimate daughter, Sonja (b. December 1952), with Margot Feist, a People's Chamber member and chairperson of the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation. In September 1950, Baumann wrote directly to