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
Lindow (Mark) (Evangelische Akademie). However, communist East Germany, with its censorship and repression of free conventions, forbade the opening of the venue. In the 1980s a local initiative renovated the enclosure walls and headstones of the Jewish cemetery, which had weathered the Nazi period untouched. In 1989, the Town Church became a venue for people demanding change in East Germany. In March 1990 the dismissed East German head of state Erich Honecker retired for two nights in the manor house of Gühlen, used as guest house of the Council of Ministers of the GDR, however, leaving after protests by people from Lindow.