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Erich Honecker: Eine deutsche Biographie
384 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2002
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September 29, 2021
When I started reading this biography, I had low expectations. After all, how good could a story about a drab, boring dictator in a drab, boring country be? Also, I grew up hating Erich Honecker. When I was young I spent many summers visiting relatives in the German Democratic Republic (DDR—East Germany). I remember the tense train border crossings. I remember the colorless cities. And I remember being told to be careful about what I said all the time. To me, Honecker embodied all that was evil. I was in Berlin in August 1989 when the cracks to the façade of East Germany were splitting and speculated that in another 5-10 years, the Wall might actually be gone! I was off by 5-10 years. Pötzl’s interesting portrait is, at times, oddly sympathetic. Honecker’s early life experiences caused him to see the world as he wanted to see it which, in turn, shaped his political career and the DDR. He was in the leadership of East German government from its inception until a few weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Honecker was born in the coal-mining region of Saarland, near the French border. He was raised in a village characterized by small alleys and darkness, something he wanted to escape. After eight years of school, he became a roofer—symbolically far away from the mines and in the open air—and a committed communist during the tumult of Weimar Germany. As one who worshipped Ernst Thälmann, the leader of the German Communist Party who was a candidate for president in the last free election before Hitler assumed power (and murdered in Buchenwald near the end of the war), Honecker inherited a hate of the Social Democrats—both mistakenly believed they were more dangerous than the Nazis—that would only abate late in life. He became an active recruiter and speaker for the party which, after Hitler assumed power in 1933, made it dangerous for him to remain in Germany. After going into exile to Paris and Prague, he was arrested in Berlin when trying to deliver money to Communist operatives. Sentenced to prison in 1935, he spent the next ten years behind bars before being freed by Russian invaders in April 1945.
Immediately after the war, after spending almost a third of his life in prison, Honecker, sought out Walter Ulbricht, the leader of the German Communists who returned to Berlin after years in Moscow exile, to become active in the party. Surprisingly, Ulbricht was so impressed with this relatively uneducated roofer that he put him in charge of recruiting. Hoenecker understood Ulbricht’s dictum, “It has to look democratic, but we must keep it all in hand.” Within the next few months Honecker created the Free German Youth (FDJ—Freie Deutsche Jugend) and was soon a member of the party’s Central Committee. When the DDR was formally created in 1949, Ulbricht became the de facto leader of the nation with Honecker as his closest and most loyal ally.
Ulbricht and Honecker, both great admirers of Stalin, proceeded to recast social and political life of the DDR into the mold of the Soviet Union. The FDJ, with its ubiquitous blue shirts and choreographed mass rallies, became the most important, visible symbolic as well as substantive indoctrination tool of the nation. Its success convinced Honecker that a hard, ideological line was the only way to achieve a communist paradise for the nation of workers and farmers. Despite the superficial successes of the DDR, discontent among workers—a lower standard of living and lack of freedom of expression as compared with the West—soon created the new nation’s first crisis.
A small demonstration in Berlin quickly grew into the nationwide June 17, 1953 Worker’s uprising. Ironically, Moscow was quickly becoming disenchanted with Ulbricht and was preparing to change leadership. But Ulbricht’s hard-line response with tanks and violent police response to the workers saved his regime and created the future template for the country. Honecker, who, as the events unfolded, confided to a friend “The worst is that I don’t know how I should react”, remained loyal to Ulbricht and solidified his place in the governing Politburo. Over next few years Honecker added more duties relating to state security to his portfolio, culminating in him being in charge of the planning and creation of the Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961 in order to stem the tide of defectors to the West.
At the end of the decade, a split began to develop between Ulbricht and Honecker. Ulbricht favored engagement with the West as he observed the expansion of West German foreign policy under Willy Brandt; Honecker maintained a hard line dictated by following Moscow’s lead. With the support of Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, Honecker maneuvered to build support within the DDR Politburo to ease Ulbricht into retirement and take over leadership of the country in 1971, a position he retained until less than a month before the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989.
As leader, Honecker sincerely believed that taking care of the material needs of his people would quell any political discontent. He still saw the world through the lens of a young man who lived through the collapse of capitalism in the late 1920s and the poverty and exploitation of the working class in late-Wilhelmine Germany. So he focused on building and renovating apartments—a total of 3 million by the end of his tenure— throughout the nation, a majority of which, in the early 1970s, still did not have private bathrooms or hot running water. He also kept prices for public transportation and food low, even thought the variety and quality was poor. It worked in the first few years, but public discontent grew because Honecker never understood when people achieve something, it is natural for them to expect or hope for more. The appearance of stability was maintained and opposition quelled by an unprecedented system of repression maintained by the Stasi, the DDR’s secret police apparatus. At one point, there was one paid Stasi operative per 180 residents.
Ironically, while this was happening, behind the scenes Honecker aggressively implemented a policy of engagement with West Germany that he opposed to undermine Ulbricht. The governments opened lines of communication and exchanged representatives below the level of formal ambassadorships. By the mid 70s, relations allowed more travel by West Germans to visit relatives in the DDR (which allowed me, as a young boy to get to know long lost relatives). Visitors were required to pay fees in West German currency. Quietly behind the scenes, a policy of “selling” the freedom of political prisoners to West Germany was formalized. In addition to the estimated 3.5 million who had left the DDR since 1949 (of a population between 16-17 million), between 1964 and 1989, an estimated 34,000 were “sold” to West Germany, first at a cost of 40,000 Marks, by 1977 it was 95,847 Marks, amounting to an estimated 8 billion Marks. This was a substantial boost to the DDR economy.
Mismanagement of the economy was central to the failure of the DDR. Honecker, who understood little about economics or delegation of duties, exacerbated the problem through his intricate micromanagement of virtually every conceivable aspect of his country’s day-to-day life. The fealty of his fellow Politburo members didn’t help. For example, when Honecker was informed that his daughter was unable to find shoes for his granddaughter, the shoe factories ramped up production by taking employees from other factories, thus causing shortages in other areas. Honecker also tended to details ranging from the selection of articles for the daily party newspaper and the types of bathroom fixtures for renovated apartments. He even made sure that there was ample space between the modern, glass encased apartment buildings he had built. Remembering his youth, he wanted to make sure that everyone had lots of light and not feel crowded.
Surprisingly, during the nuclear talks in the 1970s and 1980s, Honecker was dovish. As West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt supported the stationing of Pershing missiles in his country—a major reason his government was eventually ousted—Honecker worked actively behind the scenes to keep Russian missiles out of the DDR. This was the first step of the distance between the formerly close allies that continued through the rest of the DDR’s existence. Another surprise were the friendly relationships that Honecker developed with the hawkish Bavarian conservative Franz-Josef Strauß, the chair of Krupp, Berthold Beitz, and the leader of the parliamentary Social Democrats, Herbert Wehner, a former communist who Honecker befriended in the early 1930s.
As events overtook Honecker in 1989, he was unable to react. Had he not been diagnosed with kidney cancer in July 1989, which included surgery in the pivotal month of August, when East Germans crowded the West German consulates in Prague, Budapest, and Berlin, it is conceivable that violent means would have been used against protesters throughout the DDR. But since his Politburo colleagues were afraid to act without him, events spiraled out of control until they finally ousted him to try to save their decayed leadership.
Honecker was born in the coal-mining region of Saarland, near the French border. He was raised in a village characterized by small alleys and darkness, something he wanted to escape. After eight years of school, he became a roofer—symbolically far away from the mines and in the open air—and a committed communist during the tumult of Weimar Germany. As one who worshipped Ernst Thälmann, the leader of the German Communist Party who was a candidate for president in the last free election before Hitler assumed power (and murdered in Buchenwald near the end of the war), Honecker inherited a hate of the Social Democrats—both mistakenly believed they were more dangerous than the Nazis—that would only abate late in life. He became an active recruiter and speaker for the party which, after Hitler assumed power in 1933, made it dangerous for him to remain in Germany. After going into exile to Paris and Prague, he was arrested in Berlin when trying to deliver money to Communist operatives. Sentenced to prison in 1935, he spent the next ten years behind bars before being freed by Russian invaders in April 1945.
Immediately after the war, after spending almost a third of his life in prison, Honecker, sought out Walter Ulbricht, the leader of the German Communists who returned to Berlin after years in Moscow exile, to become active in the party. Surprisingly, Ulbricht was so impressed with this relatively uneducated roofer that he put him in charge of recruiting. Hoenecker understood Ulbricht’s dictum, “It has to look democratic, but we must keep it all in hand.” Within the next few months Honecker created the Free German Youth (FDJ—Freie Deutsche Jugend) and was soon a member of the party’s Central Committee. When the DDR was formally created in 1949, Ulbricht became the de facto leader of the nation with Honecker as his closest and most loyal ally.
Ulbricht and Honecker, both great admirers of Stalin, proceeded to recast social and political life of the DDR into the mold of the Soviet Union. The FDJ, with its ubiquitous blue shirts and choreographed mass rallies, became the most important, visible symbolic as well as substantive indoctrination tool of the nation. Its success convinced Honecker that a hard, ideological line was the only way to achieve a communist paradise for the nation of workers and farmers. Despite the superficial successes of the DDR, discontent among workers—a lower standard of living and lack of freedom of expression as compared with the West—soon created the new nation’s first crisis.
A small demonstration in Berlin quickly grew into the nationwide June 17, 1953 Worker’s uprising. Ironically, Moscow was quickly becoming disenchanted with Ulbricht and was preparing to change leadership. But Ulbricht’s hard-line response with tanks and violent police response to the workers saved his regime and created the future template for the country. Honecker, who, as the events unfolded, confided to a friend “The worst is that I don’t know how I should react”, remained loyal to Ulbricht and solidified his place in the governing Politburo. Over next few years Honecker added more duties relating to state security to his portfolio, culminating in him being in charge of the planning and creation of the Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961 in order to stem the tide of defectors to the West.
At the end of the decade, a split began to develop between Ulbricht and Honecker. Ulbricht favored engagement with the West as he observed the expansion of West German foreign policy under Willy Brandt; Honecker maintained a hard line dictated by following Moscow’s lead. With the support of Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, Honecker maneuvered to build support within the DDR Politburo to ease Ulbricht into retirement and take over leadership of the country in 1971, a position he retained until less than a month before the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989.
As leader, Honecker sincerely believed that taking care of the material needs of his people would quell any political discontent. He still saw the world through the lens of a young man who lived through the collapse of capitalism in the late 1920s and the poverty and exploitation of the working class in late-Wilhelmine Germany. So he focused on building and renovating apartments—a total of 3 million by the end of his tenure— throughout the nation, a majority of which, in the early 1970s, still did not have private bathrooms or hot running water. He also kept prices for public transportation and food low, even thought the variety and quality was poor. It worked in the first few years, but public discontent grew because Honecker never understood when people achieve something, it is natural for them to expect or hope for more. The appearance of stability was maintained and opposition quelled by an unprecedented system of repression maintained by the Stasi, the DDR’s secret police apparatus. At one point, there was one paid Stasi operative per 180 residents.
Ironically, while this was happening, behind the scenes Honecker aggressively implemented a policy of engagement with West Germany that he opposed to undermine Ulbricht. The governments opened lines of communication and exchanged representatives below the level of formal ambassadorships. By the mid 70s, relations allowed more travel by West Germans to visit relatives in the DDR (which allowed me, as a young boy to get to know long lost relatives). Visitors were required to pay fees in West German currency. Quietly behind the scenes, a policy of “selling” the freedom of political prisoners to West Germany was formalized. In addition to the estimated 3.5 million who had left the DDR since 1949 (of a population between 16-17 million), between 1964 and 1989, an estimated 34,000 were “sold” to West Germany, first at a cost of 40,000 Marks, by 1977 it was 95,847 Marks, amounting to an estimated 8 billion Marks. This was a substantial boost to the DDR economy.
Mismanagement of the economy was central to the failure of the DDR. Honecker, who understood little about economics or delegation of duties, exacerbated the problem through his intricate micromanagement of virtually every conceivable aspect of his country’s day-to-day life. The fealty of his fellow Politburo members didn’t help. For example, when Honecker was informed that his daughter was unable to find shoes for his granddaughter, the shoe factories ramped up production by taking employees from other factories, thus causing shortages in other areas. Honecker also tended to details ranging from the selection of articles for the daily party newspaper and the types of bathroom fixtures for renovated apartments. He even made sure that there was ample space between the modern, glass encased apartment buildings he had built. Remembering his youth, he wanted to make sure that everyone had lots of light and not feel crowded.
Surprisingly, during the nuclear talks in the 1970s and 1980s, Honecker was dovish. As West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt supported the stationing of Pershing missiles in his country—a major reason his government was eventually ousted—Honecker worked actively behind the scenes to keep Russian missiles out of the DDR. This was the first step of the distance between the formerly close allies that continued through the rest of the DDR’s existence. Another surprise were the friendly relationships that Honecker developed with the hawkish Bavarian conservative Franz-Josef Strauß, the chair of Krupp, Berthold Beitz, and the leader of the parliamentary Social Democrats, Herbert Wehner, a former communist who Honecker befriended in the early 1930s.
As events overtook Honecker in 1989, he was unable to react. Had he not been diagnosed with kidney cancer in July 1989, which included surgery in the pivotal month of August, when East Germans crowded the West German consulates in Prague, Budapest, and Berlin, it is conceivable that violent means would have been used against protesters throughout the DDR. But since his Politburo colleagues were afraid to act without him, events spiraled out of control until they finally ousted him to try to save their decayed leadership.
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