Margot Honecker

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Margot Honecker bigraphy, stories - East German politician

Margot Honecker : biography

17 April 1927 –

Margot Honecker née Feist (born 17 April 1927) is a former Communist politician, who was a very important member of the political scene in the German Democratic Republic. From 1963 until 1989, she was Minister of Education ("Volksbildung") of the GDR. She was married to Erich Honecker, the head of state of the GDR until its dissolution in 1989.

Honecker, who was known for her hard line political views, was responsible for the enactment of the "Uniform Socialist Education System" in 1965 and mandatory military training in schools.

Following the movement for reunification in 1989, Honecker fled to the Soviet Union with her husband to avoid criminal charges from the new regime. She obtained political asylum from the Chilean ambassador in Russia and subsequently emigrated to Chile, where she currently lives with her daughter Sonia.

Party worker

In 1945 Margot Feist joined the KPD. A year later, with the coerced merger of the SPD and KPD, she became a member of East Germany’s new state party, the SED, working as a shorthand typist with the land board of directors FDGB in Saxony-Anhalt.

In 1946 she became a member of the secretariat for the board of directors of the FDJ in Halle. She then began a meteoric rise through various departments. In 1947 she was the departmental leader of the FDJ’s culture and education in the land board of directors and in 1948 secretary of the FDJ’s central council as well as chairperson of the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation.

By 1949/1950 Margot Feist was a member of the GDR’s temporary People’s Parliament. In 1950 at the age of 22 she was elected as a representative in the newly founded People’s Chamber ().

She met her future husband, Erich Honecker, at FDJ meetings when he was the director of the Freie Deutsche Jugend. Honecker was 15 years older and married. When she became pregnant and gave birth to their daughter Sonja in 1952, Honecker divorced his wife and married Margot in 1953.

Post-GDR exile

Since 1992 Margot Honecker has lived in Santiago, Chile with her daughter Sonja Yáñez Betancourt, and her daughter’s Chilean husband Leo Yáñez Betancourt and their son Roberto Yáñez. Erich Honecker lived with his wife after being released by German authorities on the grounds of ill health in January 1993. He died of liver cancer at the age of 81 years on 29 May 1994 in Santiago. His body was cremated. Margot Honecker is believed to have kept his ashes.

In 1999, she failed in her legal attempt to sue the German government for €60,300 of property confiscated following reunification. In 2001, her appeal to ECtHR failed. She receives a survivor’s pension and the old-age pension of the German old age pension insurance federation.

In 2000 Luis Corvalán, the former General Secretary of the Communist Party of Chile, published the book The Other Germany – the GDR. Discussions with Margot Honecker, in which Honecker speaks about the history of the GDR from her perspective.

On 19 July 2008, on the occasion of the 29th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, Margot Honecker received the order for cultural independence "Rubén Dario" from President Daniel Ortega. The award was in recognition of Honecker’s untiring support of the national campaign against illiteracy in the 1980s. This honor was the first public appearance of Margot Honecker since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Honecker was reported to have said she was grateful for the honor; but publicly no words were spoken. The left-wing heads of state of Paraguay and Venezuela, Fernando Lugo and Hugo Chávez, also took part in the celebrations in Managua.

In October 2009, Honecker celebrated the 60th anniversary of the founding of the GDR with former Chilean exiles who had sought asylum in East Germany. She participated in singing a patriotic East German song and gave a short speech in which she stated that east Germans "had a good life in the GDR" and that many felt that capitalism has made their lives worse. In 2011, author Frank Schuhmann published a book entitled Letzte Aufzeichnungen — Für Margot (Final Notes — For Margot in English) based on the 400-page diary kept by Erich Honecker during his stay in Berlin’s Moabit prison beginning in July 1992. The diary was given by Margot Honecker to the author.