Honecker was married three times.
After being liberated from prison in 1945, he married the prison warden Charlotte Schanuel (née Drost), nine years his senior, on 23 December 1946.
She died suddenly from a brain tumour in June 1947.
Details of 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 Walter Ulbricht to inform him of her husband's extramarital activity in the hope of him pressuring Honecker to end his relationship with Feist.
Following his divorce and reportedly under pressure from the Politburo, he married Feist.
 However, sources again differ on both the year of his divorce from Baumann and of his marriage to Feist; depending on the source, the events took place either in 1953 or 1955.
For more than twenty years, Margot Honecker served as Minister of National Education.
In 2012 intelligence reports collated by West German spies alleged that both Honecker and his wife had secret affairs but did not divorce for political reasons; however, his bodyguard Bernd Brückner, in a book about his time spent in Honecker's service, denied the claims.

Honecker had three grandchildren from his daughter Sonja, who had married the Chilean-born exile Leonardo Yáñez Betancourt: Roberto (b. 1974), Mariana (b. 1985), who died in 1988 at the age of two leaving Honecker himself heartbroken, and Vivian (b. 1988).
Roberto's origins are debated; he is claimed to be the illegally adopted son of Heidi Stein, Dirk Schiller, born on 13 June 1975 in Görlitz, who disappeared in March 1979, due to alleged physical similarities between Dirk and Yáñez, Stein suspecting that her son might have been kidnapped at three years old by Stasi agents for Honecker's younger daughter.

Honecker's daughter divorced Yáñez in 1993.
She and her two surviving children still live in Santiago.
Honecker was married three times. After being liberated from prison in 1945, he married the prison warden Charlotte Schanuel (née Drost), nine years his senior, on 23 December 1946. She died suddenly from a brain tumour in June 1947. Details of 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 Walter Ulbricht to inform him of her husband's extramarital activity in the hope of him pressuring Honecker to end his relationship with Feist. Following his divorce and reportedly under pressure from the Politburo, he married Feist.  However, sources again differ on both the year of his divorce from Baumann and of his marriage to Feist; depending on the source, the events took place either in 1953 or 1955. For more than twenty years, Margot Honecker served as Minister of National Education. In 2012 intelligence reports collated by West German spies alleged that both Honecker and his wife had secret affairs but did not divorce for political reasons; however, his bodyguard Bernd Brückner, in a book about his time spent in Honecker's service, denied the claims.
Honecker had three grandchildren from his daughter Sonja, who had married the Chilean-born exile Leonardo Yáñez Betancourt: Roberto (b. 1974), Mariana (b. 1985), who died in 1988 at the age of two leaving Honecker himself heartbroken, and Vivian (b. 1988). Roberto's origins are debated; he is claimed to be the illegally adopted son of Heidi Stein, Dirk Schiller, born on 13 June 1975 in Görlitz, who disappeared in March 1979, due to alleged physical similarities between Dirk and Yáñez, Stein suspecting that her son might have been kidnapped at three years old by Stasi agents for Honecker's younger daughter.
Honecker's daughter divorced Yáñez in 1993. She and her two surviving children still live in Santiago.
Erich Honecker