page_title: Erich Honecker
section_title: In Popular Culture
hierarchical_section_title: Erich Honecker / In Popular Culture
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. 25.7.1991 "East-Side-Gallery", gelegen zwischen der Jannowitzbrücke und der Oberbaumbrücke. Reste der Berliner Mauer, die nach der Öffnung von vorwiegend ostdeutschen Künstlern auf der Ost-Seite bemalt wurden.
context_page_description: Erich Ernst Paul Honecker was a German politician who was the General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. As party leader he worked closely with Moscow. He controlled the government of the German Democratic Republic from 1971 until he was forced out in the weeks preceding the fall of the Berlin Wall in October 1989. From 1976 onward he was also the country's official head of state as Chairman of the State Council of the German Democratic Republic following Willi Stoph's relinquishment of the post.
  Honecker's political career began in the 1930s when he became an official of the Communist Party of Germany, a position for which he was imprisoned by the Nazi government of Germany. Following World War II, he was freed by the Soviet army and relaunched his political activities, founding the youth organisation the Free German Youth in 1946 and serving as the group's chairman until 1955. As the Security Secretary of the Party's Central Committee in the new East Germany, he was the prime organiser of the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and, in this function, bore responsibility for the "order to fire" along the Inner German border.
context_section_description: The 1983 Udo Lindenberg song "Sonderzug nach Pankow", aimed at the State Council and their lack of looseness, also achieved great popularity in East Germany. In 1987 Honecker sent Lindenberg a shawm—an instrument he had played in his youth as a member of the Roter Frontkämpferbund—in response to the gift of a leather jacket from him.
  Dmitri Vrubel's 1990 mural on the Berlin Wall My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love, depicting a socialist "fraternal kiss" between Honecker and Leonid Brezhnev, became known around the world.
caption: Press photo as a mural: Honecker with Brezhnev in "fraternal" kiss. The inscriptions in Russian reads "God! help me to survive amidst this deadly love" (Russian: Господи! Помоги мне выжить среди этой смертной любви.).
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