# Fame.am profile — machine-readable export
# Canonical URL: https://fame.am/person/erich-honecker
# Generated: 2026-08-31T16:43:37.020Z

schema: https://schema.org/Person
url: "https://fame.am/person/erich-honecker"
name: "Erich Honecker"
slug: "erich-honecker"
description: "He ran East Germany for eighteen years and built the Wall. When the Soviet wind shifted in the late 1980s, Honecker refused to bend — citing hardliners in Pyongyang, Havana, Bucharest — and was shoved aside weeks before the whole structure came down."
tagline: "Former leader of East Germany, General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party (1976-1989)"
image: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-R1220-401%2C_Erich_Honecker.jpg?width=1200"
gender: "male"
country:
  name: "Germany"
  isoCode: "DE"
category:
  name: "Politicians"
  slug: "politicians"
profileType:
  name: "Politician"
  slug: "politician"
birthDate: "1912-08-25"
deathDate: "1994-05-29"
livingStatus: "DECEASED"
scores:
  popularity:           69.71
  momentum:             9.540942684715041
  historical:           27.25836
  currentAttention:     36.79704542515125
  sourceConfidence:     65
  profileCompleteness:  75
  trendDirection:       "RISING"
ranks:
  global:   null
  country:  237
  category: null
tags:
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  - name: "Politics"
    slug: "politics"
  - name: "Stand Up"
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platforms:
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    title: "إريش هونيكر"
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    title: "Erich Honecker"
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    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Erich Honecker"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
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    title: "Erich Honecker"
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    title: "Wikiquote"
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    title: "Wikiquote"
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# bio (long form, separated for readability)
bio: |
  Erich Honecker joined the German Communist Party in the 1930s, spent years in Nazi prisons, and emerged after the war to help found the Free German Youth in 1946. As Security Secretary in 1961, he organised the construction of the Berlin Wall and bore administrative responsibility for the shoot-to-kill orders along it. With Soviet backing, he ousted Walter Ulbricht in 1971 and led East Germany into a phase of "consumer socialism" and international normalisation, including UN membership and détente with Bonn. When Gorbachev's reforms swept through Moscow in the late 1980s, Honecker dug in and refused to follow, leaning on the example of Kim, Castro, and Ceaușescu. The Politburo forced him out in October 1989; the regime lasted one more month. After reunification he hid in the Chilean embassy in Moscow, was extradited in 1992 to face trial for human rights abuses, but terminal liver cancer ended the proceedings. He died in Chilean exile in May 1994.