Biography of Margot Honecker

Margot Honecker (born Margot Feist on 17 April 1927 in Halle an der Saale; died 6 May 2016 in Santiago de Chile) was a German SED politician and Minister of National Education of the GDR from 1963 to 1989. She was one of the most influential women in the East German leadership and also the wife of Erich Honecker. Her name is linked to the GDR's strictly ideologized education system, to early support and social mobility, but also to political indoctrination, military instruction, youth workhouses and state interventions in families.

Background and party rise

Margot Feist grew up in Halle in a communist working-class household. After the Second World War she rose quickly in the new youth and party structures of the Soviet occupation zone. She worked in the FDJ, chaired the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organization and became a member of the Volkskammer at an early age. This career was closely tied to the construction of SED rule: youth, school and party were not meant to be separate spaces, but to interlock.

Minister of National Education

In 1963 Honecker became Minister of National Education. Two years later came the law on the uniform socialist education system. GDR schooling relied on a unified structure, polytechnical education, childcare and the connection between lessons and the world of work. Many families experienced this as reliability and opportunity for advancement. At the same time, school was an instrument of political education. Curricula, youth organizations and civics lessons were designed to form loyalty to the socialist state.

Power and responsibility

Honecker's ministry was responsible for more than schools. Its field included youth welfare, special homes and youth workhouses. The closed youth workhouse at Torgau later became a symbol of drill, intimidation and violence against young people considered nonconforming. Politically motivated forced adoptions are also connected with the GDR education and youth welfare system. These points leave her time in office heavily burdened.

Military instruction and ideology

At the end of the 1970s military instruction was introduced in GDR schools. Pupils were thereby directed more strongly toward military and security themes. For churches, many parents and later civil rights groups, this showed how deeply state, party and school were intertwined. Honecker defended this line even as criticism of the GDR system became increasingly open.

End of the GDR and exile

In the autumn of 1989 Margot Honecker also lost her office. On 2 November 1989 her resignation as education minister became known. After German unity she first lived near her husband in the Soviet Union and later in Chile, where her daughter Sonja lived. From Santiago she defended the GDR into old age and rejected accusations concerning forced adoptions and political repression. This late defense of the old system shaped the view of her final years.

Farewell

Margot Honecker died in Santiago de Chile on 6 May 2016. She was 89 years old. Her life remains closely connected with an education policy that reached millions of children and was at the same time part of an authoritarian system that demanded conformity and punished deviation.