'Purple Witch' invoked forced adoption
Margot Honecker Politician and widow of East German leader Erich Honecker BORN APRIL 17, 1927 DIED MAY 6, 2016 AGED 89
KNOWN as the Purple Witch in East Germany for her tinted hair and hardline position, Margot Honecker, the wife of former East German leader Erich Honecker, was the most powerful woman in the communist state until its collapse.
As education minister in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) from 1963 until October 1989 when her husband was overthrown, Honecker was responsible for introducing military and weapons training in schools, warning that socialism would have to be defended, “if necessary, with weapons in hands”.
It was also claimed that she instigated forced adoption policies in which children of dissidents and East Germans who attempted to flee to the West were forcibly and permanently separated from their parents. Many were placed in foster homes or state adoption institutions, or with the families of childless Communist Party activists.
Yet Honecker, who spent 20 years living as a recluse, never showed any remorse and continued to defend the regime for the rest of her life, describing its demise as a tragedy.
The daughter of a shoemaker and a factory worker, Margot Feist was born in Halle, where she endured a tough upbringing. Her father was imprisoned by the Nazis in 1934 and her mother died when she was still a teenager. She started working for the Communist Party’s FDJ youth association at 18. Four years later in 1949 she became the youngest member of East Germany’s parliament the Volkskammer.
It was at meetings of the FDJ that she met her future husband, who was 15 years older and married at the time. When Margot became pregnant and gave birth to their daughter Sonja in 1952 Erich divorced his wife and the couple married the following year.
It wasn’t a particularly happy marriage and by the 1970s there were reports that they were living largely separate lives.
After German reunification the Honeckers fled to exile in the Soviet Union in 1991 to escape criminal charges over human rights abuses.
When Erich was extradited back to Germany, Margot moved to Chile. Erich was later released as he had cancer and joined his wife and daughter in Chile. He died in 1994.