Head of State of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). He became a member of the communist youth organization in 1922. He went to school for 8 years and was described as not particularly intelligent. In 1928 he started an apprenticeship as a roofer, which he soon broke off again. He became a member of the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) in 1930 and went for one year to Moscow. After the Nazis came into power, he continued his now illegal work for the KPD and became a member of the resistance. In February 1934 he was arrested for a few days and then fled to the Netherlands, but returned in the autumn. On February 15, 1935 he had to flee again and went to France, but returned to Berlin later in the same year and was arrested again. In June 1937 he was sentenced to 13 years in prison, which he served in the prison of Brandenburg- Goerden. He fled on March 6, 1945. He met Walter Ulbricht in Berlin and became one of the founding members of the youth organization FDJ (Free German Youth). He was the organization's leader from 1946 until 1955. He planned and led the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. He married Edith Baum in 1947. They got divorced in 1955 and he married his longtime lover Margot Feist, with whom he already had a child. On May 3, 1971 he ousted Walter Ulbricht from power with support from Moscow and became head of state. He rejected Gorbachev's reform politics of "Glasnost and Perestroika" with the reasoning that the economic and social situation in the GDR did not make reforms necessary. During a travel to Moscow in June 1989 he said that the Wall will stand in 50 or 100 years, and congratulated China for successfully striking down the student protests. While the members of the Zentralkomitee celebrated the 40th anniversary of the founding of the GDR on October 7, 1989, thousands of people demonstrated in the streets of Berlin against the government. The pressure put unto him by the Monday demonstrations in Leipzig forced him to withdraw from power on October 18, 1989. At the end of January 1990 he was briefly arrested, but was released the following day. In 1991 he flew with his wife to Moscow to escape criminal prosecution for incitement of homicide. As it became clear that the Soviet Union wouldn't grant him asylum, he fled to the embassy of Chile in Moscow. Due to the pressure of other states, he had to leave the embassy on July 29, 1992 and was sent to Germany. He was put into the medical ward at the Moabit prison in Berlin. Due to a cancer illness, he was released from prison in 1993 and the legal proceeding was stopped. He went with his wife to Chile where his daughter lived, and died there the following year. He was cremated. The urn was in the possession of his wife. After she too died, his urn came into the possession of a friend of the family.
Cause of Death: Liver Cancer