He was at the head of the GDR for 18 years and gave the face of "socialism on German soil" like no other: Erich Honecker. Born in Neunkirchen in Saarland in 1912 and died in exile in Chile in 1994, this former roofer embodies the classic career communist and apparatchik. As the long-standing General Secretary of the SED Central Committee and Chairman of the GDR State Council and Chairman of the National Defense Council, he had dictatorial powers as the successor to Walter Ulbricht from 1971 and thus had a lasting impact on the last two decades in the workers' and farmers' state.
This Honecker portrait was compiled from extensive archive material from the ARD broadcasters and from the former GDR, as well as interviews with numerous contemporary witnesses from East and West Germany who dealt with Honecker in various roles. In addition to Egon Krenz, who talks in detail about his boss of many years, the person Erich Honecker u. a. portrayed by: Hans Modrow, Manfred Stolpe, Reinhold Andert, Peter Ensikat, Uwe Steimle, Egon Bahr, Klaus Bölling, Hans Otto Brautigam, Edmund Stoiber, Hans-Jochen Vogel, Fritz Pleitgen and Friedrich Nowottny as well as Honecker's 'court reporter' Klaus Taubert and the Bodyguard Bernd Brueckner.

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