Honecker widow relates nostalgia of East Germany

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(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-06 11:14

BERLIN: East Germans are nostalgic for the "good life" they had under communism despite a propaganda campaign to discredit the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the widow of ex-GDR leader Erich Honecker says in a new video.

Margot Honecker, who has lived in Chile since 1992, is shown in the video celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of East Germany with former exiles who sought asylum in the GDR after the 1973 coup by Augusto Pinochet. The group sings a patriotic East German song before Honecker, standing in front of the hammer and sickle of the GDR flag, gives a short speech in German.

"There is a huge amount of opposition in Germany right now to the GDR," she says. "There is no talk show, no film, no news program that doesn't try to discredit the GDR."

"But it isn't working," she adds. "Fifty percent of Germans (in the old East) say they have a worse life under capitalism, that they had a good life in the GDR. They can say what they want but people are thinking more and more about what they had in the German Democratic Republic."

Honecker, 82, warns that Chancellor Angela Merkel's new center-right coalition of conservatives and Free Democrats will hurt German workers, lead to rising unemployment and welfare cuts.

"People won't tolerate this. The signs are good. I am optimistic," she adds.

Reuters