Edith Baumann

Edith Baumann (1 August 1909 – 7 April 1973) was a German politician. She was a co-founder and official of the Free German Youth (Freie Deutsche Jugend / FDJ), the youth organisation that after 1946 became the youth wing of East Germany's ruling Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands / SED). Between 1946 and her death she was a member of the country's powerful Party Central Committee.

Sources sometimes identify her as Edith Honecker-Baumann. Between the late 1940s and early or mid-1950s, sources differing on both the dates of marriage and divorce (see below), she was married to Erich Honecker, at that time the chairman of the Free German Youth organisation, and from 1971 until 1989, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, East Germany's leader.

Life

Provenance and early years Edith Baumann was born into a working-class family in Prenzlauer Berg, at that time a recently developed district on the southern edge of Berlin. Her father was a building worker. She attended school locally, training as a . a position she retained until 1949.

Personal Marriage Edith Baumann (centre-left) and Erich Honecker (right) applauding at the Congress of Young Activists of the "Treuhandbetrieb" Discussion of Erich Honecker's private life was a constant taboo. The private lives of public figures in East Germany habitually went unremarked. Honecker's relationship with Edith Baumann, his second wife, nevertheless featured sufficiently in the consciousness of East Germany to reappear in the West German political media well before 1971, when Honecker emerged as the new East German leader. When he took over, his marriage to Baumann was already a subject of discussion in the West German press. Understandably, however, a lot of normally mainstream and uncontentious information on the Honecker-Baumann marriage emerged only after 1989,

Assuming that the marriage took place in December 1949, it was just a couple of weeks later that Erich Honecker led a delegation of the East German party to Moscow in order to attend celebrations of the seventieth birthday of the Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin. The delegation also included Margot Feist, the 22-year-old leader of the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation. Honecker was fascinated by Feist "both because she was a pretty young girl and because she was very active in the party". Intimacy ensued. It is reported that Honecker attempted to conceal their affair, but he failed because almost every night he went directly to Feist's apartment. Edith did not acquiesce, however. For most purposes, by this time the most powerful German in East German politics was the General Secretary of the Party Central Committee, Walter Ulbricht. Ulbricht now received a letter from Baumann asking him to have a very firm word with his ambitious, philandering young comrade, her husband, saying "Erich never gets home before one in the morning, his head is starting to cave in and he fantasizes about the wildest stuff..."#tag:ref|"Erich never gets home before one in the morning, his head is starting to cave in and he fantasizes about the wildest stuff...""Erich kommt nie vor ein Uhr nachts nach Hause und phantasiert das wildeste Zeug ..." But old President Pieck took a more pragmatic view. Despite his declining health and diminishing involvement in day-to-day affairs, Pieck never lost the full confidence of Joseph Stalin. In the judgement of Politburo member Gerhard Schürer it was largely down to Pieck that the ending of Erich and Edith Honecker's marriage ran its jagged course without erupting into scandal.

It was not until January 1955 that Edith Honecker-Baumann agreed to give her husband a divorce. The urn containing her ashes was placed in the section of the Berlin Main Cemetery reserved for political leaders and others highly honoured by the East German political establishment.

Awards and honours

1955 Clara Zetkin Medal 1955 Patriotic Order of Merit in silver 1959 Banner of Labor 1960 Banner of Labor 1965 Patriotic Order of Merit in gold 1969 Patriotic Order of Merit in honor clasp

In 1989 the East German postal service featured Edith Baumann on a postage stampStamps of Germany (DDR) 1989, MiNr 3222.jpg.