Margot Honecker (née Feist; 17 April 1927 – 6 May 2016) was an East German politician and influential member of the country's Communist government until 1989.

She was married to Erich Honecker, leader of East Germany's ruling Socialist Unity Party from 1971 to 1989 and concurrently from 1976 to 1989 the country's head of state.

Margot Honecker was widely referred to as the "Purple Witch" ("Lila Hexe" in German) for her tinted hair and hardline Stalinist views.

[2] She was responsible for the enactment of the "Uniform Socialist Education System" in 1965 and mandatory military training in schools to prepare pupils for a future war with the west.

[3] She was alleged to have been responsible for the regime's forced adoption of children of jailed dissidents or people who attempted to flee the GDR,[4] and is considered to have "left a cruel legacy of separated families.

"[5] She was one of the few spouses of a ruling Communist Party leader who held significant power in her own right, as her prominence in the regime predated her husband's ascension to the leadership of the SED.

Following the downfall of the communist regime in 1990, Honecker fled to the Soviet Union with her husband to avoid criminal charges from the government of reunified Germany.

The relationship between them developed when Feist, in her capacity as leader of the "Ernst Thälmann young pioneers", joined the East German delegation that traveled to Moscow for the celebration of Stalin's official birthday.

On 25 February 1965, she introduced the law that made "the uniform socialist education system" standard in all schools, colleges and universities throughout East Germany.

[19] In 1978, Honecker introduced, against the opposition of the churches and many parents, military lessons (German: Wehrkunde) for 9th and 10th grade high school students (this included training on weapons such as aerial guns and the KK-MPi).

[21] Though the accusations were never proven,[13] Honecker was allegedly responsible for the regime's kidnapping and forced adoption of children of jailed dissidents and those who tried to flee the GDR, and she is considered to have "left a cruel legacy of separated families.

[28] Boris Yeltsin was already busy building up his power base in Moscow, and Erich Honecker's desperate last letter to President Gorbachev went unanswered.

[28] In August 1991, as the Soviet Union collapsed, the Honeckers, fearing they might find themselves handed over to the German authorities, took refuge in the Chilean embassy, where for nearly a year they lived out of a suitcase in a small room.

The Russian leadership refused to become involved: it fell to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Chilean President Patricio Aylwin to negotiate a future for the Honeckers.

[28] Formally, the negotiations between Kohl and Aylwin were defined by tensions between the Chilean determination to uphold the Honeckers' right to political asylum and Germany's legal agreements on extradition: for some months, the discussions were characterised by mutual intransigence.

[31] In January 1993, Erich Honecker's trial in Berlin, which some felt had by that stage already descended into farce, was cut short because of the rapidly deteriorating health of the accused.

[citation needed] In 1999, Margot Honecker failed in her legal attempt to sue the German government for €60,300 of property confiscated following reunification.

On 19 July 2008, on the occasion of the 29th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, Honecker was awarded the "Rubén Dario" order for cultural independence from President Daniel Ortega.

[41] In a 2012 interview with Das Erste, Honecker labelled Mikhail Gorbachev a "traitor" for his reforms and called the defectors of East Germany "criminals and terrorists."