On 13 August 1986, military troops parade in front of the VIP stand on the 25th anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall. The photo shows a number of prominent East German leaders: Hermann Axen, Günter Schabowski, Heinz Keßler, Egon Krenz, Willi Stoph, Erich Honecker and Margot Honecker.

‘Happy Birthday.’ In August 1986, the German cartoonist, Horst Haitzinger, takes an ironic look at the 25 years of the Berlin Wall and criticises the crimes of the East German Communist regime led by Erich Honecker.

Am 13. Oktober 1987 erläutert Erich Honecker, Vorsitzender des Staatsrats der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (DDR) in einem Interview mit der Brüsseler Tageszeitung La Libre Belgique die Rolle seines Landes auf internationaler Ebene und die Haltung seiner Regierung zu den Forderungen nach demokratischen Reformen.

‘Temptation — Governess Honecker: ‘Don’t look! That’s a porn shop …’ In 1988, in response to Gorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union (USSR, or ‘UDSSR’ in German), the cartoonist Ernst Maria Lang portrays the refusal of the East German leadership to reform the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

‘GDR’. On 10 July 1989, Fritz Behrendt, a Dutch cartoonist originally from Berlin, paints an ironic picture of the reaction of Erich Honecker, General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), to the proliferation of protest movements sweeping across several countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Behrendt particularly emphasises the East German authorities’ refusal to change and to introduce democratic reforms. In the centre of the cartoon, Erich Honecker is sat in his military bunker surrounded by barbed wire, symbolising the GDR, with his hands over his ears so that he cannot hear the calls for freedom and democracy.

On 15 August 1989, in an article for the French daily newspaper Le Monde, Henri de Bresson analyses the economic situation in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and emphasises the East German authorities’ refusal to change and to consider democratic reforms.

‘Bar the door!’ In 1989, the German cartoonist, Fritz Behrendt, portrays the Communist leaders of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) seeking to oppose, as far as possible, the measures to democratise the country along the lines of the Soviet ‘perestroika’ model.

Am 13. Dezember 1989, in einem Interview mit dem DDR-Fernsehen, erläutert der Bundespräsident Richard von Weizsäcker, die Frage der Deutschen Wiedervereinigung und befürwortet demokratische Veränderungen in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik.

In 1989, the German cartoonist, Walter Hanel, illustrates the gradual dissolution of the Communist regime of Erich Honecker in the German Democratic Republic (GDR).