Erich Honecker (German: ['e:RIc 'honeka]; 25 August 1912 - 29 May 1994) was a German politician who, as the General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party, led the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) from 1971 until the weeks preceding the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. From 1976 onward he was also the country's official head of state as chairman of the State Council following Willi Stoph's relinquishment of the post. Honecker's political career began in the 1930s when he became an official of the Communist Party of Germany, a position for which he was imprisoned during the Nazi era. Following World War II, he was freed and soon relaunched his political activities, founding the youth organisation the Free German Youth in 1946 and serving as the group's chairman until 1955.

Honecker was married three times. After being liberated from prison in 1945 he married the prison warden Charlotte Schanuel (nee Drost), nine years his senior, on 23 December 1946. She died suddenly from a brain tumour in June 1947. Details of this marriage were not revealed until 2003, well after his death.  By the time of her death, Honecker was already romantically involved with the Free German Youth official Edith Baumann, whom he met on a trip to Moscow. With her he had a daughter, Erika (b. 1950), who later gave him his granddaughter Anke. Sources differ on whether Honecker and Baumann married in 1947 or 1949, but in 1952 he fathered an illegitimate daughter, Sonja (b. December 1952), with Margot Feist, a People's Chamber member and chairperson of the Ernst Thalmann Pioneer Organisation.  In September 1950, Baumann wrote directly to Walter Ulbricht to inform him of her husband's extramarital activity in the hope of him pressuring Honecker to end his relationship with Feist. Following his divorce and reportedly under pressure from the Politburo, he married Feist, however sources again differ on both the year of his divorce from Baumann and of his marriage to Feist; depending on the source, the events took place either in 1953 or 1955. For more than twenty years, Margot Honecker served as Minister of National Education. In 2012 intelligence reports collated by West German spies alleged that both Erich and his wife had secret affairs but did not divorce for political reasons, however, his bodyguard Bernd Bruckner in a book about his time spent in Honecker's service, refuted the claims.  Honecker had three grandchildren from his daughter Sonja, who had married the Chilean-born exile Leonardo Yanez Betancourt; Roberto, (b. 1974) Mariana, (b. 1985) who died in 1988 at the age of two leaving Honecker himself heartbroken, and Vivian (b. 1988). Roberto's origins are debated; he is claimed to be the illegally adopted son of Mrs. Heidi Stein, Dirk Schiller, born on 13 June 1975 in Gorlitz, who disappeared in March 1979, due to alleged physical similarities between Dirk and Leonardo Mrs Stein suspecting that her son might have been kidnapped at 3 years old by Stasi agents for Honecker's younger daughter.  Honecker's daughter, (who divorced Leonardo in 1993) grandson and granddaughter still live in Santiago. Answer this question using a quote from the following article:

Who was Honecker's father?