Edith Baumann (politician)

Edith Baumann Edith Honecker-Baumann
Edith Baumann depicted on a postage stamp (1989)
Born	1 August 1909 Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin, Germany
Died	7 April 1973 Berlin, East Germany
Occupation	Political activist Youth leader (FDJ) Party Central Committee member
Political party	SAPD (1931-1933) SED (1946-1973)
Spouse(s)	Erich Honecker (1912-1994)
Children	Erika Honecker (b. 1950)

Edith Baumann (1 August 1909 - 7 April 1973) was an East German politician. She was a co-founder and official of the 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 (Freie Deutsche Jugend / FDJ) organisation, and from 1971 until 1989, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, East Germany's leader.

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 .

Between 1925 and 1929 she was employed as a typist by a pharmacist wholesale supplier: a succession of typing jobs followed. She joined the in 1925, remaining a member till 1931. Between 1925 and 1933 she was also a member of the Zentralverband der Angestellten (ZdA) trades union. She joined the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands / SAPD) in 1931, which was the year in which it broke away from the more moderate mainstream Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands / SPD). She was also a leading member of the Socialist Youth League of Germany (Sozialistischer Jugend-Verband Deutschlands / SJV / SJVD ), the youth wing of the SAPD.