| Sumario: | East Germans may not have been using the language of "human rights" in the 1950s to push back at the regime as they would in the 1980s, but they were clearly rejecting the regime in its entirety, including its version of human rights (48-49). Erich Honecker, East Germany's leader from 1971 until the dying days of the regime, maintained even after the regime had collapsed that the German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik or GDR) had an exemplary human rights record (256). Its focus, however, was not to promote human rights in the GDR, but to advocate for Communists imprisoned in West Germany and to highlight the abuse of human rights there.
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