Margot Honecker, the widow of former East German leader, Erich Honecker has died in Chile at the age of 89. She had been living in Santiago for the last twenty years.

Margot Honecker died on Friday in Chile, according to people close to the family.

Local television reported that she had been suffering from cancer.

Honecker had been living in the Chilean capital as a recluse.

She was married to Erich Honecker who led East Germany from 1976 until 1989. She was an influentual member of the East German communist party and the East German regime until 1989.

She served as minister of education during his term in office and brought in mandatory military training in schools.

She was known locally as the "Purple Witch" because of her tinted hair and hardline stance. Former Bundestag president Wolfgang Thierse described her as "the most hated person" in East Germany next to Stasi chief Erich Mielke.

The couple left Germany for Russia in 1989. Fearing extradition to Germany, they took refuge in the Chilean embassy in Moscow in 1991. Erich Honecker was extradited from Russia to Germany by Boris Yeltsin's government but he was released on grounds of ill health in 1993. They moved to Chile in 1993.

The couple's private property was confiscated by the German government and Honecker lost a lawsuit she filed against the German government in 1999.

One of her last public statements was a comment on people who had tried to cross over the Berlin Wall, calling them "stupid."

"There was no need for that, it was not necessary to climb the wall," she said in an interview with Germany's ARD television. She defended the former East German state, attacked those who brought it down and complained about her pension. "The GDR also had its foes. That's why we had the Stasi," she told the Guardian newspaper in April 2012.

She is survived by her daughter, Sonja, who lives in Chile. Erich Honecker died of cancer in Chile in 1994.

(DW)