Nov 9, 2009, 10:10 GMT
Paris - A controversy arose in France Monday over President Nicolas Sarkozy's Facebook account of his visit to Berlin on November 9, 1989, for the fall of the Wall.
Several French internet media noted that it would have been unlikely for Sarkozy to have been interested in 'information coming out of Berlin, that seemed to announce a change' on the morning of November 9, as he maintains, since news that East Germans would be allowed to travel to the West was not reported until the evening.
In addition, according to Alain Auffray's blog for the daily Liberation, Sarkozy - who was then deputy head of the ruling RPR party - could not have joined 'a large and jubilant crowd' at the Brandenburg Gate.
On the evening of November 9, the crowds massed in East Berlin, at the Prenzlauer Berg, Auffray says. 'West Berliners did not begin attacking the Wall until the next day, November 10,' he writes.
Asked about the apparent flaws in Sarkozy's story, Franck Louvrier, his press and communications advisor, insisted to the German Press Agency dpa that it was accurate and that the French president was in Berlin on November 9.
However, Sarkozy's traveling companion at the time, former prime minister Alain Juppe, wrote in his autobiography that he was not in the German capital until November 16, 1989.
On the other hand, in an interview posted on TV5.org, Juppe said he was in Berlin 'the day after the Wall fell, on November 10.' But on his own blog he now declares that he was there on the 9th.
Asked which of the three dates was correct, a flustered spokesman for Juppe, said, 'One of them.'
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