With support from the University of Richmond

New perspectives on how history is made

Nicolas Sarkozy accused of rewriting history after Facebook slip

It started out as a personal account by a world leader of where he was when the wall came down. The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, posted a photograph of himself taking a pickaxe to the Berlin Wall on his Facebook page, describing how he rushed to Berlin on 9 November 1989, and crossed through Checkpoint Charlie on the first day the gates opened.

But today, Sarkozy was accused of rewriting history by French journalists who had studied reports from the time and found no evidence that he was in Berlin on the day the wall fell. Some suggested he was not in the city until a week later...
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)