Large crowds gathered along the route of the former Berlin Wall for celebrations to mark 20 years since its fall.

World leaders joined tens of thousands of people to recall the defining moment when communist rule ended in Europe and East Germany finally opened the despised concrete border on November 9, 1989.

Today’s events began as Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor who grew up in the communist state, attended a service at a church where pro-democracy rallies were held in the weeks before the end of the communist regime.

“German unity is still incomplete,” Mrs Merkel told German television. “We must tackle this problem if we want to achieve equal quality of life.”

Times Archive, 1989: Berliners cross the Wall to freedom

East Germany declared last night that its citizens could leave the country at all crossing points

• Day trip to freedom for thousands

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She noted that the East still lagged behind the West in economic growth and had double the unemployment rate.

Later Mrs Merkel is due to attend the ceremonies at the historic Brandenburg Gate with Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian President, and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader, Lech Walesa, the former Polish president, and dissidents who took part in the unrest that toppled the Wall will visit the “death strip” — the no man’s land between the two states where eastern border guards once had shoot-to-kill orders.

At a ceremony last night Mrs Clinton called for a new transatlantic push to free those still oppressed.

“Our history did not end the night the Wall came down,” she said. “To expand freedom to more people, we cannot accept that freedom does not belong to all people. We cannot allow oppression defined and justified by religion or tribe to replace that of [communist] ideology." After weeks of protests against the regime, on the night of November 9 1989, East Germany’s authorities suddenly allowed people to travel to the West.

After 28 years as prisoners in their own country euphoric East Germans streamed to checkpoints and rushed past bewildered guards, many falling tearfully into the arms of West Germans on the other side.

Karl-Heinz Buchholz, a 63-year-old retired social worker who served a year in a Stasi prison as a young man, recalled being part of a 30,000-strong demonstration that night.

“When we came home we heard on the radio that the Wall had fallen,” said Mr Buchholz, interviewed near where the Wall once stood.

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