Everyone can remember what they were doing when the Berlin Wall came down — except, apparently, Nicolas Sarkozy.

The French President has been embarrassed by a claim on his Facebook page that he dashed to Berlin on November 9, 1989, to take part in the first moments of freedom. A photograph even showed the future President, aged 34 at the time, helping to knock the wall down.

The account was challenged by witnesses from the period, who said that it was impossible for Mr Sarkozy to have been in Berlin that day, as he claimed, with Alain Juppé and François Fillon, a past Prime Minister and the current one. The Élysée Palace, the two politicians and other officials said that the story was true, but their accounts conflict with facts.

Mr Sarkozy’s entry, written by Élysée Palace staff, said: “On the morning of the 9th of November, we were werefollowing news from Berlin that seemed to announce change in the divided capital of Germany.” Arriving that day that he “went straight to the Brandenburg Gate where an enthusiastic crowd was already gathered on news of the probable opening of the wall . . . ”

Mr Fillon could not have been in Berlin that day because he was registered as present in Parliament, while Mr Juppé admitted a memory lapse. Mr Sarkozy, it appeared last night, embroidered his story, having visited Berlin several days after the event.

The tale has prompted national mirth. Ségolène Royal, his Socialist opponent, joked that he was probably also at the Bastille in 1789, while le Monde carried a front-page cartoon with Mr Sarkozy dressed as a dwarf with a pick-axe before the wall in 1989, insisting that Snow White hadaccompanied him there.

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