Nov. 8 (Bloomberg) -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989, and joined German families using pickaxes to tear down the concrete slabs, he said in a post on his Facebook Internet page.

Sarkozy, who was then a 34-year-old lawmaker in the lower chamber of Parliament, drove to Berlin on the morning of Nov. 9 after hearing news from the German capital that suggested change was coming, he wrote in a post for about 177,000 supporters of his social networking Web page. He attached a photograph showing him in front of the Wall that night.

“We decided to leave Paris with Alain Juppe,” the former prime minister, “to participate in the event that was going to happen,” Sarkozy wrote. “We then headed for Checkpoint Charlie to see the eastern side of the city and finally confront this Wall and I was able to take a pickaxe to it.”

At the time, Sarkozy held an executive position in the party called Rassemblement pour la Republique, which would later become the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, the ruling party. He is due in Berlin tomorrow to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall with Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders.

In his post, Sarkozy recalled families standing next to him, “telling us their feelings, there new ambitions and share their emotions after decades of separation.”

He said the “night continued in a climate of general enthusiasm: the German people were reunited, heralding the end of the Cold War and the beginning of a period of great freedom in Europe.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Helene Fouquet in Paris at hfouquet1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: November 8, 2009 12:39 EST