Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle signed the book of condolences for the former Hungarian Foreign and Prime Minister Gyula Horn at the Hungarian Embassy in Berlin.

In his message, he thanked Gyula Horn and called him a great European and a good friend of Germany. Guido Westerwelle issued the following statement on 19 June:

I was deeply saddened by the news of Gyula Horn’s death.

We Germans will never forget his courageous actions as Hungary’s Foreign Minister. In August 1989, Gyula Horn literally cut through the Iron Curtain, which had divided Europe for 40 years. When a little later he announced to thousands of citizens of the former GDR that they were permitted to depart Hungary for the West, he firmly established his place in the history books.

We take leave of a great European, who did the right thing at a defining moment in European history and lived out the European values of freedom and humanity.“