Germany marks 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall on Saturday with a string of events dedicated to one of the most defining moments in modern European history.

In the corridors of power in East Berlin, inside the opulent villas in the leafy northern suburb of Wandlitz which the apparatchiks called home, the mood has been on a knife-edge for weeks.

"Suddenly they opened the gate!" recalled Berliner Andreas Falge, one of the first to cross the East German border into the West on November 9, 1989.

To commemorate the recent second anniversary of the blockade of Qatar, Qatar Museums has installed an original part of the Berlin Wall at Qatar National Convention Centre (QNCC) through an ongoing cultural collaboration with Qatar Foundation (QF).

Sigmar Gabriel said Germany had a keen interest in maintaining good relations with all the Gulf countries and working for peace in the region, even if those countries were sometimes in conflict.

Germany's Cold War-era veteran foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who was the country's top diplomat when the Berlin Wall fell, has died at age 89, his office said on Friday.