Axel Schulz
On the day the Berlin Wall came down, he was 21 years old
Axel Schulz is one of the most famous German boxers.
© imago images / Future Image
Axel Schulz comes from the GDR. As he now relates, on November 9, 1989, he not only celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall, but also his birthday.
Ex-professional boxer Axel Schulz (52) comes from Bad Saarow in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). As the unity ambassador of the federal state of Brandenburg reveals almost two and a half months before the 22nd anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, he not only celebrated the surprising historical event on November 9, 1989, but also his 21st birthday.
“I had invited friends. We heard Udo Lindenberg on the tape recorder,” recalls Schulz. Since he had switched on “no radio, no television”, he himself “did not notice the fall of the Wall at first either”. Then, however, some of his friends invited to the birthday party simply did not show up and the young athlete realized a little later “that, unlike me, they had buckled what had happened. They were on their way to West Berlin”. The now 52-year-old then went “three days later” from the GDR to the Federal Republic of Germany.
“In the GDR it would never have been an option to turn my passion for boxing into a profession”
Axel Schulz benefited from the fact that the Wall fell in November 1989, especially as a budding professional athlete. “I was 21, the best time for an athlete to start his international career,” he explains. “In the GDR it would never have been an option to turn my passion for boxing into a profession.”
Although today’s “sports pensioner” has spent a lot of time in different places in the years since reunification, he is always drawn to his home state of Brandenburg. “Of course I could live in Berlin. But I don’t want to. I have my friends here – and it’s one of the most beautiful federal states.”
Axel Schulz began his successful boxing career at the age of eleven in the boxing department of BSG Gaselan in Fürstenwalde. He later won five championship titles in the GDR. He went down in the history of sport with his World Cup fight against US colleague George Foreman (72) in 1995. Schulz lost that, but because of his status as an “underdog”, he has since been considered the “world champion of hearts”.