German Unity Day: East German athletes who thrived after reunification

Figure skater Katarina Witt actually enjoyed her biggest successes before the Berlin Wall came down. In 1988 she won Olympic gold in Calgary for the GDR, following up on gold in 1984 in Sarajevo. Since the end of her active career she's appeared on TV shows as an expert, dabbled in acting and she even started her own charity for kids in 2005.

Heike Drechsler won a number of Olympic and World Championship medals before German reunification. She first won Olympic gold in 1992 in Barcelona though, in the long jump. In 2000, in Sydney, she managed to repeat her success. Although at the beginning of the 1990s her doping and Stasi past was uncovered, she still remained a popular athlete across Germany.

In 1992, the then 14-year-old swimmer Franziska van Almsick turned plenty of heads when she broke a world record in the 50 meter freestyle. At the Barcelona Olympics, she went on to win two silver medals and a bronze, and was one of the first sports stars of the newly-unified Germany. She won the German sportswoman of the year award three times and remains a popular public figure today.

Henry Maske (left) used to be in the GDR army, and won gold for East Germany at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. He turned professional in 1990 and won the world championship three years later in the light heavyweight category. His fights were national TV events. In 2010 he even acted in the role of German boxing icon Max Schmeling, in a box office film.

Matthias Sammer (right) was one of the GDR's most talented footballers at the end of the 1980s. In 1990 he moved from Dresden to Stuttgart and won the Bundesliga shortly thereafter. After a brief stint at Inter Milan, he returned to Germany to play for Borussia Dortmund where he won two Bundesliga titles and the Champions League. He was also captain of the Euro '96- winning German team.

Just like Matthias Sammer, Ulf Kirsten (right) turned his back on Dynamo Dresden in 1990, to pursue a football career in the west of unified Germany. At Leverkusen he became one of the most successful goal scorers in the history of the Bundesliga, with 182 goals in 350 games. His attacking partner at the start of his career was Andreas Thom (left), also from the GDR.

The discus throwers Lars Riedel (left) and Jürgen Schult (right) dominated their sport in the years after German reunification. Schult won Olympic gold in 1988 for the GDR and also competed side-by-side with Riedel as he then won five world titles and Olympic gold in 1996. Schult still holds the world record for the longest discus throw ever, but has always refuted any accusations of doping.

After an Olympic gold in 1988 for East Germany, Olaf Ludwig went professional in the west in 1990. In the same year he won three stages of the Tour de France and claimed the sprinters' green jersey. In 1992 he won the last stage of the Tour on the Champs Elysees in Paris, as well as the UCI Road World Cup.

A number of road cyclists followed Ludwig's example, after training together in the GDR. The two most successful were Erik Zabel (left), who won the green jersey six times in a row at the Tour de France, and Jan Ullrich (right). Ullrich was the first German to ever win the Tour de France, back in 1997. Afterwards though, both of them were exposed as having doped during their careers.

Ski jumper Jens Weissflog was one of the world's best for 15 years. The slightly-built athlete from Saxony celebrated numerous successes both before and after reunification, winning gold once at the Winter Olympics in 1984 and twice in 1994 too. With his 33 World Cup victories he's easily the most successful German ski jumper ever.

These four former East German athletes were responsible for a real boom in their sport at the start of the 1990s: Frank Luck, Mark Kirchner, Sven Fischer and Ricco Gross. They formed the core of Germany's combined biathlon relay team which won gold at the 1992, 1994 and 1998 Winter Olympics. They also won various world championships, both individually and as a group.

Birgit Fischer-Schmidt took part in six summer Olympics, from 1980 in Moscow to 2004 in Athens. Amazingly, in every games she attended, the kayaker picked up at least one gold medal, making her now Germany's most successful Olympian. The Brandenburg-born athlete finally ended her career in 2012, aged 50.