Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the long-serving German foreign minister who was one of the key architects of the country's 1990 reunification, has died aged 89.

Mr Genscher died on Thursday evening at his home outside Bonn surrounded by family.

"He was a statesman who influenced the fate of Germany like few others. He was a great European and a great German," German government spokesman Georg Streiter told reporters in Berlin.

Mr Genscher served as foreign minister, first of West Germany and then of the reunited nation, for 18 years under chancellors Helmut Schmidt and Helmut Kohl.

He remained active and well-connected long after his retirement, working behind the scenes in his mid-eighties to help secure the release of former Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Mr Genscher championed detente with the Soviet bloc in the 1970s and 1980s, and was at the vanguard of those who took Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at his word when he declared Soviet aggression a thing of the past.

That trust, and West German insistence on reaching out to help Moscow, helped hasten the end of the Cold War. It also ultimately brought about German reunification at the heart of an increasingly integrated Europe.

"European unity is the answer to the mistakes of the Germans and of European history," Mr Genscher said as he announced his retirement from parliament in 1998.

"It is the answer to a terrible world war. These reasons stand even today."

Mr Genscher was centre-stage as cracks in the Iron Curtain opened up in 1989.

In September 1989, thousands of East Germans had packed into the West German embassy in the former Czechoslovakia's capital, Prague, seeking to escape to the West at a time when East German soldiers shot those who tried to flee across the Berlin Wall.

After weeks of diplomatic manoeuvering, Mr Genscher told the East Germans they could do so.

Mr Genscher famously said from an embassy balcony: "I call you fellow citizens, and express a hearty welcome."

He told reporters outside it was "the most moving point of my political career".

After the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, Mr Genscher was at the forefront of efforts to bring together East and West Germany. The two were unified on October 3 1990.

Mr Genscher was close to former US president George HW Bush's secretary of state, James A Baker III, awakening him the night before a six-nation treaty approving German unification was to be signed in Moscow to help resolve a last-minute hitch.

However, Mr Genscher angered Ronald Reagan's sceptical US administration by insisting on cooperating with Moscow early in Mr Gorbachev's tenure. His insistence in 1989 on linking the reduction of short-range nuclear weapons in Europe with cuts in conventional arms also initially provoked tensions with Washington.

After German reunification, the veteran politician raised eyebrows in 1991 when he virtually pushed the European Community into recognizing Croatia - which had been a part of Yugoslavia - by indicating that Germany planned to take the step by itself.

The push angered Serb-led Yugoslavia, which broke up amid wars from 1991-99 that took up to 200,000 lives.

During his long tenure, Genscher became a political cult figure. His ceaseless travel to foreign capitals earned him the nickname "Genschman" - an allusion to Superman - and the yellow sweater vest he wore under his suit became his trademark.

Referring to his heavy travel schedule, then-Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze once quipped that whenever two airliners pass each over the Atlantic, "Genscher is on both of them".

He was born on March 21 1927, in Reideburg, near the eastern city of Halle.

Drafted into the regular German army in the final months of the Second World War, he was captured by American forces in 1945 and imprisoned in Britain. After the war, he studied law at Leipzig University, but became disenchanted with communist East Germany and escaped to the West in 1952.

There, he joined the small Free Democratic Party - for decades West Germany's political kingmaker - starting a political career that would make him one of the country's most popular and respected figures.