ALWAYS COLOURFUL and always controversial, the Love Parade began life in 1989 in West Berlin as an improvised march through the still-divided city.
What began as a spontaneous demonstration of 150 people and a converted Volkswagen van exploded in popularity just as techno and trance music left the underground clubs and entered the music mainstream.
By the late 1990s the parade had become Berlin’s largest annual event, attracting over 1.5 million wild party people at its height in 1999.
With the huge success, however, came heavy drinking and drug-taking that tested the patience of even the most liberal Berliners.
Worse, the central Tiergarten Park was unable to recover from the trampling hordes and the gallons of urine they left behind each year before the next invasion.
The final straw for Berliners was the revelation that, thanks to its classification as a political demonstration to “promote peace and understanding through love and music”, the city and not the organisers had to cover the security and clean-up costs.
Amid public controversy and bitter disagreement among the founders, the parade was cancelled twice and the plug was pulled in 2006. In 2007 a new event bearing the name Love Parade surfaced in the western city of Essen and a year later in Dortmund. Despite crowds of over 1 million, the 21-year-old travelling parade ended yesterday with harsh words from its founder.
“It’s just about making money,” said Matthias Roeingh, better known as ‘Dr Motte’. “The organisers did not show the slightest feeling of responsibility for the people.”
DEREK SCALLY