Love Parade

Love Parade Loveparade
Loveparade 1998 in Berlin
Genre	Electronic dance music festival and technoparade
Location(s)	Various locations in Germany
Years active	1989–2003; 2006–2008; 2010
Founded	July 1989, West Berlin, Germany
Most recent	2010

The Love Parade (German: Loveparade) was a popular electronic dance music festival and technoparade that originated in 1989 in West Berlin, Germany. It was held annually in Berlin from 1989 to 2003 and in 2006, then from 2007 to 2010 in the Ruhr region. Events scheduled for 2004 and 2005 in Berlin and for 2009 in Bochum were cancelled.

On 24 July 2010, a crowd rush at the Love Parade caused the death of 21 people, with at least 500 others injured. As a consequence, the organizer of the festival announced that no further Love Parades would be held and that the festival was permanently cancelled.

The parade first occurred in July 1989, when 150 people took to the streets in Berlin. It was started by the Berlin underground at the initiative of Matthias Roeingh (also known as "Dr Motte") and his then girlfriend Danielle de Picciotto. It was conceived as a political demonstration for peace and international understanding through love and music. It was supposed to be a bigger birthday party for Roeingh, and the motto Friede, Freude, Eierkuchen (in English — Peace, Joy, Pancakes) stood for disarmament (peace), music (joy) and a fair food production/distribution (pancakes). Roeingh dissociated himself from the parade in 2006 because of the commercialization of the event.

The parade was held on the Berlin Kurfürstendamm (avenue) until 1996. Because of overcrowding on the Kurfürstendamm, the festival moved to the Straße des 17. Juni in the Großer Tiergarten park in the center of Berlin. The festival became centered around the Siegessäule in the middle of the park; and the golden angel atop the column became the parade's emblem.