The former Duisburg mayor has denied any involvement in planning the 2010 Love Parade festival, in which 21 people were killed during a stampede. The ex-mayor is not among the six city officials facing criminal charges.
Image: picture alliance/dpa/F. Gambarini
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Adolf Sauerland, former mayor of the German city of Duisburg, told a court on Wednesday that he bore no responsibility for the planning errors that saw 21 people crushed to death at the Love Parade music festival during his time in office in 2010.
Testifying as witness before a court in Dusseldorf, Sauerland said he was "not active in the approval process," and that he "did not have to issue or prepare any permit" in the lead up to the techno festival.
Love Parade: From humble beginnings, to major music festival, to tragic ending
What began as a peaceful festival in Berlin with only 150 attendees went on to become one of Europe's largest music festivals. However, the Love Parade was abruptly cancelled after a deadly stampede broke out in 2010.
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Four DJs, three cars and just 150 party-goers
Matthias Roeingh, better known by his stage name Dr. Motte, organized the first Love Parade in Berlin in 1989 along with fellow DJs Jonzon, Westbam and Kid Paul. Roeingh said he wanted the festival to be seen as a protest for peace. Some 150 party-goers, followed by three cars blaring techno music, danced down Berlin's Kurfürstendamm boulevard under the banner "Peace, joy and pancakes."
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Europe catches the love bug
It wasn't long before the Love Parade grew into one of the largest music festivals in Europe. As the number of party-goers increased, so did the number of artists and event organizers who brought their own floats, or "love mobiles," to the parade.
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Partying in the heart of the German capital
After almost half a million people flooded Berlin's Kurfürstendamm for the Love Parade in 1996, it became clear that a larger venue was needed. The following year, the festival was moved to Berlin's Straße des 17. Juni (17th of June Street), with the Victory Column, Brandenburg Gate and Tiergarten Park providing a historic backdrop to the frenzied techno rave.
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More stress than love
But as the festival attracted ever more revelers, it also attracted more trouble ... and much, much more rubbish. Mountains of garbage in the Tiergarten became a common sight, to the disgust of many locals. However, because the Love Parade was still, in theory, a political festival, Berlin's state government had to bear the costs, both for security and for the mass clean-ups.
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Ravers protest festival commercialization
For all its controversies, the main point of criticism directed at the festival was its increasing commercialization. Love Parade organizers made a pretty profit through licensing, advertising and merchandise sales. However, that also drove many techno heads to distance themselves from the Love Parade, with some even starting an annual counter festival, know as the "F*** Parade" (pictured above).
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Out with the politics
In 2001, Germany's Constitutional Court revoked the Love Parade's classification as a demonstration. The court found that the festival offered no clear political message, a requisite for any protest. Since organizers did not want to bear the security or clean-up costs, the 2004 and 2005 Love Parade festivals were cancelled.
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'The Love is back!'
Under the banner "The Love is back!" the Love Parade relaunched in 2006, bringing more than a million revelers to Berlin. But it would also be the last edition to take place in the German capital. That year, Rainer Schaller, an entrepreneur who runs a chain of fitness centers, took over the company in charge of organizing the festival. His plan was to bring the Love Parade to Germany's Ruhr area.
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A record attendance in the Ruhr metropolises
According to the Love Parade organizers, more than a million flocked to the city of Essen for the first edition of the festival in western Germany in 2007, while some 1.6 million people partied in Dortmund the following year. Several people, however, have claimed that the numbers were massively inflated by organizers, likely for marketing purposes.
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Bochum refuses Love Parade invitation
High on the festival's successes in Essen and Dortmund, organizers wanted to bring the Love Parade to the city of Bochum in 2009. However, city officials refused, citing security concerns. This ultimately forced the party to be cancelled in 2009, provoking outrage from seasoned ravers and parade-goers.
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The horrific ending
Organizers wanted to make up for the lost year by staging a massive festival in Duisburg in 2010. The festival coincided with the city's selection as a European Capital of Culture and attracted over a million visitors. But the party ended in tragedy. Panic broke out as crowds converged in a tunnel leading to the festival grounds, resulting in the deaths of 21 people, and injuring a further 650.
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Never again
The very same day as the deadly stampede, Love Parade organizers announced that there would be no further festivals. Every year on July 24, Germany comes together to commemorate the victims of the festival tragedy.
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Love Parade disaster goes to trial
In December 2017, more than seven years after the tragic Love Parade incident, prosecutors launched criminal proceedings against six Duisburg city employees and four festival organizers. The trial is set to be one of Germany's largest ever court cases, with 70 lawyers involved — 32 representing defendants and 38 representing 65 joint plaintiffs, mainly relatives of the young people killed.
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Twenty-one people were crushed to death and a further 652 were injured at the Love Parade in Duisburg in 2010, after hundreds of thousands of festival-goers hit a bottleneck at one of the tunnels leading to the festival grounds.
Sauerland refused to take any political responsibility for the accident and was accused of showing a lack of empathy to the victim's families. He was subsequently voted out of office by referendum in 2012.
Judge confounded
Chief presiding judge Mario Plein expressed his dismay that Sauerland, as Duisburg's sitting mayor, could have had so little knowledge of the planning ahead the event. "We are not talking about the Flea market in Duisburg-Marxloh," Plein said, referring to an area on the eastern side of the city. "We're talking about the Love Parade. This is what's difficult to understand."
Previous editions of the Love Parade had seen more than a million party-goers take to the streets in Berlin, Essen and Dortmund. Similar numbers were expected to travel to Duisburg for the 2010 festival.
The former mayor responded by saying that "ultimately, the question was whether the event was eligible for approval or not."
Sauerland admitted that he had initially raised the idea before the city council that Duisburg should apply to host that year's parade, provided that a suitable plot of land could be found. The council approved the measure by a large majority, including Sauerland's own vote.
Once a former freight station grounds was confirmed as the festival's venue, Sauerland said he left the planning to the relevant officials, although his spokesman did take part in some of the Love Parade planning meetings.
Sauerland also told the court that Duisburg's police chief at the time had warned that hosting such a large-scale music event was unfeasible in a city of Duisburg's size and structure. Sauerland said he had asked city officials to evaluate those warnings and at the time had assumed that this had been done. However, he admitted that he had no knowledge of the city council's findings, or if a probe was ever undertaken.
The trial is set to be one of Germany's largest in the post-war period. Seventy lawyers – 32 representing defendants and 38 representing 65 joint plaintiffs, mainly relatives of those killed — were in the courtroom on Wednesday to hear Sauerland's testimony.
The number of lawyers and plaintiffs involved saw the case moved from the regional court in Duisburg to a 500-capacity convention hall in Dusseldorf.
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