The successor to the famous Love Parade event will take place in Berlin this weekend. Until the last minute, it wasn't clear if if would be authorized.
The first Rave the Planet's techno parade took place in 2022, 12 years after the last edition of its successor, Love ParadeImage: Michael Kuenne/ZUMAPRESS.com/picture alliance
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Fans of techno music have surely had this date marked in their calendars well in advance. The event, a successor to the legendary Love Parade, is attracting party people from around the world. This year boasts a lineup of more than 200 international artists playing sets on 25 different parade floats.
The event almost didn't happen this year, due to difficulties securing emergency medical services. Up until the last minute, it looked as if Rave the Planet would have to be canceled before a solution was finally found on Friday, as confirmed by the event's managing director Timm Zeiss.
Now ravers can dance through Berlin as planned, celebrating their love of techno music at a huge, outdoor party.
Rave the Planet was first held last year. It was a relaunch of the concept of the annual Love Parade techno party, which was cancelled following a tragedy in 2010 when 21 people died in a mass panic that broke out during the event that was held in Duisburg that year.
With the rebranding, Rave the Planet wants to symbolize a new beginning and at the same time emphasize the importance of safety and responsibility.
More than just a street party
Like in the early days of its progenitor the Love Parade, Rave the Planet is officially a political demonstration rather than a commercial endeavor. The organizers are committed to the preservation of electronic music culture and world peace. That's why they've even applied for recognition as intangible cultural heritage with UNESCO.
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"With techno culture, it's striking that there are not only young people at parties. Rather, it's a culture where older people have something to show younger people," argues musicologist Hans Cousto in a UNESCO application video on the Rave the Planet website. "That's where knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation. And this transmission of knowledge in celebratory culture, that's something that has to be protected."
From techno to house to trance, the various genres featuring on the 25 trucks of Rave the Planet reflect the diversity and range of electronic music culture, according to organizers.
The Love Parade in 1999 attracted around 1.5 million raversImage: Wolgang Kumm/picture alliance/dpa
Crowds in the hundreds of thousands expected
Last year on July 9, some 200,000 people from around the world poured onto the streets of Berlin to take part in the parade. A similar number of party-goers is expected again this year.
Like the Love Parade in the 1990s and 2000s, the parade traditionally starts at Kurfürstendamm, one of the most famous avenues in the German capital, and ends in Berlin's Tiergarten park between the Brandenburg Gate and the Victory Column.
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.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
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."
Image: Imago/Travel-Stock-Image
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.
Image: Imago/Seeliger
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.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/P. Grimm
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.
Image: Imago/Müller-Stauffenberg
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).
Image: Imago/Seeliger
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.
Image: Imago/Enters
'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.
Image: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
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.
Image: AP
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.
Image: Imago
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.
Image: AP
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.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
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.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/I. Fassbender
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The peaceful gathering of enthusiastic ravers dancing sweatily to pulsating techno beats is scheduled to go on all day — the parade starts at 2:00 pm local time and ends at 10:00 pm.
Afterwards, of course, there are both official and unofficial after-parties. In addition to parties at well-known Berlin clubs, an officially organized after-party is also the Clean-Up Day on the following day.
That event is planned thanks to lessons drawn from the Love Parade. By the 2000s, the event was no longer recognized as a demonstration, as it had been in the 1980s and '90s, and the organizers had to pay for waste disposal themselves, which plunged them into financial ruin.
To ensure the safety and well-being of the participants, the organizers work closely with Berlin authorities. That's also a lesson from the past, as the memories of the deadly events of the Love Parade in 2010 are still fresh. Last year, police called an early end to the party due to concerns about the "dangerously" large crowd.
