Accident at the Love Parade 2010

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Condolence at the Ostrampe (August 3, 2010)

The accident at the Love Parade 2010 occurred during the 19th event of this kind on July 24, 2010 in Duisburg . 21 people were killed and at least 652 others were injured, some seriously. According to the self-help association LoPa-2010 from July 2014, at least six survivors of the disaster also committed suicide due to ongoing emotional stress.

The disaster, often referred to as mass panic in the media , happened at a bottleneck in the access area of ​​the Love Parade , where there was a crush among the visitors due to possibly misdirected flow of visitors and planning errors.

After many years of investigation and 100 main trial days, the proceedings against seven defendants for minor guilt were discontinued unconditionally in February 2019. The proceedings against the remaining three accused, representatives of the organizer, were also discontinued in May 2020 because of minor guilt unconditionally.

As a result of the catastrophe, the organizer of the Love Parade ended the series of events that had existed since 1989.

View of the Love Parade 2010. Floats in the foreground (view from the north to the main stage, July 24, 2010, 5 p.m.)
View over Duisburg main station (forecourt) to the event area; the A 59 on the right edge of the picture (June 2010)

Background, events leading up to the event

The Love Parade was one and 1989-2003 year again in 2006 in Berlin organized Techno Parade , in 2007, at different locations in 2008 and 2010 Ruhr took place. It was considered the largest dance event in the world and was free for visitors. In 2004 and 2005, the previous organizer was no longer financially able to hold the Love Parade. From 2006, the Lopavent GmbH of the entrepreneur Rainer Schaller appeared as the organizer. The main sponsor of the parade was McFit GmbH , which was also founded and run by Schaller . The relaunch of the Love Parade took place in Berlin in 2006.

Due to differences of opinion with the city of Berlin, Lopavent signed a contract with the metropoleruhr GmbH business development agency in 2007, which provided for the annual Loveparade to be held at different locations in the Ruhr area from 2007 to 2011. The events in Essen (2007) and Dortmund (2008) were carried out as planned. The Love Parade planned for 2009 in Bochum was canceled due to safety concerns, including the lack of capacity at Bochum's main train station and the lack of a suitable route. The Love Parade in Gelsenkirchen planned for 2011 did not take place.

The negotiations between the city of Duisburg and Lopavent for the implementation of the Love Parade began as early as 2007. After the first preliminary tests of possible routes in autumn 2008, considerations were made to renovate the site of the former freight station near Duisburg Central Station . In February 2009, the then police chief of Duisburg, Rolf Cebin, pointed out that it was problematic to find a suitable venue and questioned a Love Parade in Duisburg because of safety concerns. Cebin was criticized for this negative attitude, among other things, the CDU district association Duisburg asked him to resign. The CDU member of the Bundestag Thomas Mahlberg also called for his replacement. In October 2009, after discussions with the property owner and clarification of the general conditions, the city of Duisburg, the organizer and the regulatory authorities jointly decided on the event site.

The Love Parade 2010 was considered to be one of the most important and largest events of the RUHR.2010 project - European Capital of Culture , even if it was neither financially nor organizationally supported by its organizers.

Visitor numbers 2010

According to the organizer, the events in Essen had 1.2 million visitors in 2007 and 1.6 million in Dortmund in 2008. On the day of the event, Schaller stated that a total of 1.4 million visitors took part in the event in Duisburg during the day. According to media reports, internal papers of the organizer show that the official number of visitors to the Love Parade has been inflated for years. In the run-up to the event, the organizer asked the cities to push the number of visitors up for marketing reasons. To determine the “number of public visitors”, the number of visitors actually expected was tripled according to internal standards.

Before the event, the organizer assumed, according to its planning documents, that a maximum of 485,000 people would visit the cordoned off event site with an area of ​​110,000 square meters during the day, of which a maximum of 250,000 people should be present at the same time. Approval for the change of use accordingly amounted to 250,000 people present at the same time. Regulatory Office and Culture Committee of the City of Duisburg expected around one million visitors in and around Duisburg in December 2009. Security officer Wolfgang Rabe made sure that the flow of visitors could be controlled without any problems even if the access to the event area was blocked due to overcrowding. Overall, he expected "a million visitors [...] spread over the day". The spokesman for the Deutsche Bahn AG, Udo Kampschulte, thought problems were possible if the passengers of the 700 special trains did not stick to the prescribed routes and, for example, crossed the tracks . Deutsche Bahn later stated that it had transported around 105,000 people to Duisburg between 9:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m.

According to analyzes by the expert Jürgen Gerlach , who carried out video evaluations as part of the preparation of the report for the Duisburg Regional Court, the reconstructed number of visitors until the site was closed at 5:00 p.m. was approx. 114,000 people. At around 5 p.m., after evaluating the video and image material, an estimated 20,000 people were still on the approach. Until 5:00 p.m., the total inflow in front of the entrances or isolation systems was therefore approx. 134,000 people. According to the planning documents of the organizer, approx. 290,000 people, so that less than half of the maximum expected people visited the site on July 24, 2010. At around 3:30 p.m., the train to Duisburg station was due to track runners for approx. 90 min, so considerably restricted until the site closes.

Location description

Site plan of the event site on the former freight yard.
Blue: BAB 59; Gray: railway line;
Top center: main station ;
Districts: Hochfeld (left, west); Neudorf-Süd (right, east)

The Love Parade 2010 in Duisburg took place on the site of the former main freight and marshalling yard. This is located directly south of the main train station in the Mitte district and was largely demolished before the event was planned, apart from a few hall ruins and ancillary buildings. The outdoor area is bounded to the west by the federal motorway 59 , to the east the Deutsche Bahn AG track systems form the boundary. At the time of the event, construction fences were set up on these two sides at a distance of about 15 meters from the property line. They secured emergency routes to and from the site.

Routes from the main train station to the event site

In the main train station, each platform was divided by a barrier in order to avoid obstacles between arriving and departing guests within the station area. A direct line of sight from the main train station to the event site should be prevented by stretched tarpaulins in order to keep visitors from crossing the tracks. The visitors were guided on two routes to the west and east around the event site to the entrance area on Karl-Lehr-Strasse . Visitors from the direction of Düsseldorf were led through the main tunnel of the main station and visitors from the direction of Oberhausen and Essen through the north tunnel of the main station. It was expected to be able to influence the flow of visitors as much as possible. The public order office of the City of Duisburg and the police were responsible for safety and order in public spaces, and the federal police for the area of ​​the main train station .

In Duisburg, the visitors streaming to the event site were provided with flyers to show the way to the event site. The flyers were about the size of a business card and gave the impression that the probable path of the floats was shown. A large number of ravers expected that, as with many other parades, there would be a track for the floats and a place for the main stage. In Duisburg, however, this was not the case: the main stage, further secondary stages and the float route were centralized on the site of the former main freight and marshalling yard.

Access to the event area

The main entrance for visitors to the Love Parade was in the south of the event site. Karl-Lehr-Straße, about one kilometer south of the main train station as the crow flies, connects the Duisburg districts of Neudorf-Süd and Dellviertel . It runs over a length of around 400 m through a road tunnel under the railway site and the A 59 motorway. At the two outermost tunnel entrances there were entrance locks for the organizer, at which visitors could be controlled and the flow of visitors regulated. Two ramps branch off from Karl-Lehr-Straße to the higher part of the event site. The eastern main ramp was intended as an entrance and exit from the site. The second, western ramp should only serve as an exit.

The organizer reckoned with an inflow and outflow of over 40,000 people per hour over a longer period of time. In the inflow, 90,000 people per hour (5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.) were expected for one hour and 70,000 people per hour (7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.) in the outflow with a two-hour delay. These figures were excessive in view of the expectation that 90 percent of visitors would travel by public transport and that Deutsche Bahn - as the main means of transport - could transport around 31,700 people per hour.

The structure and dimensions of the inlet locks in front of the tunnel entrances were not geared towards the expected number of people. According to the planning documents, the two narrowest points of the West and East inlet locks should only have a total width of around nine meters in the inflow. From the point of view of the Duisburg Regional Court, it was predictable and avoidable that the bottlenecks would in any case reduce capacity. If one assumes an average expected capacity value of 2,800 P / (m * h) for the flow at the bottlenecks of the isolation systems, it was to be expected on the basis of the planning documents that a total of only around 9.0 * 2,800 = 25,200 people per Hour - and by no means the more than 40,000 people per hour expected over a longer period of time - the bottlenecks of both entrances in the inflow could pass.

Neuralgic points of access to the event site were accordingly not the tunnels and the ramps, but the entrances with the entrance locks in front of the tunnel and the area above the eastern main ramp. In contrast to all previous Love Parades, all arriving people had to pass through this area first in order to then get to the attractions of the event site, including the two stages. Taking into account the attractiveness of this area for incoming visitors as well as the fact that the parade and float route potentially acted like a flow channel and slowly pulled people with it, there was from the beginning of the float parade the danger of high crowds, standstill, backlogs and crowds given. This area was approx. 30 m wide much too narrow.

Opposite the end of the main ramp was the organizer's office container for the crowd manager and a police liaison officer. Several of the 16 surveillance cameras were also installed in this area, the images of which could be evaluated both in the container and in the organizer's headquarters and the police operations center in the nearby Hoist high-rise building (at least until shortly before 5:00 p.m.) .

In the western ramp area in front of the billboard near the stairs where the victims were found, there was a close-meshed site fence over an unsecured collapsed manhole.

Event site

According to the police, the area of ​​the old freight yard covers a total of 230,000 square meters, of which only just under half was accessible to visitors due to buildings and barriers. The organizer expected a total of 485,000 visitors on the site, spread over the whole day. Of these, a maximum of 235,000 people should be on the site at the same time. According to aerial observations by the police, the area was never full.

Access in the north

Another entrance to the north of the site, near the main train station at the Mercatorstrasse roundabout, was reserved for rescue and supply purposes as well as for staff and special guests. However, there was also an influx of visitors to the site in this area who could not be stopped by the barriers at Mercatorplatz.

Federal motorway 59

On that day from 8:00 a.m., the federal motorway 59 was closed for 24 hours from the Duisburg motorway junction in the direction of Düsseldorf, the opposite direction from the Wanheimerort junction. After the accident, the blocked section served as a temporary treatment area for the injured, a staging area for vehicles, a landing area for rescue helicopters and as an escape route to the hospitals further south in the city. For this purpose, the blocking of the motorway was extended to the Duisburg-Süd motorway junction with the 524 federal motorway .

Permission to use the site

For the Loveparade to be held on the premises of the freight station, the organizer had to obtain a building permit from the responsible authority, the Office for Building Law and Building Consultancy of the City of Duisburg, among other things .

Missing documents for the approval process were requested on July 14, 2010.

On July 21, 2010, three days before the event, the office issued a building permit for the temporary change in use of the freight yard area. Approved were u. a. the fire protection concept of the Ökotec Fire & Risk office and the evacuation analysis of the TraffGo HT GmbH. Ancillary provisions stipulated that the event area could be used by a maximum of 250,000 people at the same time, that the escape routes on the east and south sides had to be at least 10 meters wide and were not restricted at any point by fixtures or other obstacles.

For the use of Karl-Lehr-Straße as an entrance and exit area of ​​the Love Parade as well as for construction and dismantling work that went beyond the common use of the street, a special road law permit was required. This permission was also granted to the organizer on July 21, 2010 on the basis of the security concept developed with the city of Duisburg.

The number of visitors forecast by the organizer in the documents submitted for individual hours exceeded the tunnel and ramp capacities determined using conventional methods.

The additional stipulation to keep the access and escape routes free of obstacles was also not observed, so that the actually usable width and thus the available capacity was further reduced: Several construction fences were partly firmly anchored on the access and exit ramps, two sales stands , Police vehicles, a pothole with exposed tree roots and an unsecured gully, which was covered with a false fence element and thus became a trip hazard.

An effective announcement, as planned in the security concept to inform and redirect visitors at the entrance ramp, did not take place. An electroacoustic system was a condition of the permit. According to the final report of the city of Duisburg, this system was not installed because it was technically not feasible and caused too many costs. Furthermore, the safety concept lacked a draft for the stowage in the tunnel area.

Use of folders

The organizer Lopavent had agreed to deploy around 1,000 security guards from five different companies to secure the Love Parade, including the Cologne-based companies RAD and SMS Security, CCS Security from Solingen and the Essen-based companies Challenge Security and the Kötter security service . The companies SMS and Challenge Security were responsible for the tunnels and the ramp. A list submitted by Lopavent contains the names of a total of 1301 folders, but presence is documented for only 774 of them. This fell below the number promised by Lopavent by more than 200. According to an expert report published at the beginning of June 2013, Lopavent provided 640 stewards for the show program and the VIP area, while 234 stewards were supposed to ensure the safety of the event visitors on the approximately 110,000 square meter site. This report, commissioned by the public prosecutor, denies the stewards the necessary experience.

According to the organizer's security concept, the stewards should carry out security checks at the entry gates and monitor the flow of visitors in the entrance area. Additional folders were provided in the tunnel, which the visitors should move on if necessary in order to avoid congestion.

Planned course of the event

It was planned to open the site to visitors at 11:00 a.m. From 2:00 p.m., 16 “lovemobiles” should start the parade and move in a circle around the goods sheds on the freight yard area. A final rally with numerous international stars was scheduled for 5 p.m. to midnight. A parade through the streets, comparable to previous events, did not take place in 2010. However, there were also several stages outside of the event area, which were supposed to encourage visitors to linger if necessary in order to take pressure off the event area.

Course of the accident

Road tunnel Karl-Lehr-Straße towards the main ramp on the event site (2008)
Police loudspeaker van (Düsseldorfer Strasse / corner of Mercatorstrasse, around 6.45 p.m.)
The scene of the accident at the foot of the main ramp, July 29, 2010

For the visitors, the Love Parade in the former freight yard could only be reached from the south from both side entrances of the road tunnel on Karl-Lehr-Straße, an underpass without a gradient below the railway embankments, and from there via a ramp. This also served as an exit. A second, smaller ramp into the tunnel was intended as an exit, but initially remained closed. The organizer did not open the site to visitors until the end of the leveling work at the transition to the motorway at 12:00 noon. The flow of visitors to the site increased in the course of the early afternoon without incidents worth mentioning.

From around 3 p.m., a backlog formed in the upper area of ​​the eastern main ramp up to the event site, as the arriving visitors could not be distributed to the site by the organizer according to the movement analysis. According to the police, at around 3:30 p.m. the organizer asked the police for help in controlling the influx of visitors because they were unable to resolve the backlog of visitors at the site entrance. At that point there were conflicting orders. A police officer is said to have given the instruction to open the entire entrance lock, although the event management had instructed the police to block the entrance locks in front of the two tunnel entrances, which initially did not take place. It was not until 3:45 p.m. that access from both sides of the tunnel, and later also the main ramp, was blocked by police chains. This created a backlog in the tunnel area, and visitors who wanted to leave the event site gathered at the police barrier at the foot of the main ramp. There was no line of sight between the two entrances to the tunnel and the upper part of the ramp.

Due to the large number of visitors, these police chains had to be abandoned around 4:15 p.m. in the eastern and around 4:20 p.m. in the western part of the tunnel, so that the visitors streamed to the main ramp from both directions almost simultaneously. At the police barrier on the main ramp, the arriving visitors had difficulties in reaching the higher-lying event site because the colliding streams of visitors blocked each other. Both groups of visitors grew steadily.

The visitors condensed and touched to a dangerous level beyond 6 people per square meter and tried to escape from this situation. By striving for the stairs, they unwittingly increased the pressure without being able to assess the situation in front of and behind them. The stairs and light towers (aluminum lattice towers) were on a higher level and appeared to be the only escape route.

From around 4:20 p.m., visitors came from the lower ramp area to the higher-lying event area, initially via light poles on the eastern side and via a narrow staircase on their western side, and later also by climbing a ladder on the office container in the southern part of this area.

At around 5 p.m. at the height of the stairs, the pressure within the jammed crowd caused fatal injuries to several visitors. The visitors coming out of the tunnel exacerbated the situation. There were a large number of people injured. A total of thirteen women and eight men from seven countries were killed. The autopsy of the bodies revealed that at least 20 of the fatalities examined had died of "massive chest compression ".

The entire access area in the underpasses was cleared by the police and relief measures began. The A 59 motorway, which was already closed for the day, was also used for this. At around 6:00 p.m., the police issued a first press release reporting fatalities and injuries.

The city ​​of Duisburg's crisis management team decided to initially let the event continue for security reasons in order to prevent further escalation due to returning visitors. No new visitors were allowed onto the site, all emergency exits were opened and the blocked A 59 was released as an escape route. The accident became known only gradually on the event site, as the cell phone networks were heavily overloaded. The Love Parade 2010 ended prematurely around 11 p.m., several artists had canceled their upcoming performance at short notice due to the events.

Emergency medical care

In the run-up to the Love Parade, the city's clinics, in cooperation with the fire brigade and the city of Duisburg, decided to increase their ambulance staff to 1.5 to 2.5 times the normal occupation and to reinforce the ambulance doctors to 2 to 3 times the normal occupation. In preliminary discussions, in which an emergency plan for a mass casualty attack (MANV) was drawn up, preparations were made for the treatment of internal diagnoses as well as drug or intoxicant-associated diagnoses based on the experience of the Love Parade in Essen and Dortmund . At the same time, a glass ban was issued for the event in order to avoid cuts.

Rescue service at the Love Parade 2010

The medical service set up 30 medical stations with 10 patient places each, an emergency doctor , 20 paramedics , an ambulance and two standardized treatment places for 50 patients. During the entire event, 5,600 patient contacts in the medical stations and 473 treatments in 12 hospital emergency rooms were registered with 250,000 visitors.

After the mass disaster, the number of workers was increased from 1,600 to around 4,000. After the disaster became known, many hospital employees spontaneously came to their clinics to help the victims of the event. A total of 70 ambulances and ambulances as well as nine rescue helicopters were used. As a result, up to 20 patients arriving at the Loveparade were counted per hour and per clinic. This peak loads were only two, reaches to three hours after the accident because most patients initially a first aid were subjected to on-site before the orderly evacuation was carried out in the surrounding hospitals. Overall, the care of the injured is assessed as adequate in retrospect, both by the rescue service and in the clinics .

The patients were on average 25.5 years old and generally had no significant previous illnesses, which is why 50% of the inpatients admitted to the hospital could be discharged within 7.2 hours. 73% of the inpatients admitted to hospital were discharged within 24 hours. About 59% of the patients were male. Around 31% of the patients received a main internal diagnosis (mainly intoxicant intoxication), in 54% of the cases the main diagnosis was surgical .

After the accident

After the accident, the participants were repeatedly accused of complicity in the event without sufficient evidence being given. The head of the crisis team, Wolfgang Rabe, said that the panic had apparently been triggered by visitors who wanted to jostle at the entrance to the event site. Duisburg's Lord Mayor Adolf Sauerland said at a press conference on the evening of the accident: "As far as we know the scenario, the dead were incurred because they climbed over safety precautions and then fell." A police spokesman also commented and stated that 14 visitors from one Metal stairs on the western side of the entrance had fallen. The published autopsy result contradicted the representation that the victims died from falls.

In the days that followed, the organizer Rainer Schaller , the police, the local authorities, the security expert Schreckenberg and crowd manager Walter shifted responsibility to one another. The individual parties made the following comments:

  • Schaller announced on the evening of July 26th: "The police operations management has given instructions to open all locks in front of the western tunnel entrance on Düsseldorfer Straße." With these police instructions, the main stream of visitors streamed into the tunnel uncontrolled. He does not know why the police gave this order.
  • The then Inspector of the Police in North Rhine-Westphalia Dieter Wehe and the then Interior Minister Ralf Jäger again raised allegations against the organizer at a press conference of the Interior Ministry on July 28, 2010. The police were only responsible for safely accompanying visitors to the event site. The site was opened too late and the flow of visitors was insufficiently regulated. At the top of the ramp there was a backlog of visitors, which the police had warned of in advance. After the police were called for help at 3:30 p.m., the previously agreed security concept was not adhered to by the organizer and his filing system collapsed. Wohe said: “The organizer and only the organizer was responsible for the safety of the people on the event site.” By contrast, a legal opinion commissioned by the FDP parliamentary group and published on August 20, 2010 came to the conclusion “that at least a subsidiary The responsibility of the police authorities always had to and existed. ”According to Spiegel Online , this means“ at the latest at the specific moment when a danger situation emerged, the task of averting danger was in any case (also) the responsibility of the Love Parade police forces present. ”On August 4, 2010, the then Interior Minister Ralf Jäger expanded the allegations also in the direction of the Duisburg city administration. "Commercial considerations" were the guideline for the city's actions, said Jäger. He accused the city of not checking the conditions.
  • On August 4, 2010, the city of Duisburg also submitted an interim report on the history and events of the Love Parade. The lawyers commissioned to prepare the report came to the preliminary conclusion that the city of Duisburg had fulfilled its legal obligations, in particular as a licensing authority, and, due to a mutually agreed delimitation of responsibilities, was not responsible for the security and order on the event site and in the tunnel of the Karl- Lehr-Straße was responsible during the event. However, violations of "third parties" against the specifications and requirements of the approval of the city of Duisburg can be ascertained, and one cannot rule out "that these violations have become relevant in connection with the accident."
  • The traffic researcher Michael Schreckenberg , who works at the University of Duisburg-Essen , reportedly worked on the security concept “for the city and the surrounding area”. He was not involved in the development of the security concept for the event site, but had been commissioned by the City of Duisburg to check “the existing plans for the access and detours and the event site for the Love Parade”. According to media reports, he had declared "the terrain and security concept to be sufficient", but admitted that he had "judged according to the paper situation". At the beginning of July 2010, TraffGo HT GmbH was commissioned to carry out an evacuation analysis that simulated the evacuation of the event site. According to the company, a reduction in the overall emergency exit width was approved based on the analysis.
  • The psychologist Carsten Walter was hired by Lopavent GmbH as crowd manager to observe the crowds of visitors via 16 installed cameras and to control them through central instructions to the stewards. In a press interview on August 9, 2010, he reported that the police liaison officers assigned to him - who were not authorized to issue instructions themselves - did not have a radio, but only a cell phone. Therefore, during the period when the cellular network was overloaded, communication with the police command authorized to issue instructions was not possible for about 45 minutes. A police decision to fully open the previously restricted western entrance sluice led to an increasingly critical situation in the course of the afternoon. The temporary establishment of a chain of police officers and their spatial position at the lower end of the ramp, which Walter assessed as unfavorable and as a cause of the traffic jam on the ramp, given the unexpectedly early return flow of visitors from the event site, then exacerbated the critical one Situation led. Another strong influx of visitors, which resulted from the passage of an ambulance at the west entrance, the situation is said to have finally got out of control.

Investigations and criminal proceedings

The day after the accident, the Duisburg public prosecutor's office secured planning and approval documents from the city of Duisburg and the organizer. It was " ex officio a preliminary investigation against unknown persons on suspicion of negligent homicide and negligent bodily harm ".

On Monday, July 26th, 2010, the Ministry of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia transferred the further police investigations to the Cologne Police Headquarters "for reasons of neutrality" . In mid-August, the offices of Lopavent , McFit and two security companies were searched in order to secure information about the employees employed by the organizer.

In a press release, the public prosecutor's office in Duisburg announced on January 18, 2011 that after six months of intensive educational work, there were initial suspicions against 16 people from the area of ​​responsibility of the organizer, the city of Duisburg and the police officers responsible for the event. The investigations have not yet been concluded. On July 11, 2011, the public prosecutor announced that, from their point of view, the approval for the Love Parade 2010 was illegal. The then Mayor of Duisburg, Adolf Sauerland, apologized publicly a year after the accident and admitted that he should have “taken on moral responsibility earlier”, but did not admit any mistakes of his own.

Adolf Sauerland was voted out of office on February 12, 2012 on the basis of a referendum, this procedure was the first of its kind in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Since the exact sequence of events was not clear, the Duisburg public prosecutor commissioned the British researcher Keith Still, an expert in the field of crowd science , with an opinion, the results of which were published on July 4, 2013 in a blog in the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung . The court asked the expert 75 questions. According to Still, planners and examiners acted incorrectly when preparing the Love Parade, because the failure of the model of visitor flows submitted for approval was predictable and avoidable for them.

The Duisburg public prosecutor's office brought charges against 10 people in February 2014, but the Duisburg Regional Court rejected the opening of the main proceedings by decision of March 30, 2016. This was justified with possible bias of the expert Keith Still and deficiencies in the content of his report. The fact that the opening of the main proceedings is refused in criminal proceedings when an indictment is brought before a large criminal chamber occurs in a maximum of 3% of criminal proceedings and, according to Matthias Jahn, is “an extremely exceptional case”. The public prosecutor's office in Duisburg then commissioned Jürgen Gerlach as the second expert to complete the investigation. Gabi Müller, the mother of one of the fatalities, handed over an online petition asking for the criminal proceedings to be carried out. The public prosecutor successfully appealed against the termination of the proceedings . By order of April 18, 2017, the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court decided that criminal proceedings must be carried out against all of the accused. The criminal charges against the accused become statute-barred according to § 78c Abs. 3 StGB i. V. m. Section 78b (3) of the Criminal Code, if a criminal judgment is not issued by the Duisburg Regional Court by July 27, 2020 at the latest. Civil lawsuits for damages and compensation for pain and suffering were dismissed. The legal processing of the accident at the Love Parade was the top topic on Beck's blog with 50,000 views in 2016 .

The main hearing against the ten defendants began on December 8, 2017 before the 6th major criminal chamber of the Duisburg Regional Court. It is considered to be one of the most extensive processes in post-war Germany. For reasons of space, the Duisburg Regional Court had set up a special branch in a hall of the Congress Center in Düsseldorf , where the main hearing took place. The hall had space for 500 people, on the first day 50 people were present. The accused are four employees of the organizer Lopavent and six employees of the city administration, including the then urban development department and the head of the department who was responsible for building law and building advice at the time.

The expert Jürgen Gerlach saw the police chain as one of the reasons for the accident. This emerges from a non-public expertise. However, no police officers were charged. Possible criminal offenses by police officers and other defendants have been statute barred since July 24, 2015 and are therefore no longer prosecutable. In a legal interview , the court announced that, according to a preliminary assessment, it saw the defendants' guilt as in the lower range and therefore advocated a closure of the proceedings under conditions to be negotiated. Gerhart Baum , whose law firm represented victims and bereaved relatives of the accident, asked the consideration “What else can we do?” In the direction of the adoption of the court's proposal and saw the future in “turning to the insurance companies”.

In February 2019, the Duisburg public prosecutor's office agreed to discontinue the proceedings. Seven of the ten defendants agreed to the closure of the case, three defendants wanted to continue the process with the aim of acquittal. The Duisburg Regional Court then closed the proceedings against seven of the ten defendants by decision of February 6, 2019 without any conditions.

In April 2020 it was announced that the remaining proceedings would also be discontinued without a judgment. In a five-page document, the public prosecutor's office agreed to the termination of the proceedings, as they consider the guilt of the accused to be negligible and therefore there would be no public interest in further prosecution. The sufficient suspicion against the three defendants was confirmed for the court after a preliminary assessment of the evidence. Several co-plaintiffs' attorneys subsequently protested the decision. In her opinion, there is no compelling reason to discontinue the Loveparade process before the expert is heard . The co-plaintiffs' questions about the expert opinion would have to be answered in a public hearing in the main proceedings . On May 4, 2020, the case against the last three defendants was dropped. This was justified by the Duisburg Regional Court, among other things, with the expected restrictions due to the Corona crisis and the statute of limitations at the end of July. The criminal proceedings are considered "one of the most costly (...) of the post-war period". After 184 days of meetings within almost two and a half years, the process ended without a judgment.

Co-plaintiffs and defense lawyers criticized the termination of the process.

Processing what happened

Funeral service and commemoration

Mourning candles in the tunnel in front of the ramp, July 29, 2010
During a minute's silence at the Juicy Beats Festival in Dortmund (July 31, 2010), a candle is lit for the victims of the Love Parade.

On July 31, 2010, a central ecumenical funeral service for the victims took place in Duisburg's Salvatorkirche . Among the guests were high-ranking state representatives, including Federal President Christian Wulff , as well as representatives from the rescue services, police and fire brigade. As announced, the Lord Mayor of Duisburg, Adolf Sauerland, stayed away from the memorial ceremony. The service was held by the President of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland , Nikolaus Schneider and the Bishop of the Diocese of Essen Franz-Josef Overbeck . Due to the expected high number of visitors, the service was broadcast on large screens both in the MSV Duisburg stadium and in several churches in the city. During the service, following the sermons, the clergy, together with rescue workers, emergency pastors and other disaster relief workers, lit a candle for each of the 21 victims. At the end of the funeral service, the Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hannelore Kraft , gave a speech. According to police, around 5,000 people took part in a funeral procession in the afternoon. They raised 21 black and 511 white balloons in memory of the dead and injured.

In the days that followed, numerous people laid flowers on Karl-Lehr-Strasse and set up mourning candles. Various Duisburg civic associations joined forces on August 6, 2010 to form the “Citizens' Circle Commemoration”, which wants to contribute “to preserve a dignified framework for mourning and to jointly set a sign of reconciliation”. Since September 4, 2010, a memorial plaque at the site of the accident commemorates the victims. The funeral offerings were collected and placed in a glass cube . At the same time, the road closure and the official mourning period announced by the city came to an end. A commission should think about the design of an actual memorial.

Due to the events in Duisburg, those affected have founded the association “Massenpanik Selbsthilfe e. V. “founded. The association serves to offer therapeutic and pastoral help and to represent claims of injured parties. In a protected communication forum, members have the opportunity to come to terms with what they have experienced.

Sybille Jatzko is the psychological ombudswoman for the traumatized and survivors of the disaster at the Love Parade 2010 . Together with the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland (EKiR), she runs an e-mail advice hotline and leads aftercare.

The DJ United project ( Paul van Dyk , Armin van Buuren and Paul Oakenfold ) released the benefit single Remember Love on September 10th . According to van Dyk, the track should "remind of the spirit of the old Love Parade and support the people who had to experience so much suffering". The proceeds will go to the donation account of the charities in North Rhine-Westphalia.

On July 24, 2011, the Auxiliary Bishop of Essen, Franz Grave , led the central commemoration ceremony for the first anniversary. At the celebration, a mother of one of the victims had a say and " Der Graf " von Unheilig sang his song Born to Live at the request of the relatives .

The city ​​of Duisburg commemorates the 21 victims of the Love Parade in front of the main train station with a grove of 21 magnolias . The first 3.5 meter magnolia was planted on November 23, 2012 by Lord Mayor Sören Link .

At the beginning of January 2013 it was announced that the investor Kurt Krieger , who wants to build two furniture stores at the freight station, will receive building permission from the city of Duisburg for the filling of the entire east ramp, which will cost around one million euros. A 660 square meter room narrowing towards the south is to be preserved for a memorial. As a central element of the memorial, the staircase is to be retained, which many served as the only escape route to escape from the danger zone. However, the bereaved do not see their interests represented in the planned memorial and would like a sculpture as a memorial.

On the eve of the third day of remembrance, the victims were commemorated in a “night of 1000 lights”. For the third anniversary, 21 wooden crosses were installed on the stairs near the ramp of the scene of the accident, bearing the victims' first names and ages. In addition, 21 hearts made of slate, bearing memories, were attached to the wall along with other personal mementos. Dr. Motte , founder of the Berlin Love Parade, once again criticized the security concept of the Love Parade in Duisburg on the evening of the commemoration, especially as the larger parades in Dortmund meant that larger numbers of visitors were to be expected.

The metal band Axxis performed at the fourth commemoration and presented their song 21 Crosses (21 Crosses).

On the seventh anniversary of the disaster on July 24, 2017, the "Duisburg 7/24/2010" foundation organized a public commemoration for the first time at the site of the accident. Around 300 people took part, including the former North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister Hannelore Kraft as a private person . The evening before, the victims were commemorated during a service in Duisburg's Salvatorkirche and at the “Night of 1000 Lights”, during which candles are lit at the scene of the accident. Criticism of the official memorial ceremony was expressed by relatives and those affected who expressed concern about being brought before in their grief or who were afraid of a possible crush.

monument

The memorial for the 21 dead

Almost a year after the Love Parade in Duisburg, a memorial for the 21 victims was inaugurated on June 26, 2011. A 3.50 meter high steel plaque and 21 interlocking beams, which stand for the victims, serve as a warning to the public.

In early August 2017, the memorial was badly damaged by strangers. The glass plaque with the names of the victims was destroyed.

Foundation, endowment

On the fifth anniversary of the accident, Edith Jakubassa, Manfred Reissaus, Jörn Teich, Dirk Schales and Jürgen Widera, the ombudsman at the city of Duisburg for relatives and those affected, founded the non-profit foundation “Duisburg 24.7.2010”. The aim of the foundation is to support people who are in need as a result of the accident and who do not receive sufficient or effective help from other agencies. She also takes care of the maintenance of the memorial and organizes the annual commemorations. According to Widera, the foundation should clearly show that the city of Duisburg is responsible for the accident. The foundation was set up as a consumption foundation with EUR 50,000 . In addition, the city council decided to contribute EUR 50,000 annually. Jürgen Widera and the psychologist Ulrike Stender form the board, the spokesman for the foundation is the former CEO of Kindernothilfe Jürgen Thiesbonenkamp. He is also a member of the board of trustees alongside Johannes Pflug , Peter Gasse , Jutta Stolle, Birgit Nellen (previously advisor to the Lord Mayor of Duisburg and member of the board) and Hannelore Kraft .

Criticism of the reporting

Due to the size and notoriety of the event, the bad news quickly spread worldwide. Within a very short time, a large number of eyewitness reports as well as private video recordings and images were available on the Internet in portals and blog entries, which were also evaluated by the public prosecutor to determine the cause of the accident.

The type of reporting by the mass media and journalists before and especially after the accident was critically discussed several times. The media journalist Stefan Niggemeier noted the lack of research and critical discussion of the security concept even before the accident. Safety warnings were only reported sporadically before the accident, and afterwards the journalists were dominated by self-righteousness, know-it-all and lack of self-criticism. Not only local journalism , but also national media formats such as Spiegel TV, had failed to fulfill their journalistic mandate due to prejudiced and sensational reporting. It also has media partnerships between the organizers of the Love Parade and the WDR and Bild.de given. The media scientist Christian Schicha criticized that the published images had "massively" violated personal rights. Above all, Bild and Express would have violated the press code and probably showed pictures of victims without the permission of relatives. This has catastrophic consequences for the relatives and does not serve to establish the truth. The German Press Council expressed disapproval against BILD Online on October 15, 2010 because of the portrayal of the dead and injured . The Press Council received a total of 214 complaints about the reporting by BILD Online, 179 related to the photo series that the Press Council disapproved of. In addition, supraregional media “often misused images in their reporting to reinforce the thesis of an article.” Sauerland and Schaller were “shown again and again in slow motion and repetition”. In the case of the Love Parade, such “media personalization” reduced the complexities of the events and contributed to the creation of a “ scapegoat ”.

Publication of partly internal documents via the Internet

On August 16, 2010 the regional news blog "xtranews" published the attachments to the interim report of the city of Duisburg from August 3, 2010. These attachments had not previously been published by the city of Duisburg. In the opinion of “xtranews”, the internal documents show “that it was not only foreseeable which risks the city would take, but that it knowingly accepted the risks”. At the request of the city administration of Duisburg, the regional court of Cologne prohibited the publication of the documents on August 17, 2010 by means of an interim injunction for infringement of the “xtranews” copyright .

According to the internet service "heise online", several "other portals [...] have meanwhile copied the data and made them available again on the internet". Thereupon the city stopped a further pursuit of its injunction.

On August 20, 2010, a collection of documents relating to the Love Parade in Duisburg was published on WikiLeaks . The documents relate to the planning and approval process within the city authorities and with the organizer and the course of the event, as well as subsequent documentation.

On August 30, 2010, the organizer published what it claims to be uncut video material from the surveillance cameras from the entrance area until 4:40 p.m. and a video documentation it created as a summary of the footage on the Internet.

The online news portal DerWesten.de published a selection of radio messages from the police on July 20, 2013, intended to clarify what happened on the day of the accident.

Effects on other major events

The accident at the Love Parade 2010 led organizers and authorities to intensify their monitoring of compliance with existing safety requirements.

The Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hannelore Kraft, also announced that cities in North Rhine-Westphalia should “be accompanied and intensively advised” at major events in the future. Interior Minister Jäger ordered that municipalities in North Rhine-Westphalia may only issue permits for major events if all the security authorities concerned agree with the security concept.

With regard to the Street Parade planned for August 14, 2010 in Zurich , contact was made with the Duisburg authorities in order to be able to incorporate any preliminary results of the investigation into the security planning. The event, with around 650,000 visitors, passed without any notable incidents.

The Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Ministry of Transport had the Schwerin road construction authority revoke a permit for a techno party that was to take place on September 11, 2010 in the 800-meter-long Warnow tunnel in Rostock .

Wolfgang Kirsch , Director of the Regional Association of Westphalia-Lippe , canceled the MitMenschen 2010 event that had been planned for a long time due to safety concerns. The grounds of the LWL-Industriemuseum Henrichshütte in Hattingen do not have enough evacuation options, said Kirsch.

The North Rhine-Westphalia Day 2013, which was originally supposed to take place in Hückeswagen , was canceled after several discussions with the Ministry of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia because the city of 15,000 was unable to meet the safety requirements.

Movies

With the fictional television drama Life Afterwards , the Loveparade disaster was filmed and processed by director Nicole Weegmann from the perspective of a survivor - portrayed by actress Jella Haase . The 90-minute feature film was first broadcast on September 27, 2017 in Das Erste .

With the 89-minute WDR documentary from 2020, Love Parade - The Negotiation , directed by Dominik Wessely , Das Erste showed the criminal investigation of the accident on July 22, 2020.

See also

literature

  • Landtag printed matter 15/34 A09 IA of the 15th Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia. Cover letter with the text by RA'e Ute Jasper, Andreas Berstermann (authors) for the city administration of Duisburg (as ed.): Interim report of the city of Duisburg from August 3, 2010 on the occasion of the Love Parade. Special meeting of the Interior Committee on August 4, 2010. Completed attachment folder with 310 sheets. ( partly online [PDF]) Also a register of the attachments. This is the completed attorney's report commissioned by the city administration with attachments dated August 3, 2010. See individual evidence no. 6. It is largely identical to the attachment part the various Internet publications mentioned. In the final version (beginning of September) the attorney's lecture was expanded. Compare the lecture of the city administration in the injunction against the publication on the Internet.)
  • Wolfgang Seibel, Kevin Klamann, Hannah Treis: Administrative disaster . From the Love Parade to the NSU investigations. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / New York, 2017. ISBN 978-3-593-50787-3 .
  • Jessica West . DANCE OR DIE: The Love Parade disaster. A novel . Emons Verlag, Cologne 2020, ISBN 978-3-740-80887-7
  • Jürgen Gerlach, expert in court: Professional processing of the causes of the tragic events at the Love Parade Duisburg 2010 [1] [PDF]

Web links

Commons : Loveparade 2010  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
 Wikinews: Dead in mass panic during the Love Parade  - news

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Loveparade criminal proceedings: Anonymized charge . lg-duisburg.nrw.de, December 12, 2017, page 2.
  2. ↑ No end of the investigation in sight. Handelsblatt, February 10, 2012, accessed on March 6, 2012 .
  3. ↑ a b Press release from the Duisburg Public Prosecutor's Office. (PDF; 21 KiB) Duisburg Public Prosecutor's Office, July 27, 2010, archived from the original on June 16, 2011 ; Retrieved July 27, 2010 .
  4. ↑ Press release from the Duisburg Public Prosecutor's Office. (PDF; 15 KiB) Public Prosecutor's Office in Duisburg, July 28, 2010, archived from the original on June 16, 2011 ; Retrieved July 28, 2010 .
  5. ^ At least six suicides after the Love Parade tragedy. Die Welt, February 10, 2012, accessed July 20, 2014 .
  6. ↑ Tagesschau.de
  7. ↑ Kölner Stadtanzeiger
  8. ↑ Tagesspiegel.de
  9. ^ Wit, Duisburg: Police officer is said to have given fateful orders. Spiegel Online , January 29, 2011, accessed January 29, 2011 .
  10. ↑ There was radio silence. Interview with the psychologist Carsten Walter, the crowd manager of the Duisburg Love Parade. Spiegel Online , August 9, 2010, accessed August 9, 2010 .
  11. ↑ The stairs should have been blown up. Interview by Claudia Fromme with panic researcher Michael Schreckenberg. Süddeutsche Zeitung , July 26, 2010, accessed on July 26, 2010 .
  12. ↑ Anonymized decision of the Duisburg Regional Court
  13. ↑ Organizer announces the end of the Love Parade. N24, accessed July 25, 2010 .
  14. ^ Michael Weeke: Love Parade in Bochum canceled . derwesten.de , January 16, 2009, accessed on July 27, 2010.
  15. ↑ a b c d e f g City presents interim report on the Love Parade . ( Memento from August 19, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) City of Duisburg, August 3, 2010
  16. ^ Letter to the Minister of the Interior, Dr. Ingo Wolf from Thomas Mahlberg Member of the Bundestag . ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) cdu-duisburg.de, February 9, 2009
  17. ^ Doubts about the safety concept of the Love Parade . ( Memento from July 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) tagesschau.de, July 25, 2010, accessed on July 27, 2010.
  18. ↑ Frank Hornig, Sven Röbel: That'll break you . In: Der Spiegel . No. 33 , 2010 ( online - Spiegel interview).
  19. ↑ David Schraven : Participant numbers for the Love Parade were falsified . derwesten.de , July 29, 2010
  20. ^ Final report City of Duisburg, Annex 34 . September 1, 2010 - Archive from January 9, 2011 ( Memento from January 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) City of Duisburg, September 1, 2010
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  22. ↑ a b Ingmar Kreienbrink: The Love Parade becomes a dance on a tightrope . DerWesten online portal, July 20, 2010, accessed on July 27, 2010.
  23. ↑ a b c Jörg Diehl: The party area was only allowed for 250,000 people . Spiegel Online , July 25, 2010
  24. ↑ Jürgen Gerlach: Technical preparation of the causes of the tragic events at the Love Parade Duisburg 2010. July 10, 2020, accessed on August 11, 2020 .
  25. ↑ Der Spiegel 31/2010, page 24. City map
  26. ↑ a b "It was radio silence." Psychologist Carsten Walter on his role as crowd manager and the course of the catastrophe. Spiegel Online , Interview, August 9, 2010
  27. ↑ a b Simone Utler: The miraculous shrinkage of 1.4 million. 7th part: How many people were actually in the city? Spiegel Online , July 31, 2010
  28. ↑ Simone Utler: The miraculous shrinkage of the 1.4 million. Part 2: How many people did the organizers and the city expect? Spiegel Online , July 31, 2010
  29. ↑ Blocking of the A 59 for the Love Parade . ( Memento from July 23, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Straßen-NRW, press release July 20, 2010
  30. ^ Office for building law and building advice - additional request for missing documents. Indymedia, July 14, 2010, archived from the original on January 16, 2016 ; Retrieved December 16, 2010 .
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  32. ^ A b Loveparade 2010 Duisburg planning documents, 2007-2010. WikiLeaks, August 30, 2010; archived from the original on October 11, 2010 ; Retrieved February 3, 2010 .
  33. ↑ Duisburg - 24th July 2010, Love Parade Incident Expert Report (Eng., Prepared on behalf of the public prosecutor), No. 17. (PDF; 10.0 MiB) G. Keith Still, December 9, 2011, accessed on May 12, 2013 .
  34. ↑ Duisburg - 24th July 2010, Love Parade Incident Expert Report (Eng., Prepared on behalf of the public prosecutor), No. 14 ff. (PDF; 10.0 MiB) G. Keith Still, December 9, 2011, accessed on May 12, 2013 .
  35. ↑ Jörg Diehl, Barbara Hans, Simone Utler and Julia Jüttner: Fatale Funkstille im Chaos 1st part , Spiegel Online, July 29, 2010
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  37. ↑ a b Express : Expert opinion encumbrances Loveparade-Macher , Munich, Nachrichten, vol. 51, no. 125, p. 4
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  57. ↑ Sven Gösmann: Tragedy after the tragedy . ( Memento of July 28, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) RP Online, July 25, 2010
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  66. ^ Duisburg: Court rejects the Love Parade disaster trial. In: SPIEGEL ONLINE. Retrieved April 5, 2016 .
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  78. ^ Love Parade Trial in Duisburg: That's what the mammoth trial is about. Spiegel Online, December 8, 2017, accessed December 8, 2017 .
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  82. ↑ Press release of February 5, 2019
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  85. ^ Message from the WDR
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  113. ↑ Harro Albrecht: "Now tell us!" The trauma expert Kerstin Stellermann, on the other hand, pleads for restraint in reporting accidents. In: The time . August 5, 2010, p. No. 32/2010 , accessed on August 5, 2017 : “More than 230 complaints about the reporting at the German Press Council ... A dramatic presentation can also be dangerous for viewers. The behavior of the reporters on site. "
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  115. ↑ Karin Schädler: “This is how real hatred develops” . taz.de, August 4, 2010, (Interview with media scientist Christian Schicha)
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  118. ↑ Andreas Wilkens: Duisburg prohibits the publication of documents on the Internet. heise online , August 18, 2010, accessed on August 21, 2010 .
  119. ↑ documentation Love Parade 07/24/2010 . ( Memento of the original of December 30, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. documentation-loveparade.com, Lopavent GmbH , accessed August 30, 2010 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dokumentation-loveparade.com
  120. ↑ ap / afp: Love Parade: allegations against the police. In: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung , August 30, 2010, page 8.
  121. ↑ Chronicle of a catastrophe - the Love Parade radio messages. DerWesten.de , accessed on July 20, 2013 .
  122. ↑ ruhrnachrichten.de ( Memento from September 10, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  123. ↑ NRW tightens the approval of major events. In: Ruhr news . August 17, 2010, archived from the original on August 25, 2010 ; Retrieved August 17, 2010 .
  124. ↑ Christoph Landolt: Why Duisburg and Zurich cannot be compared. In: Tages-Anzeiger Zurich. July 26, 2010. Retrieved July 26, 2010 .
  125. ↑ Bianca Hannig: Schwerin forbids tunnel parties in Rostock. In: Ostsee-Zeitung.de. July 28, 2010, archived from the original on September 8, 2012 ; Retrieved July 28, 2010 .
  126. ↑ LWL press information - Safety concerns: - Announcement 08/11/10. In: lwl.org. Retrieved July 25, 2011 .
  127. ↑ Canceled: The NRW Day in Hückeswagen. In: Remscheider General-Anzeiger. Retrieved May 27, 2012 .
  128. ↑ Love Parade - The Negotiation - The whole documentary. ARTE, accessed on July 23, 2020 .
  129. ^ Love Parade - The Negotiation - WDR.DOK - Television - WDR. Retrieved July 23, 2020 .
  130. ↑ Loveparade process: WDR co-production gives unique insights. Retrieved July 23, 2020 .

Coordinates: 51 ° 25 ′ 13.4 "  N , 6 ° 46 ′ 20.7"  E