The Love Parade: West Berlin's gift to global culture

The left-liberal daily Süddeutsche Zeitung comments on the enormous success of the Love Parade, the techno demonstration that took place in Berlin from 1989 to 2006: "The Parade's victory march began - not by accident - on Berlin's Kurfürstendamm, right where the former West was at its 'Westest'. Far from wanting to anticipate anything, techno culture was fundamentally against anticipation. But putting it like that also fails to hit the mark because it implies a direction, whereas the whole movement was about the timelessness of ecstasy, the joy of repetition, about interiority, concentrating on the moment and your own body. ... [With rave culture] everything merged together in the present, an endless moment with neither past nor present, without extension, an eternal loop. All that suits the atmosphere of the divided metropolis of West Berlin to a 'T', like the calm in the eye of the hurricane. The culture of the Love Parade blends technological advancement with a disinterested attitude to progress, the joys of the mass with absolute indifference to the power it could have. It was all about living the ready-made urban idyll, a cultural technology for which the old West Berlin offered the perfect preconditions."

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