BERLIN -- A techno parade whose initiators include the founder of the Love Parade, once a popular annual party in Berlin, took to the streets of the German capital Saturday with calls for the city's electronic music culture to be added to a world heritage list.
The “Rave the Planet” parade set out on a route from the Kurfuerstendamm shopping boulevard to the Victory Column in the middle of Berlin's Tiergarten park. Organizers registered the event with police as a demonstration with some 25,000 expected participants.
Police said around 5,000 people turned up for the beginning of the parade in cool, rainy weather, but the crowd was increasing, German news agency dpa reported.
One of the organizers, a DJ known professionally as Dr. Motte, called for an unconditional basic income for artists and for Berlin's club culture to be listed as intangible heritage by UNESCO, the U.N.'s cultural agency.
Dr. Motte, now 62, is best known for founding the Love Parade — which grew from a small procession of 150 ravers in 1989 to a huge music festival and street party with some 1.5 million participants a decade later. The event's popularity later waned; it was last held in Berlin in 2006.
Parties with the Love Parade brand were held under different organizers after that in Germany's industrial Ruhr region, but ended after a mass panic at the 2010 event in Duisburg that resulted in 21 deaths.
