The Love Parade was a very popular electronic dance music #festival It first occurred in July 1989, in Berlin. That year, the Love Parade was actually supposed to be a birthday party organised by and for Matthias Roeingh, with the aid of his then girlfriend, Danielle de Picciotto. The Berlin underground loved the parade, which was not only a music festival, but also a demonstration for peace and international understanding. Because of the massively positive reception, the Love Parade became a fully-fledged event and a landmark of German pop culture. The parade was held annually from 1989 to 2003, on the streets, avenues and parks of Berlin. In 2007, the parade/festival had to be moved from Berlin to the Ruhr area, mainly because the city’s authorities were threatening to ban it, for safety and environmental concerns. As it turned out, moving the festival from #berlin was a good choice. In the following years, attendance skyrocketed from 500,000 in Berlin to over a million visitors.