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In the ever-changing 1990s, Germans strongly associated ecstasy, and the illegal drug of the same name, with the rave event known as Love Parade. Every year from 1989 to 2003, the Love Parade attracted over half a million attendees to Berlin. Young people flocked to the city, forging a dance and rave culture that served as a form of rebellion against their parents’ generation, which they viewed as somewhat outdated.
Fueled by the intoxicating substance known scientifically as MDMA, Love Parade goers expressed their sexual liberation, particularly in terms of homoeroticism, in an explicit and celebratory manner. The combination of ecstasy and the Love Parade embodied a powerful sense of freedom.
However, there was much more to it; after all, the Love Parade also evolved into a techno music movement that marked a new era in urban culture, especially for Berlin. This development was influenced by the political and economic changes of the time, which arguably triggered this new cultural orientation.
In a study of the 2019 Love Parade, historian Joe Perry of Georgia State University explains how the techno playground (playworld) of the 1990s helped Berlin cultivate a neoliberal image known as “Neues Berlin.” In the decade following reunification, Berlin sought a new self-image and, riding the wave of the techno movement—which had spread internationally among young people from Great Britain—the city gradually earned the unofficial title of Europe’s party capital.
While the early Love Parades resembled street festivals, 1996 marked a turning point: the event was relocated from the Ku’damm to the Straße des 17. Juni. This new route crossed the Tiergarten and stretched from the Brandenburg Gate to the Victory Column, attracting a record high of 600,000 to 750,000 participants. The media actively covered the parade, with television broadcasting live coverage, allowing the entire nation to follow the event from their living room couches.
Under the motto “Peace, Love, and Unity”— three key themes often cited by users of the drug ecstasy as part of its consciousness-expanding effect — techno, dance, and eroticism came together. This experience ascribed a transgressive power to techno music. However, as noted by some scholars, despite the sense of community, “the transgressive aspects of techno nourished an individualized pleasure culture, stripped of any radical politics that might effectively lead to larger social change.”
In 1996, cocaine, LSD, marijuana, alcohol, and Red Bull circulated at this “mega-rave,” a term coined by Simon Reynolds in his book Energy Flash. A Journey through Rave Music and Dance Culture. Despite the variety, Perry noted that ecstasy clearly dominated the scene. Party-goers associated the drug with casual sex and regarded it as a technological achievement for providing pleasure, as described by Matthew Collin in Altered State. The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House. A less aggressive perspective saw it merely as a “caressing and cuddling drug.”
Nonetheless, ecstasy demonstrably enhances the sense of harmony, reflected in a stronger perception of love, happiness, and community. During ecstatic dance, which is also referred to as trance (the definitions of the term are always vague in this regard, just like the descriptions of the states of the affected individuals), one feels detached from world events, as if the present and with it any sense of time were suspended, wrote Nadia Seremetakis in her book An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. Dance assumes quasi-spiritual significance as a ritual. While religion may allow some to connect past and future within the present, for others in rave culture, intense celebration represents a profoundly spiritual and timeless experience.
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In addition to the techno music aspect, this rave event played a significant role in the democratization of a youth movement, facilitated by the early adoption of the Internet by the Love Parade organizing team. Its founder, Matthias Roeingh, aka DJ Dr. Motte, was one of the first users of the World Wide Web. With online information platforms like techno.de, techno.net, and the dedicated Love Parade website, rave culture reached audiences far beyond Berlin. Consequently, a subculture linked to a “society for fun” began to go mainstream.
By the turn of the century, the Love Parade became increasingly commercialized, ultimately leading to its designation as an officially recognized political demonstration being revoked in 2001. According to historian Perry, this trend helped neoliberal forces gain significant influence in Berlin, as the pop culture of the Love Parade began to intertwine with capitalism.
During the 1990s, Berlin’s economic growth developed alongside its techno scene. As the event attracted large crowds and garnered more media visibility each year, companies recognized an opportunity to enhance their brand recognition. Businesses based in Berlin could market themselves as modern and trendy to a global audience, while the techno scene in an urban setting generated serious money.
However, for the urban development of Berlin, it was not only the economic factor that contributed to the Love Parade’s resounding success. The event also had significant cultural and topographical consequences for the city.
The Love Parade helped reclaim districts in Berlin that their historical baggage had previously overshadowed. The Tiergarten, which became central to the Love Parade in 1996, was an essential site for the display of power during the Nazi era. In the architect Albert Speer’s plans for the “World Capital Germania,” inspired by Adolf Hitler’s visions for transforming Berlin, the park assumed a representative function along an imposing east-west axis running across the city. Accordingly, the Nazis widened the Straße des 17. Juni, then known as Charlottenburger Chaussee, was used for their triumphal processions and marches, and decorated with swastika flags to symbolize “Germania.” Today, its current name commemorates the East Berlin uprising of June 17, 1953, when Soviet occupation forces, with the involvement of the GDR police, violently suppressed mass democratic protests.
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This politically charged topography of Berlin — marked by the Nazi era and the division of Germany — was given new meaning by a generation of young people dancing to techno. Alexander Branczyk, alias DJ CZYK, argues about the transformation of “the massive Nazi parade street [Straße des 17. Juni]” in Felix Denk and Sven von Thülen’ s book Der Klang der Familie, Berlin, Techno und die Wende: “In this way, a completely new image of Germany emerged.” After this reconquest of the city, Straße des 17. Juni, like the Tiergarten, could be used for other events in a more value-neutral way, as these locations now appeared, to a specific but decisive extent, more depoliticized.
The history of the Love Parade has experienced unpredictable turns over the past 20 years, particularly following the original organizing team’s loss of the right to register the festival as a political demonstration before the Berlin Higher Administrative Court in 2001. The event, which had been held regularly until 2003, became financially unviable. In 2006, the parade organizers sold the name and rights to the fitness studio brand McFit, which relocated the festival from Berlin to the Ruhr region in 2007. During the third Ruhr Love Parade in 2010 in Duisburg, a stampede tragically led to the death of 21 participants and injured over 650 others.
The coronavirus pandemic disrupted Dr. Motte’s plans to revive the Berlin Love Parade in 2021. However, the rave event made a comeback in 2022 under the new name and motto “Rave the Planet” and “Together Again,” followed by “Music is the Answer” in 2023. “Rave the Planet” [that took place two weeks ago] is now a recurring political demonstration that positions itself as a direct legacy of the original Love Parade.
At raves, religious affiliation or cultural traditions are irrelevant. However, ritual is an essential aspect of the experience, bringing together friends and strangers in an intense and meaningful way. Participants often prepare for the events for days, deciding what to wear, and the anticipation itself is a harbinger of impending happiness. In retrospect, the memories gathered during the event act as a reservoir of joy. Perhaps dancing to music as a vehicle of achieving ecstasy finds its most succinct expression, in our time, within this cultural phenomenon. This may be the “place” where, decoupled from religion, Berliners achieve spiritual experiences through dancing and gathering in the public space.
This article is an extract from the book “Berauscht der Sinne beraubt. Eine Geschichte der Ekstase” (in English, Intoxicated, Deprived of the Senses. A History of Ecstasy), published in 2025 by © Propyläen Verlag, and translated by The Urban Activist.
