Love Parade Trial 2019 Archive · January–October

The former defendant from the building office

A former city employee who had himself been a defendant until February returned for the third day of his evidence. Co-plaintiffs and defence lawyers now had the opportunity to question him.

Surveillance footage of the upper part of the ramp was examined. It showed large numbers of visitors below two rows of fencing. Questions concentrated on whether the fencing that existed on the day corresponded with the approved plans and whether the final inspection should have identified any difference.

The witness's answers remained brief. His position was that his building-control task had been completed once the relevant construction requirements had been checked and that the wider operation of the crowd system did not fall within his remit.

The evidence again exposed the recurring problem of the trial: individual officials could describe having completed their specific task while the overall event system nevertheless contained significant safety weaknesses.

A lesson in bureaucracy

Another former defendant from the Duisburg building authority returned as a witness. He had been involved in the construction inspection immediately before the Love Parade.

His evidence was highly technical. He described the building application, inspection requirements and the final site visit. From his perspective, the organiser had ultimately satisfied the requirements that fell within his particular area of building control.

He repeatedly distinguished that narrow function from the wider decision to use the site, the design of the tunnel and ramp system and the operational management of visitor flows.

The witness said he did not believe he had made an error. Looking back at his time as a defendant, he had instead wondered why the dock had contained only ten people.

On the second day, questions returned to documentary records and the responsibilities assigned to individual departments. The result was another illustration of a highly fragmented approval system.

"The developer plans — the authority checks"

The former head of the Lower Building Supervision described the difficult relationship between the authority and Lopavent during the approval process.

According to internal emails, the organiser's lawyer had challenged whether a formal building application was required at all. The application eventually submitted in June 2010 contained gaps and required repeated amendment.

The witness emphasised that the building authority did not design the event. Its role was to examine the material submitted by the applicant and determine whether the parts falling under building law could be approved.

On the second day he said visitor movement within the tunnel and ramp had not been part of his authority's assessment. In his view, the ramp was not an escape route under the relevant building-law analysis.

He told the court that even after years of reflection he had not identified an error in his own actions. Co-plaintiff lawyers were visibly frustrated by the limited answers and continued to press the witness over the final site inspection and missing or altered infrastructure.

"We were not bent"

A former senior city official rejected the suggestion that building-control staff had been pressured into granting an approval they considered unlawful.

The authority had been regarded by some other participants as unusually demanding because it repeatedly requested evidence, reports and amendments before accepting the application.

Yet the witness maintained that neither the tunnel nor the operational management of the ramp had been treated as falling within the building authority's own assessment.

Records prepared after the disaster showed that officials considered themselves to have completed their respective duties. This generated a broader systemic question: if everyone believed they had performed correctly, why had the combined system failed so catastrophically?

From defendant to witness

Former Duisburg building director Jürgen Dressler returned to the courtroom as a witness after proceedings against him had been discontinued in February.

As a defendant he had been entitled to remain silent. As a witness he was now required to answer questions truthfully, although he retained protections relating to self-incrimination.

Dressler's opening account was short. His central position was that his department had never wanted the Love Parade on the proposed site and had become involved only because fencing and other physical works triggered building-control requirements.

He described the approval process as belonging primarily to officials beneath him and sought to distinguish political, managerial and technical responsibilities.

On the final day of his evidence, Dressler reflected on the personal impact of having spent years as the first-named defendant. He nevertheless continued to reject the suggestion that he had personally committed a criminally relevant error.

The former building director

Dressler's evidence began with only a brief free account. The limited opening immediately raised questions about whether he was attempting to demonstrate how little direct involvement he had had in detailed planning.

Under questioning he explained that the building authority had become involved because the proposed event site was to be fenced and required formal approval for temporary structures and use.

His evidence continued the distinction that had appeared repeatedly throughout the proceedings: the building authority reviewed certain legal and structural requirements but did not regard itself as the planner of the overall crowd system.

Technical preparation of the floats

A graduate engineer who had worked on the technical preparation of the music trucks described his responsibilities before the event.

Once the Love Parade began, he considered his own task largely complete and said operational control of the floats had passed to others.

He repeatedly stressed that he had not been involved in designing the event site or the tunnel and ramp access system.

As with several other witnesses from the organiser's wider team, the hearing produced limited new information about the three remaining defendants.

Video evidence challenges memories of crowd announcements

The court examined footage recorded from one of the music trucks in preparation for a witness who had previously said that early announcements had been made encouraging people to move away from the ramp.

Two hours of video showed only limited announcements. Those that could be identified appeared vague and, importantly, occurred late in the developing emergency.

Radio records also appeared difficult to reconcile with the witness's earlier account that useful announcements had been made at an early stage.

During questioning the witness repeatedly moved between memory, assumption and inference. Judge Plein had to distinguish what the witness actually remembered from conclusions reconstructed years later.

On the following day co-plaintiff lawyers openly challenged the credibility of parts of his evidence, particularly the scale of his asserted memory loss.

The "narrative" of the Love Parade

A long-standing Love Parade worker described the history of the event and the increasingly inflated attendance figures associated with it.

The court returned to the distinction between announced media numbers and realistic physical attendance. Figures such as 1.2 million visitors had long been part of the public narrative surrounding Love Parade events but were not realistic measures of simultaneous attendance.

The witness said cost savings at the expense of safety had not been openly discussed in his presence. As throughout the trial, however, the key issue was not simply what was explicitly said but how resources, capacity assumptions and operational decisions interacted.

The flow of VIPs

An event manager who continued to work within Rainer Schaller's wider business group described her responsibility for the VIP area at the 2010 event.

Approximately 1,500 guests, celebrities and commercial partners were to be received in that area. According to the witness, the movement and servicing of the VIP guests worked as intended.

The court's real interest was not VIP hospitality itself but the witness's knowledge of Lopavent's organisational structure and who had been responsible for the main access system.

Her evidence produced little new information. As with several former Lopavent witnesses, detailed responsibility for the tunnel, ramp and separation system remained difficult to reconstruct.

The float controllers

Two witnesses described how the Love Parade's music trucks were controlled from an operations room in a high-rise building near Duisburg Central Station.

The controllers communicated with the vehicles by radio and used a magnetic board to track the floats around the event site. Individual vehicles carried a radio passenger responsible for communication with the operations centre.

The witnesses had authority to influence the speed and movement of the floats but said their responsibility did not extend to managing the tunnel and ramp.

The court explored whether the floats could have been rerouted, stopped or used more actively as a means of dispersing people away from the access area.

The evidence did not establish that the float-control system had been used effectively for that purpose during the critical period.

Visitor counting by mouse click

A witness responsible for estimating visitor numbers described manually counting people visible within defined CCTV areas.

Once each hour he clicked on individual people within the images and produced an estimate which was passed to the production manager and then to the public-order authority.

He had experience in the security industry but little prior experience of using video in this particular way.

Co-plaintiff lawyers pressed the witness over the significance of the information he was producing and his response once the emergency became apparent.

He repeatedly said he could no longer remember what actions had been discussed or taken during the most critical period.

An economist responsible for traffic planning

A former freelance worker for Lopavent described his involvement in the transport working group.

The graduate economist openly acknowledged that he had no previous professional experience as a traffic planner. He had nevertheless worked on site inspections, road-closure plans and the concept for visitor arrival and departure.

He distinguished "traffic" matters from formal traffic-law responsibilities and described his role on the event day as involving only limited supporting tasks.

The court also examined his continuing private friendship with one of the defendants. The two still met socially, although the witness said they did not substantively discuss the trial.

On the second day the witness produced additional notes and photographs in an effort to assist the court. His willingness to prepare contrasted with the substantial memory gaps described by a number of earlier witnesses.

An unusually informative insider

The court heard from a witness regarded as unusual among the long sequence of Lopavent personnel because he was able and willing to provide comparatively detailed evidence.

The testimony helped illuminate working relationships within the organiser and the division of responsibilities between permanent staff, freelancers and specialist contractors.

This was significant because one of the recurring problems in the trial was reconstructing Lopavent's internal decision-making. Unlike the city or police, the organiser had generated relatively little formal documentary material that clearly allocated responsibilities.

The burglary

A former Lopavent worker who had acted as the contact person for local residents described her role and her long-standing relationships with other members of the Love Parade team.

She remained personally close to several former colleagues, including defendants. One was godparent to one of her children, while another stayed at her home during trial days.

The court again encountered significant memory gaps when asking about responsibility for the tunnel and ramp planning.

The witness did, however, recall an unusual event in April 2011. A later defendant had brought a laptop and hard drive to her home so that a backup could be made.

During a short period when the occupants were away, the home was burgled. The laptop and hard drive were taken while other property was left behind. The burglary remained unexplained.

"He says and I do"

A carpenter who had undertaken practical work for Lopavent described a working structure in which tasks were often carried out on instruction rather than through a detailed formal organisational hierarchy.

His evidence was followed by that of a former office manager who had worked closely with the company's creative director and chief executive.

She explained that Lopavent itself had only a small permanent staff, relying heavily on freelancers and contractors for major events.

She had arrived in Duisburg only shortly before the event and described limited involvement in the detailed technical planning.

As with other organiser witnesses, the court repeatedly attempted to identify who had possessed authority over particular parts of the event system and found that those boundaries were difficult to reconstruct.

Uncertain witnesses

A witness who had worked in the Lopavent security centre was questioned about handwritten notes made on the day of the event and other documents later supplied to investigators.

The court attempted to establish whether those notes represented a contemporaneous operational log or were merely personal observations reconstructed at different times.

Defence lawyers examined inconsistencies between the written material and later witness accounts, particularly where the records could affect assessment of what the remaining defendants had known and when.

As the trial moved further away from the date of the disaster, questions about memory, later reconstruction and the reliability of documents became increasingly important.

"That was too dangerous for us"

The Duisburg manager of a large security company described recognising significant risks associated with operating the entrance controls.

He had grown up near the Karl-Lehr tunnel and said he knew the physical environment particularly well.

When his company was asked whether it would take responsibility for the separation or entrance-control system, he declined. In his assessment, positioning his personnel within the roadway while large numbers of people entered the tunnel presented an unacceptable risk.

His company nevertheless supplied approximately one hundred personnel elsewhere in the operation, and the witness spent much of the day within the security centre.

Lawyers pressed him over what he remembered from that control environment and suggested that his claimed memory gaps were difficult to reconcile with his senior operational role.

The liaison officer without a connection

A former police liaison officer described his role inside the Lopavent security centre.

His function was to receive information that appeared relevant to police and pass it into the police command structure. He did not have authority to issue operational orders himself.

Telephone records showed multiple calls between his mobile phone and police command during the afternoon, but he could no longer remember the content of many individual conversations.

Critically, he was not directly connected to officers managing the tunnel, entrance controls or ramp. Information therefore passed through several organisational layers.

He described the atmosphere in the security centre as initially cooperative but said relations changed markedly after the disaster.

The evidence highlighted the weakness of a liaison arrangement in which the person intended to connect organisations had no direct authority over either operational system.

Security planning, friendship and credibility

A graduate engineer in theatre and event technology who had assisted Lopavent's security department described recognising the tunnel as a potential problem during an early site inspection.

He said he had been reassured that the city would manage visitor routing from the railway station so that excessive pressure would not develop at the tunnel entrances.

The witness had been recruited by a close friend who was one of the remaining defendants and had worked with him repeatedly on earlier Love Parade events.

The court reminded him expressly that, unlike a defendant, he was required to answer truthfully. Over two hearing days, prosecutors and co-plaintiff lawyers repeatedly questioned the credibility and completeness of his answers.

The witness described himself as an assistant rather than a decision-maker. The court nevertheless examined what he had known about the tunnel risk, what had been discussed within the security team and whether concerns had reached those with formal responsibility.

A difficult position for a former defendant

A former Lopavent defendant whose proceedings had ended in February returned as a witness.

Judge Plein expressly reminded him that his legal position had changed: he was now required to tell the truth and could face consequences for deliberately false evidence.

Rainer Schaller had previously described the witness as a senior organisational figure. The court therefore wanted to establish what he knew about the three remaining defendants and their responsibilities.

The witness said the tunnel and ramp had not been his subject area and claimed limited knowledge of detailed discussions among the remaining defendants.

The judge openly described parts of this as difficult to understand, particularly given the witness's senior position and continuing professional and personal relationships with some of those involved.

Site coordination and the police commander who was absent

A former Lopavent site coordinator was questioned about physical works carried out across the former freight-yard site and about how responsibilities had been shared within the organiser.

As in several earlier hearings, witnesses tended to describe decisions as having emerged through a collective process rather than through a clearly documented hierarchy.

The following day a senior police officer gave evidence. He had been intended to lead the relevant police operation on 24 July 2010 but did not arrive until after the disaster because his wife had gone into labour that morning.

He had nevertheless been involved in advance planning and described concerns about the event site. Experience from earlier Love Parade events had made him sceptical about whether the organiser would always provide the agreed levels of personnel and infrastructure.

His evidence again demonstrated that significant reservations existed among experienced operational personnel before the event.

The final co-plaintiff witness

The final scheduled co-plaintiff witness appeared after several earlier adjournments caused by ill health.

The man had become a prominent campaigner following the disaster, supporting other survivors and taking part in memorial and victim-support activities.

His own medical history and the extent to which particular conditions could be attributed to the Love Parade were disputed. Separate investigations had therefore arisen around aspects of his claims.

During evidence he became visibly distressed. Judge Plein adjusted the questioning and demonstrated considerable patience when particular words or descriptions triggered an emotional response.

The witness described his years of campaigning for other victims as having ultimately damaged his own health and said he intended to withdraw from those responsibilities.

Witnesses from the Schaller group

A series of witnesses from Lopavent and the wider Schaller business group were questioned about production, site coordination, communications and internal follow-up after the disaster.

A production assistant described working as a freelancer on successive Love Parade events. She had close personal relationships with some people involved and struggled to recall who had held responsibility for particular areas.

A company spokeswoman described responsibility for the VIP area and said she had not been closely involved in the tunnel, ramp or emergency planning.

Prosecutors and the court showed scepticism about several parts of the evidence, particularly where witnesses could remember detailed operational matters but not how information concerning responsibility had been obtained.

The spokeswoman also recalled that Lopavent personnel spent several evenings after the disaster reviewing camera recordings and producing written recollections.

The hearings continued to demonstrate the difficulty of reconstructing Lopavent's internal communication because the company had left far fewer formal records than the public authorities.

Serious allegations involving a lawyer representing Love Parade victims

The archive also recorded allegations made by several Love Parade victims against a lawyer who had represented people affected by the disaster.

They alleged that unrealistic expectations of compensation had been created and raised concerns about insurance payments and legal fees. The lawyer rejected the allegations.

This material concerned representation of victims rather than the criminal liability of the three remaining defendants, but was included in the historical archive because it formed part of the wider legal aftermath of the disaster.

"That looked like a bomb blast without blood"

A police platoon leader who had been ordered to form a cordon on the ramp gave emotional evidence about the conditions he encountered.

Before the event he had already doubted whether the proposed access system would work effectively. During the operation he and his officers attempted to intervene as congestion became increasingly severe.

One officer transmitted an unusually urgent radio call simply asking for help — something the witness said was striking because trained officers normally communicate in a more structured way even during difficult incidents.

After eventually reaching the most affected area, the witness described people lying throughout the scene while police, emergency personnel and other visitors attempted to assist them.

On the following day the court concentrated on the absence of a police contingency for the failure of the access system.

The witness confirmed that officers deployed at the critical location had expected the organiser to deal with the crowd-flow problem. There was no clearly developed police "Plan B" for a dangerous accumulation at the top of the ramp.

Concerns among key police officers

A police officer described a site inspection undertaken on 23 July 2010, the day before the Love Parade.

Despite an official public statement saying the police were professionally prepared, the witness described substantial unease among officers expected to work around the tunnel and ramp.

In his assessment the proposed access arrangement appeared exceptionally ambitious. Other platoon leaders and senior officers shared concerns that the area could become extremely congested.

They did not predict fatalities, but many apparently entered the operation expecting serious crowd-flow difficulties.

The witness said that because of his position within the police hierarchy he did not believe he had sufficient authority at that late stage to alter the deployment plan.

Former defendant complains about judges who opened the trial

Former city defendant Jürgen Dressler reportedly filed a complaint against judges of the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court who had ordered the criminal proceedings to go ahead.

Dressler argued that social and political pressure, including a large public petition by survivors and relatives, had influenced the decision to open the trial.

He maintained that his innocence had effectively been confirmed by the later discontinuance of proceedings against him and criticised what he regarded as serious errors in the earlier legal assessment.

The episode demonstrated the continuing disagreement about the decision to prosecute, even after proceedings against seven defendants had been discontinued.

The trial continues with three defendants

The first hearing after the partial discontinuance looked superficially similar to earlier proceedings, but only three men now remained in the dock.

All three had worked for Lopavent and continued to face allegations of negligent homicide and negligent bodily injury.

Attention immediately turned to whether the seven former defendants might later be called as witnesses.

This would materially change their legal position. Former defendants who had previously exercised the right to silence could now be required to provide evidence about planning, approval and organisational responsibilities.

Twelve co-plaintiffs leave the proceedings

The partial discontinuance also affected participation by co-plaintiffs.

Twelve people had been admitted to the proceedings only in relation to the former city defendants. Once those defendants left the case, the associated co-plaintiff participation also ended.

The court had registered dozens of co-plaintiffs, including relatives of those who died and people injured during the disaster.

The reduction illustrated that the February decision affected not only the defendants but also the ability of some victims and families to participate formally in the remaining criminal case.

Proceedings against seven defendants discontinued

After fourteen months and 101 hearing days, the court discontinued proceedings against six former employees of the City of Duisburg and one former Lopavent employee.

No financial conditions were imposed on those seven defendants. The discontinuance did not amount to a conviction or a finding of guilt. The presumption of innocence remained in place.

The court had assessed their possible individual responsibility as comparatively low when considered against the much broader, multicausal sequence that led to the disaster.

Three Lopavent defendants rejected the proposal to terminate their proceedings in return for financial conditions. Their position was that they wished the case to continue so that they could seek a formal acquittal rather than accept an unresolved termination.

The decision was deeply disappointing to many survivors and relatives. Some nevertheless acknowledged that the trial had already established important facts about planning failures, police actions and weaknesses in the wider event system.

Proceedings to continue with three defendants

On the 100th main hearing day the prosecution accepted the court's proposal to discontinue proceedings.

For seven defendants the proposed discontinuance was without conditions. For three Lopavent personnel the prosecution considered a financial payment of approximately €10,000 appropriate because their possible responsibility was assessed differently.

Those three defendants did not accept the proposal. At least one expressly stated that he would not give up his right to seek an acquittal.

This meant that the entire criminal trial would not end. Instead, the case would continue in substantially reduced form.

The approaching limitation period remained an important practical problem. Hundreds of potential witnesses were mentioned in the expert material and it was increasingly apparent that the complete original evidential programme could not be finished.

The Love Parade trial will probably continue

One Lopavent defendant formally rejected the possibility of ending his case, either unconditionally or through a financial payment.

His lawyer stated that the defendant wanted the proceedings to continue until one of the legally definitive outcomes was reached: acquittal, conviction or expiry through limitation.

This was significant because discontinuance required the consent of the individual defendant as well as the prosecution and court. Even if every other defendant accepted termination, the trial could continue against a single person.

The decision therefore made it increasingly unlikely that the entire case would disappear in early February.

Why ending the proceedings did not necessarily mean the justice system had failed

The court's proposal generated extensive legal commentary. Critics argued that a case involving 21 fatalities and hundreds of injuries should not end without a judgment.

Other legal commentators emphasised that the seriousness of the consequences could not replace the requirement to prove the individual criminal responsibility of each defendant.

Negligent homicide under German law does not require an intention to cause death. Nevertheless, the prosecution still had to prove an individual breach of duty, causation and the degree of personal responsibility beyond the wider organisational failure.

The Love Parade therefore represented an extreme problem for criminal law: a disaster could result from many interacting errors while the guilt attributable to any one individual remained comparatively limited.

Many responsible people, no individual guilty party?

Presiding judge Mario Plein publicly explained the court's proposal following the non-public legal discussion.

Seven defendants — six city employees and one Lopavent employee — were considered candidates for unconditional discontinuance because any individual guilt was provisionally assessed as low.

For three Lopavent defendants, the court considered their possible responsibility greater because they had held operational functions during the event and might theoretically have been able to influence the situation on the day.

The court described the disaster as a multicausal event. Planning deficiencies, communication failures, police actions, operational weaknesses and shortcomings in the physical site interacted.

The Gerlach expert work had identified an event area that was too constrained, insufficient and poorly positioned personnel at the entrance controls, inadequate communication and the absence of effective loudspeaker communication within the danger area.

Particularly significant was the conclusion that intervention might still have prevented the disaster until approximately 16:31. The first fatalities were reported later.

The closed legal discussion

Judges, prosecutors, defence lawyers and representatives of the co-plaintiffs met for the long-awaited non-public legal discussion.

The meeting examined the evidential position after almost one hundred hearing days and whether the remaining programme could be completed before the absolute limitation period.

The possibility of discontinuing the entire case had been widely anticipated, although the legal mechanism and treatment of the individual defendants remained uncertain.

The discussion did not itself end the proceedings. Consent from the prosecution and the relevant defendants would still be required before the court could discontinue individual cases.

And now?

The first archived hearing of 2019 continued the evidence of the Love Parade Float Manager.

He was asked to describe how music trucks had moved during previous Love Parades in Berlin, Essen and Dortmund and how the Duisburg system differed.

Detailed questioning about people, responsibilities and earlier events produced repeated statements that he could no longer remember.

More significant than the evidence itself was the approaching legal discussion scheduled for 16 January.

By this point numerous possibilities were being discussed: continuation of the full trial, partial discontinuance or termination of the proceedings. Further witnesses had already been scheduled through April, but the future of the case was uncertain.