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Deadly German Stampede Gets Its Villain

DUISBURG, GERMANY — On Saturday, this city plans to hold a memorial service for the 21 people who died after being trampled in a tunnel trying to attend the Love Parade music festival here.
The Germany chancellor, Angela Merkel, was to interrupt her vacation to attend the service. But the mayor of Duisburg, Adolf Sauerland, won’t be present.

Mr. Sauerland, who has been in charge of this aging industrial city of 490,000 people since 2004, told a WAZ Media reporter in an interview on Thursday that he would stay away “out of respect for the families of the victims.”

It was one of his few public statements since the tragedy, at which at least 500 people were also seriously injured, occurred on July 24.

Mr. Sauerland, who sought out the annual music event for his city, was hugely popular here until the tragedy. A member of the moderate-conservative Christian Democrat Party, which runs the national government in coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats, his election ended decades of rule by the Social Democrats. He mixed easily with locals, and was known for using the informal “Du” (you) instead of the formal “Sie.”

Now he is a pariah, holed up in his office and protected day and night by the police. Mr. Sauerland no longer sleeps at home; he has received several death threats and members of his family members, fearing for their safety, have left town.

“If Sauerland attended” the memorial service, Bjorn Munich, a 35-year-old Duisburg resident, said, “he would be lynched.”

These days it is eerily quiet in the Rathaus, the city’s town hall. Politicians around the country, newspaper and television commentators and many citizens of Duisburg are calling for Mr. Sauerland to resign and accept some responsibility.

Mr. Saulerland’s spokeswoman, Anja Hungeburth, said the mayor felt it was best to stay away from the service because he “did not want to cause any kind of provocation.”

It is still not clear exactly what caused the deadly stampede at the music festival, which grew from a 1989 peace demonstration into a huge outdoor celebration of club cultures that drew about 1.5 million people at its peak in 1999.

The location was transferred from Berlin to the Ruhr region in the mid-2000s. It was supposed to be held last year in Bochum, but the local authorities said no, arguing that they did not have the facilities to cope with such a large crowd.

Mr. Sauerland, sensing an opportunity, decided to go after the event for Duisburg as part of his effort to turn around this declining industrial city by attracting culture, services and high-tech industry.

“It was Sauerland’s big thing,” said Johannes Pflug, a Social Democrat who represents Duisburg in the federal Parliament, or Bundestag. “He wanted to show that Dusiburg could do it, that he could change the image of Duisburg. But now, after the tragedy, he is in a very difficult situation.”

The tragedy took place in the late afternoon as participants crowded into the underpass on the way to the entrance even after the main gate was closed in an attempt to control the flow of revelers. The prosecutor of Duisburg has called for an official investigation.

The interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Ralf Jäger, this week sought to spread the blame to the organizers and the city council for failing to take adequate security and safety measures.

The festival grounds, held on a former railroad depot, had a capacity for about 250,000, but an estimated 1.4. million people tried to attend the festival.

Mr. Sauerland, in his interview on Thursday, denied any responsibility for the Love Parade tragedy. “There could only be personal responsibility if there had been unjustified interference in the planning process,” he said. “That was not the case.”

Mr. Sauerland’s retreat into seclusion puzzles Mr. Pflug, the parliamentary representative. “He is shocked, stubborn, or simply does not know how to deal with the tragedy,” Mr. Pflug said. “He was fixated on the Love Parade. Now he is such an isolated figure, the way he sits in the Rathaus.”
The Rathaus is no more than a brisk 20-minute walk from the tunnel where the tragedy took place. The path to the tunnel starts from the back entrance to the main railway station, snaking along a quiet, non-descript residential area before reaching some retail stores.

Over the past days, this route has become a pilgrimage. Both ends of the tunnel are open. They have been transformed by beds of flowers, candles, teddy bears and other personal mementoes commemorating the dead. Some of the visitors cry softly. Others take photos. Teenagers hold hands.

Many of those visiting the site attended the festival. Deniz Tufan Bozkuet, 19, was one of those.

“Everything seemed O.K. to me,” said Mr. Bozkuet, who arrived before noon at the festival, well before the stampede took place. “There was no information put over on the loudspeakers. Nothing. I was so shocked when I eventually left to go home. The place was swarming with ambulances and police. My parents were worried. They could not reach me. The telephone lines were overloaded.”

Laure Böhmer, 18, came much closer to being caught up in the tragedy. In the late afternoon, she was on her way from the railway station to the tunnel entrance when a police officer urged her to turn back.

“In fact, he pleaded with me,” Ms. Böhmer said. “He said there were just too many people inside.”

Laure’s mother, Karin, had been listening to the radio when reports came in of an accident at the Love Parade. “I managed the third time to get through by texting to Laure,” she said. “I asked her to come home and forget about the Love Parade. Thank God she did not get into the grounds. We owe it to the policeman.”

For Joana Horch, a 26-year-old language student, it was her fourth Love Parade. She did not feel comfortable from the very beginning.

“This time, we could feel something was amiss,” she said. “It’s hard to explain. It was almost scary. There was police and private security personnel present from the main railway station to the tunnel. We were channeled into one direction towards the tunnel.”

But in the tunnel, she recalled, there was no security. “We were already a mass of people,” she said. “Once we got out of the tunnel, we had to reach the grounds by climbing a concrete ramp which had high walls on both sides. We could see behind us a big concentration of people building up inside the tunnel.”

Inside the festival, she and her friends enjoyed the music for several hours. “We were told nothing about what was happening outside,” she said. Not knowing of the deaths, they headed back to the train station through the main tunnel, where — inexplicably — the police were still allowing people to go. “It was shocking,” she said. “You cannot imagine it. We could see corpses. It was chaotic. People were walking over bodies.”

It will be her last Love Parade — and everybody else’s. The organizers said this week they would never hold the event again.
By JUDY DEMPSEY
The New York Times

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31germany1_span-articleLarge.jpg Fredrik Von Erichsen/European Pressphoto Agency A mourner at the scene of the Love Parade accident in Duisburg, Germany, on Thursday.

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