page_title: Olof Palme Peace March
section_title: Events
hierarchical_section_title: Olof Palme Peace March / Events
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Christine Lieberknecht als Rednerin beim Olof-Palme-Friedensmarsch Buchenwald-Kapellendorf 1987
context_page_description: The Olof Palme Peace March was a transnational peace march/demonstration that took place in the German Democratic Republic during September 1987.
  The peace march involved people from three countries, West Germany, East Germany and Czechoslovakia. It began at Stralsund on the Baltic Sea coast, and crossed the territory of East Germany, taking a far from direct route, to end, officially, at Dresden. It was considered remarkable because members of East German political opposition groups were permitted to participate in the march legally.
  The march was named to honour the former prime minister of Sweden, Olof Palme, who had been shot dead by an unidentified assailant on a Stockholm street the previous year, on 28 February 1986. Palme had opposed the nuclear arms race and advocated a nuclear weapons-free corridor in central Europe.
context_section_description: The Peace March started on 1 September 1987 at the (recently renamed) Olof-Palme Platz in Stralsund, and traveled (predominantly) south, passing through places such as Burow, Potsdam, Wittenberg und Meißen before reaching Dresden.
  At the same time all sorts of supportive events took place independently in towns and villages away from the route of the march, most of which were organised by the Church.   A major demonstration took place on 5 September in Prenzlauer Berg on the south side of Berlin, with around 1,000 participants proceeding from the Zion Church in Berlin's Rosenthaler suburb to the Gethsemane Church in Pankow.
  The highpoint came at the suggestion of an organisation called "Action Reconciliation Service for Peace" ("Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste") and involved several days of "pilgrimage" from the former concentration camp at Ravensbrück to that at Sachsenhausen.   The route was intended to recall Death marches of concentration camp victims in 1945.   Peace March participants were greeted in some of the places through which they passed by mayors and church ministers, with a local ceremony, typically involving prayers followed by the joint planting of a "Peace Tree" ("Friedensbaum").  Along their pilgrim route these protesters carried with them banners carrying peace messages about turning swords into poughshares, and others urging the wider availability of "social/peace service ("Sozialen Friedensdienst")" as an alternative to the compulsory military service that young Germans were obliged to undertake.   Other protest banners called for an end to military indoctrination in the country's kindergartens and schools, an end to East German military-style fortification against would-be emigrants along the frontier between the two Germanys or an end to nuclear power.
  The Olof-Palme Peace March was originally scheduled to proceed from Stralsund to Dresden and to take place between 1 and 18 September.   Of the other related peace-protest events that took place across the country during those days, one of the most widely reported took place on 19 September, when approximately 500 people marched from the Buchenwald National Commemoration and Admonition Centre (ie the former concentration camp at Buchenwald) to the Evangelical "Thomas Müntzer" Community Centre at Kapellendorf.   Marchers included a local Lutheran pastor's daughter, Christine Lieberknecht who more recently, in 2009, became the regional prime minister in Thuringia.   The pastors from the Church of the Good Shepherd in Weimar and from nearby Denstedt welcomed the peace pilgrims and the banners which they carried, which here carried mainly messages with a particularly local resonance, calling for a corridor through central Europe free of chemical and nuclear weapons;  something that Olof Palme and Erich Honecker had reportedly proposed.   This march was organised by the Thuringia branch of the Christian Peace Conference (CFK).
caption: The Kappelendorf marchers included Christine Lieberknecht who 22 years later became the regional prime minister. in Thuringia
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