Olof Palme Peace March
organization
The Olof Palme Peace March was a transnational peace march/demonstration that took place in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) 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.
Background
The Olof Palme Peace March was initiated by the German Peace Society in the German Federal Republic (West Germany), the Peace Council in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and the Peace Committee in Czechoslovakia. Along with national representatives from the three national peace movements, following pressure from the West German side, the East German confederation of Evangelical churches were also permitted to take part in the Peace March. The Peace March was announced early in 1987 in Neues Deutschland, the national mass-circulation newspaper of East Germany's ruling SED (party). Its timing coincided with a scheduled visit by East German leader Erich Honecker to meet with his West German counterparts in Bonn between 7 and 11 September 1987.
The public source identifies “Olof Palme Peace March” as organization. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Olof, Palme and Peace.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q2021096. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1987 and 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “Olof Palme Peace March” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.