Olof Palme Peace March

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.

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.

[2] The Peace March was announced early in 1987 in Neues Deutschland, the national mass-circulation newspaper of East Germany's ruling SED (party).

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.

[2] 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.

[1] Honecker returned home on 11/12 September and the police tactics became more aggressive regarding posters critical of government, which were confiscated in raids and/or banned in population centres such as Leipzig, Torgau and Dresden.