Taking Off at Tempelhof
My second day in Berlin, I met up with a fellow Wellesley alum for a walk. While I had intended for this to be a spontaneous wander, after a bit I asked if we could go to Tempelhofer Feld because I was bursting with curiosity about the place.
Tempelhof is a giant park that, until about 15 year ago, was an airport. It seems the only thing that’s changed since then is the lack of planes. We rounded a corner and then BAM, there it was, the old runways and the whole airfield stretching before us. It was a bit surreal to see people jogging and biking along this huge runway - the scale of it all was so off. Apparently in better weather, people kite board down the runway. A different kind of liftoff.
The problem with a big open field is that there’s nothing to cut the wind, and I was quickly getting cold. I decided to head back another day when the weather was a bit better.
Instead of heeding my own advice, I went back to Tempelhof yesterday in blizzard conditions. Well it was a blizzard for a Californian anyway — I guess the two British guys jogging in shorts would’ve disagreed with me. I took a different route to the park, walking down a pleasant street lined with apartment buildings on one side, then down a small flight of steps and onto the runway. No wonder the rents were cheap in this neighborhood — the planes would literally fly past your apartment window (check out this wild picture). Some of the buildings in the area still have little red blinking lights on their roofs — and these aren’t skyscrapers, they’re like five story buildings.
I knew there was a museum in the old terminal, so I headed towards it. The snow had started in earnest by then - big fat flakes that stuck to my scarf and hung around for a bit on the tarmac before melting. I trudged around the fence for a while, increasingly desperate to find an entrance to the terminal before I realized that the part of the airport that face the field is for the planes, not for the passengers. And since I’m not a plane, I would probably have to go around to the other side of the airport in order to get in. It’s an odd feeling to get a little claustrophobic and panicked on a 300 hectare field. I was starting to think I’d never get out.
Luckily I found an exit and after 4-5 wrong attempts and a lot of confusion, found the museum and signed up for a tour.
Tempelhof is most famous for the Berlin Airlift in 1948-49. West Berlin, controlled by the US, UK and France, was surrounded on all sides by East Germany, controlled by the USSR. The Soviets decided to cut off West Berlin, so the only way to supply the city with fuel, food, and medicine was by air.
During the airlift, a plane was landing every 3 minutes at Tempelhof. A truck with 10 Germans would pull up to the plane as soon as it landed, and the men had 30 minutes to unload 9 tons of cargo - everything from coal to canned goods. If they didn’t finish unloading everything, too bad. The flying schedule was tight - they couldn’t afford any traffic jams - so the plane would leave.
The consequences of the airlift were probably the exact opposite of what the Soviets intended to accomplish with the blockade. West Berliners no longer saw the Americans as an occupying force - instead, they were the saviors and protectors of their city. The Soviets didn’t think West Berlin could be supplied by air, but after 11 months of the allies doing just that, the USSR finally ended the blockade.
Our tour guide unlocked a series of doors and we arrived in the departures/arrivals part of the terminal. It had to be rebuilt after the war, though not because the Allies bombed it. In the waning days of WWII, Hitler ordered the destruction of German infrastructure so that it wouldn’t fall into the hands of the enemy. So they blew up part of Tempelhof.
We exited the building and headed down to where people boarded their planes. The terminal is built in a big curve, with the airplane hangers on each end. Apparently it’s unheard of to have hangers be part of an airport terminal — it’s a huge fire risk. Our guide told us the airport was built this way because Hitler wanted to have space for 65,000 people to sit on the roof and watch Nazi airshows, so everything got put in one building. Our tour guide got increasingly agitated about this — “it shows you how megalomaniacal these people were. They didn’t care about safety or the well-being of the people at all. They just cared about showing off.” Ironically, the roof was never actually used as a stadium for air shows.
We trekked over to the hangers to see some planes and then reentered the airport at a lower level, where they did the baggage sorting.
We continued through the warren of rooms in the basements of the airport, stopping into the air raid shelters with creepy paintings on the walls. Apparently they were of a popular children’s book series and were supposed to make people feel better when they were getting bombed?!?!
Then we began the long climb to the top of the building, where the US service members would hang out. Half of Tempelhof was a commercial airport and the other half was a US military base. Americans who were stationed at Tempelhof also lived there, so there were amenities like bowling alleys and baseball diamonds built on the airfield. I guess this place has always been a park.
It was fascinating to scurry around the innards of an old airport, especially one with such a dramatic history. Berlin doesn’t quite know what to do with the place. There have been attempts to build housing on the field, but Berliners have emphatically rejected this plan - they want to keep the open space as a park.
The terminal building is huge, and around a third of it is just empty. Another third is in use by a variety of entities - there’s a kindergarten, restaurants, a giant police station, a circus school. Refugees were housed there for a few years. It’s rented out for parties - the luggage belt in the arrivals hall still works and is a great place for a sushi display. 15 years after the last flight left, the city and its residents are still trying to figure out what to do with this vast space. We’ll see what takes off.
Lol. Air Bourbon is hilarious. Cool place
Fascinating! Glad you managed to find the entrance to the old terminal 🤣