Berlin Tempelhof Airport () was one of the first airports in Berlin, Germany. Situated in the south-central Berlin borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg, the airport ceased operating in 2008 amid controversy. This left Tegel and Schönefeld as the two main airports serving the city for another twelve years until both were replaced by Berlin Brandenburg Airport in 2020.
Tempelhof was designated as an airport by the Reich Ministry of Transport on 8 October 1923. The old terminal was originally constructed in 1927. In anticipation of increasing air traffic, the Nazi government began an enormous reconstruction in the mid-1930s. While it was occasionally cited as the world's oldest operating commercial airport, the title was disputed by several other airports, and is no longer an issue since its closure.
Tempelhof was one of Europe's three iconic pre-World War II airports, the others being London's now defunct Croydon Airport and the old Paris–Le Bourget Airport. It acquired a further iconic status as the centre of the Berlin Airlift of 1948–49. One of the airport's most distinctive features is its huge, canopy-style roof extending over the apron, able to accommodate most contemporary airliners in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, protecting passengers from the elements. Tempelhof Airport's main building was once among the twenty largest buildings on earth, but it also formerly contained the world's smallest duty-free shop.Airports International. June 1975.
Tempelhof Airport closed all operations on 30 October 2008, despite the efforts of some protesters to prevent the closure. A non-binding referendum was held on 27 April 2008 against the impending closure but failed due to low voter turnout. The former airfield has subsequently been used as a recreational space known as Tempelhofer Feld. In September 2015, it was announced that Tempelhof would also become an emergency refugee camp.
Function Tempelhof was often called the "City Airport". In its later years, it mostly had commuter flights to other parts of Germany and neighbouring countries; but it had in the past received long-haul, wide-bodied airliners, such as the Boeing 747, the Lockheed L-1011 Tristar and the Lockheed C-5A Galaxy. The first of these three first appeared at Tempelhof on 18 September 1976, when Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) flew in Boeing 747SP Clipper Great Republic to participate in the static exhibition of contemporary military, non-combat and civil aircraft at the annual open house of the United States Air Force (USAF) at the airport.
The Galaxy had its first appearance at Tempelhof on 17 September 1971, when an aircraft of the USAF's 436th Military Airlift Wing flew in from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, United States, to participate in that year's open-house exhibition. These events respectively marked the debut at Tempelhof of the largest aircraft in commercial airline service at the time and the then-largest aircraft overall.
Tempelhof, compared to Brandenburg Airport and Tegel Airport, wasn't a particularly large airport. The layout of the airport was relatively simple - two parallel runways oriented east–west (09/27 L/R), with a single oval taxiway around the airport, with the main terminal on the north-western segment of the airport. The runways are not comparatively long, either - versus Brandenburg's 3600m and 4000m runways which can easily handle intercontinental airliners like the Boeing 747, Tempelhof has two runways at 2094m (09R/27L) and 1840m (09L/27R), which can, at most, handle Boeing 757 and Airbus A320-size aircraft.
Other possible uses for Tempelhof have been discussed, and many people are trying to keep the airport buildings preserved.
In September 2015, in the midst of the 2015 European migrant crisis, it was announced by the Berlin state government that Tempelhof would become an 'emergency refugee shelter', holding at least 1,200 people in two former hangars.
As the airport has been listed as a historic monument since 1995, preservation work has been routinely carried out, even after its closure; this includes the development of a preservation plan between 2012 and 2015, which outlined methods for maintaining the site whilst allowing for future development in the area.
History
The site of the airport was originally Knights Templar land in medieval Berlin, and from this beginning came the name Tempelhof. Later, the site was used as a parade field by the Prussian army from 1720 to the start of World War I. In 1909, French aviator Armand Zipfel made the first flight demonstration in Tempelhof, followed by Orville Wright later that same year. Tempelhof was first officially designated as an airport on 8 October 1923. Deutsche Luft Hansa was founded in Tempelhof on 6 January 1926. The airport's first permanent terminal building was completed in 1929.Christine Heeb, "A multifaceted monument - the complex heritage of Tempelhof Central Airport", Master of Arts thesis in World Heritage Studies, Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus, 2007 (pdf), p.18.
As part of Albert Speer's plan for the reconstruction of Berlin during the Nazi era, Prof. Ernst Sagebiel was ordered to replace the old terminal with a new terminal building in 1934. The airport halls and the adjoining buildings, intended to become the gateway to Europe and a symbol of Hitler's "world capital" Germania, are still known as one of the largest built entities worldwide, and have been described by British architect Sir Norman Foster as "the mother of all airports". With its façades of shell limestone, the terminal building, built between 1936 and 1941, forms a quadrant. Arriving passengers walked through customs controls to the reception hall. Tempelhof was served by the U6 U-Bahn line along Mehringdamm and up Friedrichstraße (Platz der Luftbrücke station).
Zentralflughafen Tempelhof-Berlin had the advantage of a central location just minutes from the Berlin city centre and quickly became one of the world's busiest airports. Tempelhof saw its greatest pre-war days during 1938–1939, when up to 52 foreign and 40 domestic flights arrived and departed daily from the old terminal while the new one was still under construction.
The new air terminal was designed as headquarters for Deutsche Luft Hansa (moved in 1938), the German national airline at that time. As a forerunner of today's modern airports, the building was designed with many unique features, including giant arc-shaped aircraft hangars. Although under construction for more than ten years, it was never finished because of World War II. For passengers and freight, the 1927-built terminal stayed in use until 24 April 1945.
The building complex was designed to resemble an eagle in flight with semicircular hangars forming the bird's spread wings. A hangar roof was to have been laid in tiers to form a stadium for spectators at air and ground demonstrations. Norman Foster called Tempelhof "one of the really great buildings of the modern age".
World War II
Fearing Allied bombing of airports, all German civil aviation was halted on 2 September 1939, but gradually restarted from 1 November.Laurenz Demps and Carl-Ludwig Paeschke, Flughafen Tempelhof: Die Geschichte einer Legende, Berlin: Ullstein, 1998, p. 68. . However, the 1927-built terminal remained closed to all civil aviation, and all civilian aircraft movements to and from Berlin were transferred to an airfield in Rangsdorf until 7 March 1940, when the 1927 terminal was reopened and civil aviation continued until 24 April 1945.
From January 1940 until early 1944, Weser Flugzeugbau assembled Junkers Ju 87 "Stuka" dive bombers; thereafter, it assembled Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter planes in the still unfurnished main hall and hangars 3 to 7 of the new terminal, which were supplied by a railway and trucks via a connecting tunnel.Laurenz Demps and Carl-Ludwig Paeschke, Flughafen Tempelhof: Die Geschichte einer Legende, Berlin: Ullstein, 1998, pp. 69seqq. . Hangars 1 and 2 were not used to assemble aircraft as these were already used by Luft Hansa for its own planes. Aircraft parts were brought in from all over the city while complete aircraft engines were trucked to Tempelhof. Once the airframes were complete and the engines had been installed, the finished aircraft were flown out. The Luftwaffe did not use Tempelhof as a military airfield during World War II, except for occasional emergency landings by fighter aircraft.
On 21 April 1945, Deutsche Luft Hansa operated its last scheduled flights, and over the coming days laid on additional non-scheduled flights from Johannisthal Air Field which stopped over at Tempelhof to take on freight en route to Travemünde and Munich, where Luft Hansa had relocated its headquarters.Laurenz Demps and Carl-Ludwig Paeschke, Flughafen Tempelhof: Die Geschichte einer Legende, Berlin: Ullstein, 1998, pp. 78seq. . Two days later, on 23 April, the airline's last-ever flight to depart Tempelhof left for Madrid, but was later shot down over Southern Germany.Laurenz Demps and Carl-Ludwig Paeschke, Flughafen Tempelhof: Die Geschichte einer Legende, Berlin: Ullstein, 1998, p. 79. .
Tempelhof's German commander, Oberst Rudolf Böttger, refused to carry out orders to blow up the base, choosing instead to kill himself. Soviet forces took Tempelhof in the Battle of Berlin on 28 and 29 April 1945 in the closing days of the war in Europe. Soviet forces combed through the old and the new terminal searching for treasures, hidden places and documents, opening all rooms.
During their search, they blew up the fortified entrance to a three-level bomb shelter for celluloid films of the Hansa Luftbild GmbH, a Luft Hansa subsidiary specialising in aerial photography. The explosion immediately ignited the celluloid, turning the film shelter under the northern office wing of the new terminal into a furnace and making it impossible to enter for several weeks. The raging inferno led the Soviet commander to order the lower levels to be flooded with water. With no functioning water supply in war-torn Berlin, this was only possible because the new terminal, which had suffered only slight war damage, had its own electricity and groundwater utility with underground reservoirs under the northerly forecourt of the new terminal close to the film shelter.
On 8 May 1945, Western Allied and German signatories of the German Surrender in Berlin and their entourage landed at Tempelhof airport.Laurenz Demps and Carl-Ludwig Paeschke, Flughafen Tempelhof: Die Geschichte einer Legende, Berlin: Ullstein, 1998, p. 80. . At the beginning of May, Weser Flugzeugbau opened a workshop in hangar 7 to repair streetcars. In the following weeks, Berliners raided all unguarded parts of the opened buildings searching for food or anything else useful in bartering in the black market. In accordance with the Yalta agreements, Zentralflughafen Berlin-Tempelhof was turned over to the United States Army 2nd Armored Division on 2 July 1945 by the Soviet Union as part of the American occupation sector of Berlin. This agreement was later formalised by the August 1945 Potsdam Agreement, which formally divided Berlin into four occupation sectors.
The 852nd Engineer Aviation Battalion arrived at Tempelhof (Code Number R-95) on 10 July 1945 and conducted the original repairs in the new terminal. After the Allied Control Council had agreed upon West Berlin Air Corridors under control of the Berlin Air Safety Centre, these opened in February 1946, enabling civil aviation at Tempelhof to restart.Laurenz Demps and Carl-Ludwig Paeschke, Flughafen Tempelhof: Die Geschichte einer Legende, Berlin: Ullstein, 1998, p. 83. .
Berlin Airlift