Tempelhofer Feld (THF) Tour

Berlin Airlift C-54 veteran on the apron at THF.

In December we got a couple interested friends together to go do the tour of the old Tempelhof Airport of Berlin Airlift fame. It was a civilian airport until 2008 then turned into the city's largest open space park land. Here you can have the unique experience of biking on former runways. I incorporate it often on trips back and forth to work as it is an easy way to rack up some mileage since the area is so vast. We go here in the summer to fly our kites, rent pedal go-carts or have family bike-picnics.

Dominating the northwest end of the park is the massive Terminal building, which is fenced off from the rest of the site. It is being used now to house refugees and a few businesses moved in as tenants. But for as many times as we've been to Tempelhof we have never gone "inside." This came to an end one windy day in December when we scooted in the Grün Berlin office on Tempelhofer Damm and presented ourselves to the tour guide. We would spend the next two hours in the complex.

The Terminal is worthy of note. It is 1.2km long, one of the largest buildings in Europe. Built during the late thirties under the Nazis, it was designed to be the showcase airport for the planned architectural overhaul of the entire city of Berlin into its new incarnation as the "World's Capital City."

Thankfully that never happened. However they did end up leaving a gigantic architectural record behind. Like many places in Berlin, this one is ripe with history, stories and ghosts.

In the picture below, the Terminal building occupies the upper left part of the former airfield.

Here is what I learned on the tour in loose chronological order for the airport:

Tempelhof Field was a cavalry demonstration area in the 1800's before being used as an airfield in the early 1900s. Orrville Wright came in 1909 to give fund raising flights and show off the technology. The first flight passenger was carried aloft here.

Germans went crazy for aviation. Hamburg airport opened in 1911 and Bremen followed in 1913, two of the world's oldest airports that are still utilized for civilian traffic. Wilbur Wright's College Park, Maryland airport opened just before that in 1909.

The initial "terminal" building was built in the 1920s at Tempelhof when passenger traffic started to happen.

When the Nazi's took power, Hitler wanted to build a massive airport to align with his other plans of filling up Berlin with architectural monstrosities to befit a city that he wanted to become the "Welthauptstadt" (World's Capital City). Tempelhof was chosen as the site.

Designed in 1930's, construction stopped in '41 when resources were needed elsewhere due to the war. Throughout the war it was a grass field, although it was never used as an airfield during the war.

Overhead view of the 1.2 km-long terminal building and field beyond. Dated 2008, Berliner Morgenpost.

The south side of the terminal building (right hand side of the above picture) was a Stuka dive-bomber factory during the war, using forced laborers from the camp nearby. It was established here after early British bombing raids damaged the airplane manufacturing plants in North Germany nearer to England, so they had to move the production lines away from the coast. Tempelhof was a huge empty unfinished space that served well for this purpose.

The complex was not targeted during the war by American and British bombers as they knew that when Germany was defeated the Allies would be occupying the city. Doing that required air facilities, so they left Tempelhof alone.

There was however fighting around it during the final battle with the Russians. This resulted in light damage to the structure but nothing like what the rest of the city endured. Nazi sappers rigged explosives in May 1945 in an attempt to destroy it but the explosion only damaged a small part of the vast complex.


Berlin Airlift "LuftBrücke"

Berlin was an outpost in the middle of Soviet-controlled East Germany.

The Airlift was begun originally to resupply US/UK/FR army garrisons in Berlin after the Russians cut off rail and road access to the city in response to West Berlin's introduction of its own currency. The Airlift later assumed its more-familiar humanitarian storyline of helping the city survive the blockade. Berlin was vitally important on all accounts: Allied troops, Berlin civilians, West Berlin as a political symbol and geographic reality located deep behind the Iron Curtain. There were approximately 2M civilians in West Berlin at this time.

Berlin needed 1000 flights a day to survive, at its height they were able to do 1400 a day. There were three air corridors, two for incoming and one for outgoing back to West Germany. The Soviets didn't shoot down any Airlift airplanes, but accidents and crashes during the effort claimed some 70 lives. The names of these people are inscribed at the Luftbrücke Memorial just outside the main terminal entrance.

Luftbrücke Memorial, Tempelhofer Feld. The three prongs symbolize the three airports in Berlin.

A similar memorial exists in Frankfurt Am Main, one of the main departure points from West Germany into Berlin.

There were three main airports in the airlift: Tempelhof (US sector), Gatow (British Sector) and Tegel (French Sector). Tegel itself was built specifically for the Airlift in three months in 1948.

Another look without the city borders. Gatow is no longer in service as an airport either and half of its runway got bulldozed for a housing development. However there is a German military museum out there that is the focus of a future post.

At Tempelhof, the US built the concrete runways in 1948 for the airlift. The original airport plan had no runways since all planes just took off from grass. This gave early pilots the advantage of turning into the wind to take off whichever way the way was blowing, not something you can do with an expensive and stationary concrete runway. Improvements in aviation technology eventually overcame these limitations.

By the Spring of 1949 the Allies had days when they brought in more supplies on airplanes than they had beforehand using trains, ships and trucks. This fact and the overall efficiency of the operation was pressed home repeatedly in media reports and propaganda campaigns to make the Russians look bad. The Soviets lifted the rail and road restrictions on May 1, 1949, admitting defeat in the first major political battle of the Cold War.

This Eagle sculpture in front of main terminal entrance used to sit on top and had a huge swastika in its claws. Dismantled. Only head is left, installed outside.

At the northeast corner of field there are two interpretive signs for two former airplanes, a C-54 and a C-47 that used to be displayed there. The C-54 is the one they now keep under the THF overhang. The C-47 is the one they hung up outside the Deutsche Technik Museum.

The kids play on a dirt mound covering part of the early-stage artificial runway. 

Civilian traffic landed at Tempelhof from 1950's thru '75, when it was curtailed and most sent to Tegel. US Military took over most of the activity. Opened again to air service 1990 - 2008. The site was converted to a park after public referendum in 2010.

Main terminal with overhang construction. This enabled passenger loading without exposing people to the elements in the days before jetways.

Planes could easily pull underneath the overhang.

From the observation deck on top of the main terminal. Architects wanted to create a structure that was a cross between a stadium and a functional airport terminal to facilitate mass rallies around the spectacle of aviation and other political reasons. The curving structure was designed as a grandstand and could hold up to 100,000 people on the roof. They never got around to building the actual seats.

Here is a view to the East. The white containers are the soon-to-be opened complex for refugee housing. The scrub trees to the right of the taxiway are made of bomb rubble from the war. The US Air Force officers shooting range and paratroop tower/static line and practice course is also here. This is approximately where the original airport building was in the 1920's.

The main arrival/departure hall, in operation until 2008. This vast room is rented out for events. The check-in counters, bag drops and airline name-shields are still there.

The old airport cafes are maintained as they were.

The Airlift veteran C-54 Globemaster that lives on as a full time resident and movie/event prop.

Baggage claim in the main hall. Baggage transport logistics have not changed appreciably since they were pioneered here in the 30's.

Former check-in desks.

The Americans left their mark by building a basketball court for the USAF contingent stationed here.

Centercourt emblem.

Deep underneath THF is a bomb shelter complex designed to protect the population of nearby neighborhoods. Many rooms still contain original paintings of German fairy tale stories to keep the children's mind off of the bombardment happening upstairs. Why would they think to include bomb shelters in the first place? By the late '30s the plans were already laid for the war and somebody realized it was a necessary hedge.

The complex is quite vast and very little of it is currently being used for anything.

One of the interesting trivia bits to the building is a gigantic "hidden" room located just above the entry way to the main arrival/departures hall. The terminal structure was not yet finished at war's end, so there was the question of whether to complete the construction using the existing plans. No architect would touch that of course so it was just easier to install a fake ceiling and leave this potentially massive entryway forgotten. 

You can now walk into this room, which still features damages from the battle since nothing in it was ever fixed. It is testament to the size of the building that you could just close off a hall this big and not even notice it.

Tour guide orients the group in the "hidden room." We stand on an artificial floor over the existing entrance foyer.

Smoke-blackened ceilings and scarred stone pillars frame the huge original entryway. It feels like walking into some recently-discovered Egyptian Temple.

Parting shot of the C-54, since I love airplanes.

What does it feel like to bike down old runways on sunny spring days? Elation.

The future of Tempelhofer Feld, like many historical artifacts in Berlin, is uncertain. With land prices soaring as more people and businesses move to Berlin, a chunk of real estate right in the middle of it all is incredibly tempting for the city to sell off to developers. Berlin isn't in the best financial state either, which is what makes it so amazing that a citizens movement was able to save it in 2008 after the official closure.

Everywhere you look around the city you see construction cranes and new apartments going up. While there is a historical protection law ("Denkmalschutz") for structures, it seems to be unevenly applied across many of these building sites around the city. Even since we have been here we've seen unused stretches of land with atmospheric old railway buildings fall under the bulldozer and the feeling is that the pace of this will not taper off anytime soon.

Tempelhof Terminal will never have to face this, but the open land of the runways and surroundings is at risk. The current deal is that protection of 'Tempelhofer Freiheit" extends until 2020 then there will be another battle over the real estate. I feel it is one of the things that makes Berlin unique and I love having the runways for my cycling workouts. I hope this continues.