Tempelhof Airport in Berlin

You know, filling out all the security clearance paperwork for my new job (which hopefully starts soon!) has reminded me that I haven't written a travel post in a while. In the packet, they ask where you have lived and traveled the past 10 years, and my response is "where do I begin?"

But unlike past posts, where I try to cram in as many pictures and as much information as possible, from now on I am just going to focus on one historic site that I have visited at a time. I think that will be better.

So today's post is about Berlin's historic Tempelhof Airport (Zentralflughafen Tempelhof-Berlin for those of you who speak German), which was built by the Nazi's in 1936 and quickly became a symbol of Nazi power, and was the center of the Berlin Airlift from 1948-1949.

Peter and I spent a weekend in Berlin in 2004 and even though it is probably the most depressing city I have ever visited, it is among my most favorite. I have long been a huge WWII buff, reading everything I could get my hands on about it and watching documentaries. And of course watching Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. So to actually get the opportunity to visit Berlin was just amazing.

But anywho, I got the idea to post about the Tempelhof Airport from a recent Washington Post article. Apparently it is scheduled to close to air traffic in October of this year, even though many Berliners tried to keep it open. Thankfully, however, it is protected by preservation laws and cannot be torn down. And unlike in the US, where it would have been leveled to make way for a mall or luxury condominiums, many people are suggesting that the airport terminal (the third-largest building in Europe) be used for a museum or art gallery.

So, I am very thankful I got to see it before it is closed. And here is a quick history lesson:

The site of the airport was originally inhabited by the Knights Templar back in the early 1200's (and coincidentally I am reading about these Knights in a book for my book club), which gives it the name Tempelhof. It was also the site of a 19-minute flight by the Wright Brothers in 1909. The airport was constructed in the 1930's as part of Adolf Hiter's plan to bring visitors to Berlin and for a while his plan worked. It quickly became one of world's busiest airports, with more than 52 foreign and 40 domestic aircraft arriving and departing daily. These flights brought in politicans, celebrities and vacationers.

At the end of the war, the airport was turned over to the US Army under the Yalta Agreements but by 1948 the Sovient Union blocked all traffic into and out of West Berlin. Instead of abandoning the citizens living inside the blockade, the western Allies decided to airlift food into the city. For 11 months, from June 1948 until September 1949 Allied planes brought in nearly two million tons of food and other supplies. At the peak of the airlift a plane touched down every 90 seconds.







The Berlin Airlift Memorial, which stands in the Platz der Luftbrücke, is inscribed with the names of the 31 American and 39 British pilots who lost their lives during the Airlift.

















Standing outside the airport, it wasn't hard to imagine how it looked during it's Nazi heydays. Hitler wanted to impress the world and it's sheer size and architecture is impressive, even today. For me, it was just really cool to stand there and imagine all the history that took place here, everything I had read about in high-school history classes and books and seen in documentaries. From all the glitz and glamour to the thousands of planes touching down to bring in supplies to keep West Berliners alive. It was very awe-inspring.