Save the Mother of all Airports!!!

[Royalla]

The beautiful crescent of Tempelhof airport

The world's first passenger airport, the world's third largest building, a marvel of (Nazi-)architecture, site of the Berlin airlift 1948-49 and “the mother of all airports” according to architect Norman Foster: TEMPELHOF airport in Berlin is all of this.


Overjoyed German children during the Berlin Airlift of 1948-49. American "Raisin bombers" brought food and coal to West Berliners cut off by Russian troops. During the 15-month operation, a total of 277,569 flights were made. At times a plane would land every three minutes.

Nevertheless, it has been closed on 30 October and its future is uncertain. During months of political crossfire, even the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the very influential tabloid BILD have thrown in their weight to save the airport. There have been massive protests by the Berliners, including a collection of 200000 signatures. But Berlin city authorities, lead by Mayor Wowereit, didn’t listen to the people’s voice and went ahead with their sacrilege.

You should have seen me 3 weeks ago, desperately running around on the vast premises, armed with a camera to document what I could in case they tear TH down. I hear you say “They surely can’t do that?” but since nothing has been decided on the further use of the mother of all airports, chances are it might just be left to rot in the meantime and then silently disposed of one day. It seems that this is likely to happen since perfectly sensible suggestions like making it a new archive of the Berlin public library have obviously been turned down.

The only way to save this unique building in its complete and original state is to make it UNESCO world heritage. Please, forum friends- have a look at this website. Do sign the petition!

World heritage airport Tempelhof

Just an anecdote: in November Tempelhof had to be opened again (nonofficially) for one day because several pilots of small private aircraft hadn’t yet realized TH had been closed. One of the three aircraft was a red biplane. You see, even MvR is on our side! (ok, it was an Antonow AN-2, but it was red and a biplane so hey…)

[FOKKERJ]

Greetings Royalla,

Thanks for sharing this information.
I wish you the best of Luck with this.

FRÖHLICHE WEIHNACHTEN
FOKKERJ