Today in Berlin, a plebiscite was held to try to stop the city government from closing down the historic inner-city airport Tempelhof. The percentage of voters who turned out wasn’t high enough to make the election count. Whatever… even if this vote had carried, its results still wouldn’t have been binding on the government. Dear Berliners, I hope that you enjoy the exclusive condos and the corporate office park that will descend on Tempelhof. Years from now, the dreams of a beautiful park and cultural center will not have been realized; you will look back on today with disgust. And this blog post will live on in Google’s cache to remind you.
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4 responses to “Goodbye, Tempelhof”
nevermind, Dan – i went voting, and put my cross happily on NO (which means in favour of the disclosure). Living in Berlin-Schmargendorf, i spent the biggest part of my childhood listening to the noises the Boeing 747s made, until they headed for Berlin-Tegel. The remaining air traffic keeps annoying us when we are sitting in our Kleingarten (ähem), watching an immaculate summer sky. Stop it, now (whatever they will build)!
Berlin is a metropolis. Metropolises need airports. It is already annoying enough trying to fly into Berlin, and Schönefeld is dreadful. Coming into Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt, even Düsseldorf is easier and cheaper than flying from outside of Germany into Berlin. Even after the conversion to BBI, Schönefeld will still be dreaful. Living in a city is about making certain sacrifices for certain benefits. Noise is necessary.
Hey Dan,
did you actually ever board a plane in or out of Tempelhof? Me neither, since it’s just small planes going to various small German towns and rarely to any place outside of Germany. Yes metropolises need airports, but not in the center of the city and Tempelhof really doesn’t have the capacity to handle todays air traffic volume. Schönefeld is dreadful but that will change in the future and there is really no alternative to it in my opinion. I wish there was…
You have to look at the historic dimensions too. Yes Tempelhof kept Berlin alive during the blockade, but that was 60 years ago and it’s simply too expensive to keep the airport open because of historical melancholy. After the blockade, Tempelhof was a US Airbase for decades and of no use for Berliners. We have since become a bit disconnected with the place. People that grew up in East-Berlin have no relationship to Tempelhof whatsoever. Why should they vote to keep it open? Now there’s just small planes and really not that much traffic in and out of Tempelhof. What’s the use of keeping it open? I don’t see any. Feel free to open my eyes beyond the metropolis-argument, because I really can’t wait to see this huge gaping hole in the middle of Berlin eradicated, even if it’s just going to be condos and corporate office parks. Look at this and tell me one good reason to keep those two short lanes open..! http://maps.google.de/maps?f=q&hl=de&geocode=&q=tempelhof+berlin&ie=UTF8&ll=52.473998,13.410702&spn=0.032205,0.09407&t=h&z=14&iwloc=addr
I’m too young to have flown in or out of Tempelhof. But I do have colleagues that I worked with in Frankfurt who used to fly there with Lufthansa (when there was that connection…) for business meetings with designers in Kreuzberg. I also have a friend whose done the Lufthansa Mannheim–Berlin connection.
The capacity for Tempelhof could be increased. It would be a nice landing spot for low cost airlines after they get priced out of the new BBI. I think that its location is more important than the nostalgia factor, i.e, that East Berliners have no historical connection to it is irrelevant… I don’t see how that would keep them from using the airport if planes and airlines would actually go there.
Berlin has plenty of other land that could be developed for better parks and recreation, condos, offices, apartments, etc. The best way to keep using Tempelhof’s footprint would be the airport.