Back in 2010 I was learning German and visited Berlin for the first time with another friend whose German was as bad as mine. We downloaded this random app (in German) telling us about Berlin tourist attractions, and upon reading it we "understood" that Tempelhof was a tourist attraction and "frozen in time" and we should visit it.
We walked into the building looking for tickets for some sort of exposition, but there was no one inside - not even security. We genuinely believed it was a place open for guests, so we just walked straight in. We toured inside of the airport alone for about 40 minutes, through the hangars and corridors and up and down a couple of rooms and staircases. The most curious room we found was some sort of poorly lit restaurant that had tableware with eagles drawn on it, and a cute old bar which I suspect is what one would find in Germany during the Cold War.
Most doors were unlocked one way, but would lock such that you couldn't walk back where you came from, and thus kept pushing us to go further and further in. The place is huge though, and we didn't see many of the things shown in the pictures in the posted link, not even the main hall.
Finally a guard found us and politely escorted us out of the building. We figured the airport was closed because it was Sunday, and it actually took me a couple of years and other visits to Berlin to realize the building wasn't open for the public.
One of my greatest experiences of being lost in translation.
Every once in a while, you can visit Tempelhof. I have visited it some time ago and really enjoyed the main hall. It's in pristine condition, with the old signs and typography.
Tempelhofer Feld is also part of the Berlin experience, half way between a park and an open air festival, used simultaneously by picnickers, cyclists, skaters, gardeners, DJs, kite surfers, drone pilots and just about everyone else.
There have been talks of building on top of it, but I can't think of a better example of a public good worth preserving. It's one of the rare places where you are allowed to exist without spending a dime.
Tempelhof was also the stage of the Berlin Airlift [0], a fascinating moment of Berlin's history.
Fun fact, the airport was once the largest building in the world, and is still today in place 28 (source: Wikipedia) and the longest building in europe.
What is also missing in the article: Its massive underground site. During WW2, the airport was used to build combat airplanes. For parts supply, it has its own subway station (not in use today) and even a water power plant to run off grid.
> What is also missing in the article: Its massive underground site.
Not to mention the former NSA/CIA station upstairs from the Cold War days! I visited both the station and the underground site some years ago before they closed the airport. Not sure, though, if those places are now part of the public tours, too.
Wow, I've always wanted to visit this airport, glad to read that they're not going to tear it down.
In 2016 Conan O'Brien went there, because the airport was being used to house refugees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j39oTM2DLGs . According to the German Wikipedia article of the airport, this use would only be limited for 3 years until the end of 2019, but there were also a lot of protests against it.
Make sure to visit it in Spring/Summer! The place is very lively with joggers, bikers, wind surfers, BBQs (although it is now banned because of lockdown I think), and tons of people just lying around and chatting.
I understand that people needs houses but, I would consider letting go and demolishing this park would be as bad as demolishing Tiergarten. People need green spaces and parks as well.
> I understand that people needs houses but, I would consider letting go and demolishing this park would be as bad as demolishing Tiergarten. People need green spaces and parks as well.
On top of this, as the article alluded to I'm dubious of what kind of apartments would be built. The kind of people who really need housing in the city are likely not going to benefit from whatever developers would do with the space.
Tempelhof has the advantage that it’s so large that both goals can be accomplished. Tempelhof is still significantly larger than the central park, after all.
If they’d actually build affordable apartments and student dorms, berliners would be happy to support it.
I do not have much faith in government about anything related to housing, as they allowed Deutsche Wohnen merger to create an even larger monopoly on housing market [1]. The merger donated a small percentage of their apartments to social housing as a PR stunt but I am not convinced at all that, that merger beneficial for people of Berlin.
So start a petition to change the law so that construction on the tempelhofer feld is allowed while requiring that all buildings constructed on the tempelhofer Feld have to be priced according to the old Mietpreisbremse.
If that petition gets enough signatures, it becomes a Volksentscheid, and if that gets enough votes, it'd be law.
IANAL but I don't think this would pass the Constitutional Court. Voting wasn't what killed the Mietpreisbremse - if you tried this probably we'd get some housing constructed and then immediately any limit ruled unconstitutional.
It would relatively easily pass the constitutional court. The issue with the Mietpreisbremse was modifying existing ownership of land and buildings.
If you make new contracts to sell and develop land, as would happen in this case, you can put any clause you want in there. You could even make a contract that says the CEO of Deutsche Wohnen has to run around in a bunny costume over the Alex if they want to build on Tempelhofer Feld – they don’t have to sign, after all.
Ah, first, we both (I assume based on your use of "old") made the common mistake of confusing the Deckel and the Bremse. So to clarify, I am assuming you meant "the old Mietendeckel" and that is what the court struck down - the Mietpreisbremse is still in effect. If this assumption is wrong and you rather did mean a pre-2015 version of the Mietpreisbremse implementation, sorry.
> The issue with the [Mietendeckel] was modifying existing ownership of land and buildings.
Was it? My understanding was that the decision ended purely on jurisdictional grounds. (Quick summary for anyone following along from the US, Germany has a kind of "inverse 10th Amendment" - the states can regulate things only as long as the federal level does not.)
By passing §§ 556 to 561 BGB, the federal legislator conclusively exercised its concurrent legislative powers extending to the law governing rental fees as part of civil law... the Berlin Rent Cap Act constricts the latitude afforded by federal law to the parties to a tenancy contract and introduces parallel legislation governing rent at Land level that contains statistical and not market-dependent stipulations.
In other words, I thought the problem was only that the law intruded on a legal framework between private housing providers and the federal government, not any particular aspect of what it changed.
Well exactly, the issue was a state modifying an existing agreement between developers/landlords and the federal government.
But that wouldn't have to happen in Tempelhof, as this requirement wouldn't be passed the same way, it'd just be part of the contract selling the land. And a law from the state, requiring the state to only produce such contracts of sale.
That's indeed a problem there. I was there for a walk on a cold and windy day. After walking for a while, we wanted to go back, and it turned out horrible, because back was against the wind, and there is nowhere to hide from the wind. Sure, you will not leave civilisation here, but trees would help.
They probably don't plant any because when they finally do decide to build a new residential quarter, they'd also have to fight against tree savers. And probably there's a regulation that for each tree you fell, you need to plant a new one. So better not plant too many trees without good reason...
I think that the open plain is what makes the Tempelhof Field what it is. If you want trees, Hasenheide is right next door, or you can go to any of the other forested areas. But for an really open place, there is no such place in the city. I agree that some tree cover at the sides could help against the traffic noise but the openness is what makes this place special.
Tempelhofer Feld is so vast, you could build housing and it would still be a huge park.
Hardly anyone goes as far as to the southern strip, most people stay at the edges or bike through the center.
You could build housing there with little influence on the character of the park.
IMHO, especially housing on the southern strip would massively influence the character of the space.
If you ask people, what makes the space special, you will very often get the answer, that it is the space's openness and breadth.
This impression is especially created by the southern strip, as open space continues also beyond of it: first, the railway (Ringbahn), after that the city highway and after that relatively low-rise industrial buildings.
If you would build on the southern part, this view would be cut off much earlier.
IMHO, if one wants to build housing on the field while keeping its character, one needs to build on the south-west corner - kind of as a continuation of the terminal building - or in the north-east corner.
> You could build housing there with little influence on the character of the park.
Except that the value of any amount of housing there would skyrocket, be purchasable by only the richest expat assholes and Bayerischer trust fund kids, who would within five years get the police to enforce full Ruhezeit in the park because it's interfering with their startup's self-actualizing.
I remember walking through Tempelhof when their appeared to be a sort of cycling event on. It might have been a regular thing, but it was fairly incredible. A single massive continuous swarm of people of all ages looping the airfield, on bikes, trikes, recliners, even velomobile. There was a tandem towing a trailer with two kids in it. It was crazy.
Tempelhof is cool. I flew into Tempelhof on a USAF jet in 1981. Landing was 'interesting,' due to the short runway and crowded city around it. On final approach the pilots had to thread the needle between apartments on either side of the flight path. You could basically see into the apartments, which were at eye level. Plus there was a cemetery right underneath, perhaps as a convenience in the event of a mishap.
"Operations at the site ran for three years until April 2012, when its previous management company filed for bankruptcy and went into receivership,[2] after the last flight operator, low-cost airline Vueling, withdrew its last route from the airport,[3] and it would remain closed for seven years until finally being reopened in September 2019."
Looking at it in google maps with the aerial view turned on, it looks like there is (or was, at time of photo) a bunch of modular housing units for temporary accommodations, the whole terminal and apron is still there, and there's a dog park. The dog park has lots of cute user submitted photos of dogs.
There's also a 'private university' named for Sigmund Freud. I was hoping that some of Berlin's famous graffiti artists might have drawn a visible from space phallus on the roof, but no such luck.
I am always fascinated by these web sites that document the "abandoned" past (though clearly this airport has not been abandoned at all). Here is another one I like: http://www.hudsonvalleyruins.org/. There used to be a website that kept track of abandoned ski areas, but I cannot find it. Sadly, it looks like the website itself has been abandoned.
I went to that quarry a few times as a kid, even climbed up the really high ladder. Pretty cool place. Apparently there are cameras these days and the cops will come though unfortunately.
When visiting Berlin a few summers ago, I happened to be staying in Neukölln and decided it'd be fun to do one of my daily runs around the airfield. There's a funny thing about airports that I quickly realized: they have no trees and thusly no shade. They're also really big.
I won't say I particularly enjoyed the run but it was cool to be able to do it and experience a very unique and historic outdoor space in a big city.
For anyone else thinking to visit when it's hot: there are trees and shade around the beer garden "Luftgarten". You'll be thirsty for a beer after walking along that long runway too
Maybe I am a bit to critical or most people in Berlin central do not know this, but Tempelhof isn't even the mother of 'abandoned' airports in Berlin. That would be Johannisthal. Sure, it's even more abandoned so you barely see the remains of the runways and so on. But well, these days the parks are full enough anyways :)
Arriving to Templehof felt like a dystopian experience. A vacant Facistic styled airport and a public park in the size of a neighbourhood. As someone coming from a dense area urban area it was like nothing else. If you consider visiting keep in mind it’s a long ride
I live in Berlin. This place is entirely Giant. It’s a great place to go and hangout in the summer. Two large dog off leash areas and a large outer ring and tons of places to ride cycles and things.
There’s also a few restaurants to eat at before you go exploring.
In South Korea I visited Dorasan station that is on the train line between South and North Korea. That train line has only been used a few times, for obvious reasons. At the moment I visited Dorasan. it was not really used. So there was this big modern station that was almost completely empty.
I know the original plan was that they were going to shut down Tegel, Tempelhof, and Schönefeld and replace them all with BER.
My understanding is that now BER has finally been finished, Schönefeld has been turned into a terminal + runway of BER, and Tegel has recently been shut down. If so, what's going to happen to the Tegel buildings and airfield space now?
The main Tegel terminal buildings will be converted to house research institutes; this will be the core of a project with the fancy name "Urban Tech Republic".
The eastern part of the airfield will be used to build new residential housing ("Schumacher Quartier").
These are quite ambitious plans, construction is expected to complete not before 2027.
Also what happened to the other aiports in Berlin like Tegel and Sconefeld since Brandenberg replaced them. The major delay in completing Brandenberg is also surprising to an outsider.
I took a guided tour of the main Tempelhof airport building back in 2015. Some highlights:
* The main hall's ceiling was originally significantly higher, making a very imposing space. After the war, the Americans insisted a false ceiling was put in to make the hall less impressive. The room was damaged during the war by fire and all this damage remains above the false ceiling and is accessible. The tour actually took us up there.
* Construction of the airport had to halt during the war and some areas were hastily completed. We were shown areas where the attractive stone facade had fallen away and there was rubble stuck together by mortar behind.
* Hitler had a private terminal with a private elevator leading down to the boarding area
We walked into the building looking for tickets for some sort of exposition, but there was no one inside - not even security. We genuinely believed it was a place open for guests, so we just walked straight in. We toured inside of the airport alone for about 40 minutes, through the hangars and corridors and up and down a couple of rooms and staircases. The most curious room we found was some sort of poorly lit restaurant that had tableware with eagles drawn on it, and a cute old bar which I suspect is what one would find in Germany during the Cold War. Most doors were unlocked one way, but would lock such that you couldn't walk back where you came from, and thus kept pushing us to go further and further in. The place is huge though, and we didn't see many of the things shown in the pictures in the posted link, not even the main hall. Finally a guard found us and politely escorted us out of the building. We figured the airport was closed because it was Sunday, and it actually took me a couple of years and other visits to Berlin to realize the building wasn't open for the public.
One of my greatest experiences of being lost in translation.