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| Here's a photo of the airside of Tempelhof Airport, now a park, taken in 2012. Head Building East, which I mentioned in the previous post, can be seen at the right, near the radome. |
As I begin this second post about the cultural history of
Tempelhof Airport, I should make a note of reference to the situation at the
airport today. The grounds of the
airport have been designated as a public park.
I summarized the evolution of this park in a series of posts last
November (click on the “Berlin-Tempelhof” label below for a link to those and
other past posts) – the goals of the park include the desire to establish a new
cultural resource that focuses on six objectives:
·
Stage
for the new
·
Clean
future technologies
·
Knowledge
and learning
·
Sports
and health
·
Dialog
of religions
·
Neighborhood
integration
A description
of these can be found at the Tempelhof Park website, which is linked at the end
of this post. It will be useful to come
back to these six at the end of this series, which is focused on Christine Heeb’s
thesis A multifaceted monument – the complex heritage of Tempelhof Central
Airport.
I think that
many of my fellow USAF veterans who were stationed at the airfield following
World War II and on through the Cold War are aware that the history of the Tempelhof district in Berlin
dates to the Templars, an order of military knights during the Middle Ages. Heeb’s document places the grounds of the
airport at the northern boundary of the Templar estate, which was founded in
1247. The purpose of the district was to
serve as a “commander’s court,” a sort of administrative and martial function.
That
military heritage continued into the era of the Prussian kings and German
emperors. Farms were prevalent in the
area, but the kings and emperors would use the open ground for military
displays, parades, and other public functions.
Eventually the land was acquired from the farmers, and this public use
of the area continued through most of the 1800’s, right up until the dawn of
aviation.
Heeb’s
thesis includes a fascinating citation of Zeppelin flights at the airport beginning in
the late 1880’s, including a photograph of the Graf Zeppelin landing at the
airfield in front of 300,000 spectators in 1909. Also in
1909, Orville Wright made an appearance at Tempelhof, demonstrating the Wright Brothers’ aircraft
and piloting skills, this time in front of a crowd of 150,000 people. The result of the demonstration was the
establishment of a firm in Germany to build airplanes, a collaboration between
Wright and some industrialists – the firm was called Flugmaschine Wright GmbH,
and it started with an order for 20 aircraft.
Despite all
of these connections with the nascent aviation industry, Tempelhof was not the
first airport in Berlin – that happened at Johannisthal (there is an Wikipedia article, for further reference), which was begun in 1908. This airfield was used throughout World War
I, until Tempelhof’s development as an airfield started in the 1920’s.
And that is
where I will pick up this history tomorrow.
A link to the modern day Tempelhof Park can be found
here: http://www.tempelhoferfreiheit.de/en/
Christine Heeb’s thesis can be found here:
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