Clinging on to a Cold War symbol

Image by tinou bao

Berliners have a special affection for Tempelhof Airport, scene of the airlift that broke Stalin’s 1948 blockade. One of the world’s first and busiest hubs, its monstrous terminal building was commissioned by Albert Speer as part of Hitler’s grand architectural plan. But it only has two runways and can’t be expanded because it is smack in the city centre; most of the 13 million travellers to Berlin go through its two other airports.

Now, strapped for cash, the city council wants to close it.

Quite sensible you might think, but Berliners have other ideas, and the council has been forced to hold a referendum on Tempelhof’s future. How very quaint.

In any other city residents would be thrilled to be told that a noisy, dirty airport right next to their homes was to be scrapped, saving them vast sums of money: here they are campaigning to save it. But then Berlin isn’t like other cities: it was the capital of the Cold War, right on the front line.

If you lived there you had to take a stand, for America and its way of life, or for socialism and the Communist Party. Structures like Tempelhof are redolent of a history that for Berliners is still alive, however turbulent and awful, and many are not yet ready to move on.