The opening in late October 2020 of Berlin’s extensive awaited new airport – nearly a ten years late – marks the close of an period for Tegel.
Couple airports have pretty that amazing retro experience of the primary hexagonal terminal at Berlin’s Tegel airport. Ignore the horrible muddle of outsized sheds which have disfigured Tegel in latest several years, as the airport struggled to cope with expanding passenger figures next the dismal failure of the airport authority to entire Berlin’s new airport on the other side of the metropolis.
For decades that unfinished new airport has made Berlin the butt of sharp remarks. But for lots of the silver lining in the cloud was that Tegel remained open extensive previous its projected closing date. Tegel was held in terrific affection by lots of citizens of West Berlin, for whom – particularly through the Chilly War decades – it symbolised independence and escape.
But Tegel was extra than that. In its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, it was a design and style icon that underpinned strong messages about West Berlin. This was Germany’s 1st push-in airport. It was an journey that paid out homage as significantly to the auto as it did to the aeroplane.
Subsequent the development of the Berlin Wall in 1961, Tegel was 1 of two professional airports in isolated West Berlin. The other was Tempelhof, close to the city centre it noticed its final flights in 2008. Tegel, which opened in 1960, was really a lot larger sized than Tempelhof.
Tegel symbolized the fluid mobility of the West – it was an overstated retort to the grand boulevards of East Berlin. There was substantially talk in the western component of the town of Das Neue Berlin (“The new Berlin”), a phrase that located expression in bold architectural statements that performed up mobility. The endless swirl of site visitors all around Ernst Reuter Platz and the uninterrupted move of contemporary automobiles along the new city motorway both equally invited comparison with America.
But Tegel went additional, making ballet-like interactions between cars and trucks and planes. The highway from the coronary heart of Berlin sweeps north-west in excess of grand bridges, gliding into a tunnel – with planes taxiing higher than – to arise in the interior of an open hexagon where passengers could be dropped off proper at their departure gate. The wander from vehicle to aircraft was just a make any difference of a few metres.
It was all utterly cinematic, but the celebrated Tegel hexagon wasn’t a layout that stood the check of time. It wasn’t simple to develop, and in current years the formidable highways top to the airport have often been so clogged with visitors that driving to Tegel has misplaced its romance.
Berlin’s new airport opens on 31 October. It is situated on the south-eastern margins of the town, much from Tegel. It is in outcome a redevelopment and large enlargement of East Berlin’s airport at Schönefeld. Tegel will keep on being open up for just a week right after the new airport opens. Soon after Tegel closes, the web site will be redeveloped for residential and small business use.
But as the last aircraft climbs up from the runway at Tegel, there will be a lot of Berliners who will lose a tear at the demise of an airport that after experienced an unrivalled elegance and operation – even though in the latest several years it has as well generally seemed overcrowded and dysfunctional.
The authors are the publishers of ‘hidden europe,’ which is both of those a print magazine and an online corpus of travel composing, focusing on areas of European journey, daily life and lifestyle. Locate out far more at hiddeneurope.co.british isles.