Ordie
12-29-2008, 08:10 PM
Touring Hitler's air palace
It makes a big-screen opening this week, but this Nazi relic is a spectacle in itself
DENIS SEGUIN
Special to The Globe and Mail
December 20, 2008
There is a scene in the upcoming Tom Cruise movie, Valkyrie, when a host of German soldiers musters in a vast courtyard. The looming walls could only be one place, for only one place in Berlin can make so many people look small: Tempelhof Airport, one of Europe's largest buildings.
On Oct. 30, the storied airfield (long superseded by other local airports) closed to winged traffic, its many square kilometres of prime Berlin real estate destined for some kind of redevelopment. But the building itself remains open for walking tours.
Typical of Nazi-era architecture, Tempelhof's main building was built to last all 1,000 years of Hitler's Reich. A short walk from the U-bahn stop at Platz der Luftbrucke, the first view is a city block of art deco limestone, itself only a small part of a complex that goes on and on and on. Don't even bother photographing the exterior unless you have a satellite. The curving arms of the terminal span 1.2 kilometres, and the complex encompasses three million square feet.
But it is Tempelhof's past that most evokes a sense of wonder, both as a monument to the banality of evil and as a symbol of hope. The 2½-hour walking tour is something of an endurance test, but it's time well-spent for military buffs or anyone interested in history.
Even film history. Directed by Bryan Singer, Valkyrie tracks a real plot by German officers to assassinate Hitler late in the war. The entrance to Tempelhof's secret underground railway poses as the forecourt on a German base. Singer is by no means the first director to harness Tempelhof's dramatic potential. Billy Wilder shot two films here, A Foreign Affair (1948) and One, Two, Three (1961), during its reign as Berlin's commercial aviation hub.
More than an airport, Tempelhof was the nexus of Nazi air power. How many airports have not one but two aircraft factories? Here slave labourers constructed the Stuka dive bomber and the top-secret Focke Wulf 190 fighter plane - and often attempted to sabotage them.
Tempelhof's strategic value led to intense fighting during the battle for Berlin. Its fortified vaults contained the majority of German aerial reconnaissance, millions of feet of nitrate film stock. The Russian army blasted its way in, igniting the highly flammable film into a conflagration that burned for 11 days. Drooping metal doorframes speak to the intensity of the fire.
Farther down, in a distant sub-basement, air raid shelters bear the weight of history as well. Separated from their parents, the children of air force officers had their own chambers. On the walls, jolly illustrations and a children's verse are still clearly visible. You were safe here, at least from instant death by bombing - but not from the rolling thunder of the Russian advance.
Tempelhof also played a pivotal role at the beginning of the Cold War, during the Russian Army's 1948 blockade of Berlin. As the principal airport in Allied-occupied West Berlin, it was a lifeline for one million Berliners who would otherwise have faced a grim choice between starvation and capitulation. The tour ends in the now-silent terminal building, before a mural celebrating the U.S. Air Force's Candy Bombers, the crewmen who organized air drops of chocolate for young Berliners.
Later, Tempelhof became a U.S. air base and home to several hundred American soldiers, many of whom left graffiti on the blackened beams of the burned-out film vaults. The American presence lends the tour one of its more surreal moments. You're led into a huge darkened room. The fluorescent tubes flicker on overhead - and you find yourself in a basketball gym. Down a corridor, a huge lounge sits like a museum diorama of the 1970s. This is where the Cold Warriors kicked back until the Wall came down.
Small wonder the Berlin government has no clue what to do with this colossus. Three million square feet of blackened vaults, air raid shelters, basketball courts and an airline terminal no one uses. Demolition will probably take longer than the construction. Best to have a look before it truly is history.
English group tours must be booked in advance through BIM Berlin Real Estate Management,
49 (30) 90166 1484; flughafenbesichtigung@bim-berlin.de (flughafenbesichtigung@bim-berlin.de). $21.
Source:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081220.TEMPELHOF20/TPStory
It makes a big-screen opening this week, but this Nazi relic is a spectacle in itself
DENIS SEGUIN
Special to The Globe and Mail
December 20, 2008
There is a scene in the upcoming Tom Cruise movie, Valkyrie, when a host of German soldiers musters in a vast courtyard. The looming walls could only be one place, for only one place in Berlin can make so many people look small: Tempelhof Airport, one of Europe's largest buildings.
On Oct. 30, the storied airfield (long superseded by other local airports) closed to winged traffic, its many square kilometres of prime Berlin real estate destined for some kind of redevelopment. But the building itself remains open for walking tours.
Typical of Nazi-era architecture, Tempelhof's main building was built to last all 1,000 years of Hitler's Reich. A short walk from the U-bahn stop at Platz der Luftbrucke, the first view is a city block of art deco limestone, itself only a small part of a complex that goes on and on and on. Don't even bother photographing the exterior unless you have a satellite. The curving arms of the terminal span 1.2 kilometres, and the complex encompasses three million square feet.
But it is Tempelhof's past that most evokes a sense of wonder, both as a monument to the banality of evil and as a symbol of hope. The 2½-hour walking tour is something of an endurance test, but it's time well-spent for military buffs or anyone interested in history.
Even film history. Directed by Bryan Singer, Valkyrie tracks a real plot by German officers to assassinate Hitler late in the war. The entrance to Tempelhof's secret underground railway poses as the forecourt on a German base. Singer is by no means the first director to harness Tempelhof's dramatic potential. Billy Wilder shot two films here, A Foreign Affair (1948) and One, Two, Three (1961), during its reign as Berlin's commercial aviation hub.
More than an airport, Tempelhof was the nexus of Nazi air power. How many airports have not one but two aircraft factories? Here slave labourers constructed the Stuka dive bomber and the top-secret Focke Wulf 190 fighter plane - and often attempted to sabotage them.
Tempelhof's strategic value led to intense fighting during the battle for Berlin. Its fortified vaults contained the majority of German aerial reconnaissance, millions of feet of nitrate film stock. The Russian army blasted its way in, igniting the highly flammable film into a conflagration that burned for 11 days. Drooping metal doorframes speak to the intensity of the fire.
Farther down, in a distant sub-basement, air raid shelters bear the weight of history as well. Separated from their parents, the children of air force officers had their own chambers. On the walls, jolly illustrations and a children's verse are still clearly visible. You were safe here, at least from instant death by bombing - but not from the rolling thunder of the Russian advance.
Tempelhof also played a pivotal role at the beginning of the Cold War, during the Russian Army's 1948 blockade of Berlin. As the principal airport in Allied-occupied West Berlin, it was a lifeline for one million Berliners who would otherwise have faced a grim choice between starvation and capitulation. The tour ends in the now-silent terminal building, before a mural celebrating the U.S. Air Force's Candy Bombers, the crewmen who organized air drops of chocolate for young Berliners.
Later, Tempelhof became a U.S. air base and home to several hundred American soldiers, many of whom left graffiti on the blackened beams of the burned-out film vaults. The American presence lends the tour one of its more surreal moments. You're led into a huge darkened room. The fluorescent tubes flicker on overhead - and you find yourself in a basketball gym. Down a corridor, a huge lounge sits like a museum diorama of the 1970s. This is where the Cold Warriors kicked back until the Wall came down.
Small wonder the Berlin government has no clue what to do with this colossus. Three million square feet of blackened vaults, air raid shelters, basketball courts and an airline terminal no one uses. Demolition will probably take longer than the construction. Best to have a look before it truly is history.
English group tours must be booked in advance through BIM Berlin Real Estate Management,
49 (30) 90166 1484; flughafenbesichtigung@bim-berlin.de (flughafenbesichtigung@bim-berlin.de). $21.
Source:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081220.TEMPELHOF20/TPStory