Tegel Airport in Berlin is finally closing. A brand new airport, Berlin Brandenburg International Airport is being built on the outskirts of Berlin. The idea of this new airport displaced and replaced first Tempelhof airport, known for the Luftbrücke. “During the Berlin blockade from June 1948 to May 1949, Tempelhof Airport becomes the take-off and landing site for the ‘raisin bombers’ which assures the provision of vital supplies for the people in West Berlin and drops sweets, sometimes borne by handmade parachutes, to the delight of the children.”[1] Tempelhof was permanently closed in 2008 and turned into a park.
Now it’s Tegel Airport’s turn. “Slightly more than a month after the start of the Berlin blockade, the French occupied forces agree to the construction of a new airport in their sector, which is to help the Berlin Airlift. In a record time of only 90 days an airport is built on the former military training site; it has a runway of 2428 metres, which at the time was the longest in Europe. The first aircraft lands here on 5 November 1948.”[2] Tegel quickly became one of the most used airports in Europe. Tegel is a small-ish, yet very practical airport, built in a hexagon, with check-ins at the gate for outbound flights, and passport control and baggage claim directly at the end of the deboarding ramp. Families and friends could wait behind glass doors at baggage claim, eagerly eyeing tired passengers for signs of lon-awaited loved-ones waiting of their bags.
I find myself strangely emotional at the news of Tegel’s closing. In January, it will be 20 years since we arrived as a small family of 4 (my husband and myself, a 2 year-old and a 6 month-old) with all our earthly possessions packed in Rubbermaid tubs. Colleagues were there, outside those glass doors, waiting to welcome us with flowers and hugs and helping hands. Tegel has been a hallmark of all of our comings and goings for the last 20 years: joyous reunions with grandparents and tearful goodbyes to friends and colleagues going on their separate ways across the globe and to different chapters of their lives. Many a tear of joy and sadness was shed in those halls, each departure marking the inevitability of the passage of time, the pain wrapped up in bittersweet good-byes, and the transcendent longing for permanence, exacerbated by the emotions felt in altitude, hovering between 2 countries—a reality that is more than physical for most of us who live bi-cultural lives.
The airport itself became a sort of a signpost for these realities, a landing and launching pad for deep reflection about transience, meaning, belonging, human connection and love. Is one indeed closer to heaven in an airplane or on the ground on a little patch of earth called “home?” (Interestingly, Tegel’s sister, Tempelhof became temporary housing for thousands of refugees at the peak of the refugee crisis in 2015, first in the hangars and then in prefabricated container villages.) I wonder how many of these refugees felt that sense of living in a no-man’s-land on their way to their new life in Germany...
Tegel is a part of Berlin’s history, a positive emblem of human kindness, collaboration and hard work to keep Berliners alive and cared for. For me, Tegel will forever bring back memories of welcoming and sending off all of the most precious people in my life, many of them now scattered across the globe. The strangely familiar world between worlds that was Tegel will be erased from use as an airport, but never erased from our memories, of which it was just a runway lifting us up into thoughts of home, love, and the desire for the eternity placed in our hearts.
Photo credit: https://www.berlin.de/en/airports-and-stations/1872399-2932875-airport-berlin-tegel-txl.en.html
