Tempelhof Airport

Tempelhof was first officially designated as an airport on 8 October 1923. Lufthansa was founded in Tempelhof on 6 January 1926.
The old terminal, originally constructed in 1927, received politicians and celebrities from around the world during the 1930s. As part of Albert Speer’s plan for the reconstruction of Berlin during the Nazi era, Prof. Ernst Sagebiel was ordered to replace the old terminal with a new terminal building in 1934.
The airport halls and the neighbouring buildings, intended to become the gateway to Europe, are still known as the largest built entities worldwide, and have been described by British architect Sir Norman Foster as “the mother of all airports”. With its façades of shell limestone, the terminal building, built between 1936 and 1941, forms a massive 1.2-kilometre long quadrant yet has a charmingly intimate feel; planes can taxi right up to the building and unload, sheltered from the weather by its enormous overhanging canopy. Passengers walk through customs controls and find themselves in a dazzlingly simple and luminous reception hall. Tempelhof is served conveniently by the U6 U-Bahn line along Mehringdamm and up Friedrichstraße (Platz der Luftbrücke station).
Zentralfiughafen Tempelhof-Berlin had an advantage of central location just minutes from the heart of Berlin and quickly became one of the world’s busiest airports. Tempelhof saw its greatest pre-war days during 1938-1939 when more than 52 foreign and 40 domestic aircraft arrived and departed daily.
The air terminal was designed as headquarters for Deutsche Lufthansa, the German commercial airline. As a forerunner of today’s modern airports, the building was designed with many unique features including giant arc-shaped hangars for aircraft parking. Although under construction for more than ten years, it was never finished because of World War II.
The building complex was designed to resemble an eagle in flight with semicircular hangars forming the bird’s spread wings. A mile long hangar roof was to have been laid in tiers to form a stadium for spectators at air and ground demonstrations.