Berliners face emotional vote on Cold War airlift site

By Kerstin Gehmlich

BERLIN (Reuters) - At the age of 7, Mercedes Wild waved excitedly at each U.S. plane that circled over her Berlin home and landed at Tempelhof airport, packed with supplies to feed Berliners during the Soviets' Cold War blockade.

Today, the 67-year old Wild is fighting against city plans to shut down the giant airport site in the centre of Berlin, which is almost the size of New York's Central Park.

After years of debate, Berliners are to vote on the closure of the Nazi-built complex on Sunday.

"It's quite emotional. The airport is a symbol of freedom," Wild said, standing in the almost empty, 1,200 meter-long building just a 10-minute drive away from the Brandenburg Gate.

"I'm fighting for the future, the future of Berlin. Our economy needs this airport," Wild said.

During the Berlin airlift between 1948 and 1949, Western forces flew hundreds of thousands of tonnes of supplies into Tempelhof after the Soviets blocked rail and street access to Berlin's Western-occupied sectors.

But air traffic has slumped since the days when the so-called raisin-bombers landed in intervals of 90 seconds at the airport. Last year, only 350,000 of Berlin's 20 million air travelers went through the loss-making site.

The decision whether to keep Tempelhof has turned into a high-profile battle, pitting Berlin's popular mayor, Social Democrat (SPD) Klaus Wowereit, against conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel and many members of her Christian Democrats (CDU).

"The continued operation of Tempelhof isn't just significant to the economy and to jobs," Merkel told BZ daily last week. "To many people and to me personally, this airport, with the airlift, is a symbol of the city's history."

Merkel has urged Berliners to participate in Sunday's vote, although its result will not be binding for the city government.

Wowereit wants to close Tempelhof in October, calling the maintenance of an inner city airport an "anachronism" that exposes residents to noise and safety risks and weighs on economy and environment.

COLD WAR RELIC

Dubbed the "mother of all airports" by architect Sir Norman Foster, the neoclassical terminal of Tempelhof was designed by Ernst Sagebiel. Between 1936 and 1941, forced laborers built it in the monolithic style preferred by Adolf Hitler.

The limestone building is flanked by crescent-shaped hangars which follow the curve of the oval airfield. The terminal roof was intended as a viewing platform for up to 100,000 people. A canopy was designed to allow jets to pull out of the rain.

But modern jumbos are too big to fit under the roof or to use the relatively short runways, and the airport made a loss of 115 million euros in the past 10 years, Berlin's SPD says.