Farewell to the transvestite revue as eccentric airport faces closure

But time finally seems to have caught up with Tempelhof, the lifeline to West Berlin during the airlift of 1948-49, but now scheduled for closure.

"It would be a catastrophe if they shut it," said Tempelhof's veteran tour guide, Klaus Eisermann, as he strolled the cavernous but largely deserted arrivals hall. "Berlin would lose a chunk of its history."

Mr Eisermann and his colleagues are fighting a rearguard action to try to prevent Tempelhof - the most imposing Nazi-era building left in Berlin - from closing in October.

The airport, in the centre of the German capital, played a crucial role in the cold war, when the allies used it to supply the city after Stalin closed all land routes to West Berlin. Back then an allied plane landed every 90 seconds. These days, only a handful of flights arrive each day.

Its runway is too small to accommodate large jumbos; it mainly serves internal flights to and from provincial places such as Erfurt and Bremen. Last year it attracted just 460,000 passengers.

Berlin's bankrupt city council, fed up with annual €16m (about £10.5m) losses, wants to close it and expand Schönefeld airport in the ex-communist east.

Tempelhof's 1,000 or so staff are not going quietly. "The mood is bad," Bernd Fröhlich admitted yesterday, breaking off from a game of ping-pong in Tempelhof's sports hall, a legacy from when the US military occupied the mile-long building. "The problem is that politicians have been threatening to close us for a decade now."

With proper investment, the airport's fortunes could be turned round, according to Karsten Kaiser, one of Tempelhof's full-time firefighters. His watch pass the time by cultivating carp in a giant tank.

"We cook them every new year," he said. "You have to eat them when they are fairly small. Otherwise they get muffig - stale-tasting."

The transvestite cabaret in the downstairs theatre is quite good, according to the firefighter. "It's a bit like the Moulin Rouge but with men."

Tempelhof, one of the world's oldest airports, opened in 1923. In 1936 Hitler's chief architect, Albert Speer, commissioned a new airport building.

The architect was Ernst Sagebiel, whose grandiose oval design, which involved constructing a giant stand for thousands of spectators, was never quite completed. Tempelhof survived the second world war, despite being cratered by bombs, and damaged by the Red Army after Berlin's fall.

During the airlift more than 2m tonnes of food and fuel were brought in. In the end the Soviets relented, lifting their blockade. Today, getting anything to eat at Tempelhof can be tricky. The airport's first-floor restaurant shut three years ago because of a lack of customers; passengers' only bet nowadays is a grilled sausage from the airport's modest Imbiss, or snack stall.

Young passengers, meanwhile, appear unfamiliar with Tempelhof's illustrious past. "I don't know much about it, to be honest," said Matthias Meinel, an 18-year-old student. "I'm from Frankfurt. We have a proper airport there."

Yesterday Mr Eisermann said part of the problem was that East Berliners do not have a sentimental attachment to Tempelhof.

"For West Berliners, it is a symbol of freedom. But people in the east don't have any historical roots. I've worked here for 40 years. Back in the 70s the airport was packed. We were happy."

Mr Eisermann and other employees have launched a petition. But despite a last-minute offer by one German carrier to take over the 770-hectare (1,900-acre) site, their chances of success appear slim.

text :Luke Harding in Berlin
source: Guardian Unlimited