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In 1999’s On the Natural History of Destruction, W. G. Sebald writes about the annihilation of German cities and nationalistic identities post World War II. Immediately following this crushingly expansive destruction was a period of rebuilding, where new ideas and a new feeling of moral responsibility could take root. What couldn’t be fully addressed psychologically was done so architecturally, through the reconstruction of Germany’s (specifically Berlin’s) public spaces. A particularly sentimental example of this kind of structural undertaking is Berlin’s recently shuttered Tegel Airport.

Tegel’s mottled concrete facade and musty interior welcomed those partial to a nostalgic, stress-free traveling experience. Contemporary additions such as cheap, tiled flooring and the introduction in 2018 of low-cost party airlines like Ryanair and easyJet only marginally interrupted the building’s ascetic ambiance. For most travelers, watching Tegel’s looming, two-tiered tower come into view as they approached their drop-off inspired feelings of comfort and belonging. Indeed, in the 2017 statewide senate parliament elections, Berliners were asked in a referendum if they wanted to keep Tegel operating, despite the projected opening of Berlin Brandenburg Airport (which finally happened in October 2020). The people voted yes—much to the horror of politicians and policy-makers.

The airport’s beginnings as a purely functional stopgap are consistent with the memory it holds for most who walked its halls. During the Berlin Blockade in 1948, the French military authorities in charge of Tegel ordered its expansion into a modest military base and airport, with one unique feature—a 7,966-foot runway, then the longest in Europe. At the time of its opening, Tegel connected West Berlin to the rest of the world, and continued to do so when the Berlin Wall went up in 1961. It played a substantial role in the economic rehabilitation of West Germany, while East Germany, still under Soviet rule, remained mired in regressive post-war regulations.

Tegel served commercial airlines through the 1950s and onwards, though only those headquartered in the UK, US, and France (three of the major victors of WWII) were permitted. From the ’50s through 1990, most flights out of TXL were to big cities within those nations. Restricted though it was for West Germans, travel outside of the country was even less viable for inhabitants of East Germany, especially once the Berlin Wall was built.

The brutalist style and functionality of Tegel is what has endeared it to international aesthetes for the past 50 years. The airport’s current structure was conceived in 1965 by architects Meinhard von Gerkan and Volkwin Marg. This was the duo’s first public commission (they won a competition to build the airport based on an untested design). Their relative inexperience was likely at the root of their simple, efficacious blueprint for Tegel’s central building—an octagonal terminal with negative space at its center and airplane gates arranged like tentacles on each facet of its exterior. Visitors moved through a looping internal passageway, with arriving passengers only one hundred feet from their departure gate. This meant you could be dropped off and reach your terminal with rare haste, or be picked up less than twenty minutes after you landed, something unheard of in most major modern airports.

In tandem with the demolition of the Berlin Wall (starting in 1989 and concluding in 1991), and the subsequent reunification of Germany, Tegel and all other West Berlin airports’ travel restrictions were lifted. Lufthansa, KLM, American Airlines, Swissair, TWA, and United Airlines initiated flights to Berlin, among a number of other international airlines. Tegel grew to become a symbol of a bygone era of German efficiency. Situated as it is in the middle of the city, its contemporary context is one of centrality and interconnectedness. Tegel served not just as a symbol of unity, but as an anti-capitalist answer to the modern airport—devoid of the luxury retail enticements and restaurants designed for tedious multi-hour layovers that most present day airports (and travelers) favor. Much more than an airport, Tegel is likely to hold architectural, emotional, and social significance in whatever form it takes in the future.

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PHOTOGRAPHER ROMAN GOEBEL

CREATIVE DIRECTION CARINE ROITFELD

CREATIVE CONSULTING EDOUARD RISSELET

GUEST EDITOR HONEY DIJON

STYLIST NIKI PAULS

HAIR RUBY HOWES

CASTING GIULIA MASSULLO

TALENT CHRISTOPHER ROSENTHAL @ DSM MANAGEMENT, NIELS TRISPEL @ SUCCESS MODELS, NAYME HASSANY @ TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER SASHA BARTUR for @CRSTUDIO

PRODUCTION JOSI MÜLLER

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