BERLIN: At the age of 7, Mercedes Wild waved excitedly at each US 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 travellers 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 labourers 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.

A relic of its Cold War division, Berlin has two other smallish airports besides Tempelhof, but few intercontinental flights leave from the three sites, with most travellers having to go through Frankfurt to reach long-haul destinations.

To make Berlin more accessible and competitive, authorities have decided to build a new three-billion euro airport south of the city, replacing the existing three aiports.

“Our future is in BBI,” says Wowereit, who hopes the new Berlin-Brandenburg International (BBI) complex will create some 40,000 jobs when it opens in 2011.

Tempelhof critics point to court decisions stating that BBI can only open if Berlin’s other airports shut and say keeping Tempelhof will spark a wave of legal proceedings and delay BBI.

Some residents see a more concrete nuisance in Tempelhof, with its runway just 100 metres away from their apartments.

“I live right in the entry lane. Wherever I go inside my house, I can’t escape the noise,” said resident Anne Schmidt, banging drums during a protest march against the airport.

VIP AIRPORT?: Surveys show a majority of Berliners want to keep Tempelhof open. The pro-airport campaigners a colourful mix of businessmen, singers, actors and CDU politicians hope that even though the outcome of Sunday’s vote is not binding, the voice of 2.4 million Berlin voters will not go unheard. “Cosmopolitan city or province? Save Tempelhof!,” read the pro-airport posters plastered around the capital. “An airport for the super-rich? We won’t be fooled,” anti-airport campaigners respond on their flyers.

Tempelhof is popular with private jet operators who fly businessmen to Germany’s capital. Its supporters want to extend small aircraft traffic and have proposed setting up a fly-in medical clinic, hotels or a conference centre there.

Its supporters say it makes no sense to close Tempelhof before BBI actually opens, and argue the smaller city airport could later complement the capacity of its larger peer.—Reuters