General
Tegel is a Berlin airport. A first predecessor was created at the beginning of the 20th century, when an airships division moved from the Tempelhofer Feld to a barracks on the southern edge of the Tegel shooting range. This use ended with the end of the First World War, because thereafter Germany was forbidden to maintain its own air force. The next flying activity followed in the 1930s, when the area was used for a time to test rockets. Finally the actual Tegel airport has been built in 1948 during the Berlin Airlift, in order to increase the airfield capacity in Berlin. After the Airlift, it served as a military airfield for the French armed forces, on which also a civil air transport took place. In 1974, the hexagonal terminal has been opened on the south side, and Tegel took over the entire air traffic of the free part of the city. After the reunification in 1990, Tegel developed into the most important airport of Berlin. Tegel is scheduled to be closed with the commissioning of the new airport BER.