(CNN) — While the imminent opening of Berlin's long-delayed Brandenburg Airport will cause many in the city to breathe a sigh of relief, it also means the sad end of an era.
As Brandenburg cranks into action, Berlin's Tegel Airport -- a much-loved relic from the last century -- will at long last be closing for good.
In truth, Tegel should've been decommissioned years ago. It was congested, tired and outdated. But Brandenburg's decade of delays kept it alive as a stand-in, and for all its faults, it had many admirers.
Even efforts to permanently close the airport earlier this year due to the coronavirus pandemic failed. Tegel managed to evade death one last time.
Despite its relatively small size, it became Germany's fourth busiest airport and symbolized Berlin like few other public buildings.
Berlin's airports were never just means of transport, never just faceless terminals in the middle of a field. These facilities perfectly reflect the turbulent story of the city in the 20th and 21st century.
The most famous, Tempelhof, was opened in 1927, and sealed its place in aviation history during the Berlin airlift of 1948-49 when the city was blockaded by the Soviet Union.
Now closed, it's been transformed into a park and sought-after location for World War II movies.
The city's other main airport, Schönefeld, opened in 1946 as the main airfield of East Germany, and retained something of that Soviet atmosphere well beyond the country's reunification.
Of all of them, it's Tegel that holds a special place in the heart of many Berliners.
Stalin's orders
Tegel Airport is scheduled to close for good on November 8, 2020.
JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP via Getty Images
Like so many other things in the city, Tegel Airport is a stopgap measure that somehow became permanent.
After World War II, when West Berlin was still in the hands of allied forces, there were plans to turn the area into allotments, but Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had different plans.
As the blockade he ordered began in June 1948, it turned out quickly that there was need for an additional airfield to bring supplies in, so the French authorities in charge of the Tegel district ordered the construction of a 2,500-meter-long runway -- the longest in Europe at the time.
The first plane, a USAF Douglas C-54, landed in November 1948.
After the blockade ended six months later, Tegel became the Berlin base of the French Air Force.
In the late 1950s, with increased air traffic coming into West Berlin in ever bigger planes, the runways at Tempelhof were proving too short, so over the next two decades Tegel became the main airport.
The city's special status during the Cold War meant that only the Allies could operate military and civilian aircraft from and to Tegel. All passengers had to use the airport's original small prefabricated terminal building.
Despite these cramped conditions and restrictions, for some the airport truly was a gateway to freedom.
Drahomira Bukowiecki fled communist Czechoslovakia in 1968 to West Berlin and was sentenced to 10 years hard labor in
