On the May 8, 2010, for the first time in 80 years, the area of the now closed Tempelhof Airport was opened to the public. The city of Berlin chose the slogan “Bewegungsfreiheit” (freedom to move) for the ceremonial two day opening event, but already during the opening speech of mayor Klaus Wowereit it became quite clear that not everybody was equally welcome at the party. After some visitors had been whistling and booing during Wowereit’s speech, he addressed the crowd, saying that the newly opened park was not a park for those who want to holler and shout, but for peaceful citizens. Make of that whatever you want.

The controversy that evolved around this huge piece of land, roughly 380 hectares, the size of 500 soccer fields, set in a very central position in one of Europe’s major cities, has been going on for quite some time now and has started pretty much immediately after the closing of the airport in October 2008. Many different proposals on what to do with the area and the huge airport building, that is currently under a preservation order and is only being temporarily used for conventions such as Bread&Butter, have so far been made.

The suggestions ranged from turning the whole area into a car free city district, to converting the airport building into a private, airplane accessible plastic surgery clinic, to heaping up an artificial skiing mountain, to giving every Berlin citizen a square meter of land and, of course, to turning it into a public park.

But with the nasty word “gentrification” being on everyone’s lips in Berlin, the future of the area seemed already clear, especially with other big projects like “Media Spree” in the making. A lot of people feared that this piece of land would be turned into yet another playground for the rich and powerful, that property values and rents would rise in the neighboring districts and that the current residents would sooner or later be forced to look for more affordable housing elsewhere in the city. These fears seem justified, considering that Neukölln, and especially the northern part of it, is becoming more and more hip, that a very considerable part of the Neukölln population has a migratory background and/or forms part of the low income working class and that similar developments are in progress or have already taken place in other districts of the city, such as Friedrichshain or Prenzlauer Berg.

In the summer of 2009, the leftist action group “Squat Tempelhof” launched a week long campaign, “inviting” people to squat on the premises and to reclaim the inoperative Tempelhof Airport. The day of the main demonstration, over 1500 policemen equipped with full riot gear, police horses and dogs and water throwers were guarding the area. While on that day over 100 arrests were being made, the situation almost escalated when a plain-clothes police officer pulled his gun on some protester, when he felt threatened by them.

Now, almost a year after these incidents and seeing a relatively peaceful opening of the park, one has to ask oneself, if it wouldn’t have been possible to just spontaneously open the gates of the area in 2009 and thus take the wind out of the protesters sails, especially since the protest did not come as a surprise, because they had been announced as part of the leftist “action weeks” weeks before any actual actions.

But of course the answer is NO and the explanation is quite simple. The Berlin police has been complaining about the low funding of its forces for a long time now and especially after having to face the usual 1st of May riots (which are, by the way, just kiddy business compared to what is going on in Greece right now and serve pretty much only as a pretext for everybody to get at least once a year the chance to hurl a bottle at a policeman and for the police men to test their new batons) and the student protests of 2009, this opportunity seemed to present itself on a silver plate and was just the right thing to prove that the Berlin leftist groups are out of control and that only higher funding of the police forces will guarantee that anarchy wont brake loose in this humble city. So while the protests sure enough generated a lot of media attention, they seemed more than anything else like a harm of the leftist groups own interests. But while one can argue with the methods of these groups, they have certainly proven more than once, that if no protesting is going on, the city of Berlin will decide over peoples heads and not feel any shame about it. So it seemed especially sad that the owners of the allotment gardens that currently surround parts of the Tempelhof Airport were not joining the protests and obviously didn’t seem to understand, that if the surfacing plans of turning the area into a new city district filled with luxury apartments were to be carried out, they would be the first ones that would have got to go.

This is especially tragic because allotment garden owners have always formed very powerful interest groups and lobbies in Germany and have more than once successfully crossed city development plans. One year later they seem to have gotten a better understanding of the situation and some critical voices could be heard from their side, too, but they still did not publicly protest for the preservation of their gardens on the day of the park opening. Maybe they were afraid that people would also want to squat on their properties, since the fence surrounding the premises was the main thorn in the protesters side.

Why, if the park was now open to the public, it was only possible to get on the premises from 8am until 9.30pm and why the area would have to remain fenced in, were questions many people asked themselves and suspicions rose that the access to the park would not stay free of charge for long. Suspicions that don’t seem all too far fetched, considering that the same company that now runs and oversees the Tempelhof Airport area is also in charge of the Britzer Garten, a park that was constructed for the biannual Federal horticulture show in 1985 and that charges a 2 Euros entrance fee for adults.

The city of Berlin brought forward the argument that the area needed to remain fenced in, because in 2017 the International Garden Festival is going to take place on the premises and that for the time of the festival the entrance would of course not be free. Also they argued that they did not want troublemakers on the premises at night and that they want to keep the area clean, arguments that are both highly dubious and insulting to the people that live in the surrounding areas of the park.

Why would the park have to remain enclosed when other big parks, like the adjoining Hasenheide, manage well without any fences and when parks in parts of the city that seem less problematic than Neukölln, like the Tiergarten park, also have to deal with a considerable problem of trashing after a sunny weekend of BBQ and boozing?

But in what estimate the city of Berlin holds the Neukölln residents was pretty much made clear when Thomas Besling, the councilor responsible for construction of the SPD party, announced last week that he was hoping that high value properties, that might be constructed on the edges of the Tempelhof airport area in the near future, would positively influence the adjoining neighborhoods. One thing that can surely be said is, that the fence was put to good use on the opening weekend by the police and the security personnel. While regular visitors could pass the gates without any problems, people that were deemed suspicious by the organizers were having their bags checked and had protesting equipment, such as flags and flyers, taken from them.

Also an information stand that wanted to present an alternative and critical opening program and that wanted to call attention to the Nazi past of the airport and the concentration camp “ColumbiaHaus”, that was once situated on the airport premises, was forced off the area by the security staff and some of its organizers had to face ejection for the whole weekend.

The city of Berlin had decided that the opening weekend would be a pleasant one and that no critical voices should rain on their parade. And for most of the visitors it was indeed a pleasant weekend. At least during the day. Sports teams and dancing clubs presented themselves, all kinds of electric scooters could be tested-driven for free, there was food and music, people were having barbeques, flying kites, riding bikes and skateboards, playing with their kids and dogs or looking at the airport building.

But in the evening, when the organizers feared that some people might actually try and squat on the premises, a lot of the gates were closed by the security staff long before sundown and many visitors that wanted to enjoy the evening atmosphere did not get a chance to see the park that day. T

hey could have made use of their “freedom to move” to the main entrance, the only gate that remained open the whole day, but that would have meant a solid 20 minute walk from many of the other entrances.

Around 200 protesters were later escorted off the premises by the police and a couple of arrests were made but the situation remained relatively calm.

What is going to happen to this fought over piece of land in the future is still not clear. Over the next couple of years different sports clubs will install themselves on site and in 2017 the International Garden Festival will open its doors. Until then the Tempelhof Airport area will go back to what it had already been in the 18th century, under the reign of Emperor Friedrich Wilhelm I. A picnic and weekend trip spot for the Berlin citizens.

But so far no plans concerning the use of the area after the Garden Festival have been announced. One thing is for sure, though. If nobody gets involved in the decision making process, then the Berlin senate will try to further shape the city into something that would please Thilo Sarrazin a whole lot and that even Emperor Friedrich Wilhelm I might have appreciated.