There’s a low rumbling sound of aircraft landing and engines whirring. Bags are loaded onto planes. In the terminal, people sip coffee, wait for their flight and reunite with loved ones in arrivals.

Berlin’s Tempelhofer Feld, a thousand-acre open space, long the Fatherland’s proudest parade ground, was made over into Europe’s crack airport five years after the War. Fifteen minutes’ taxi ride away ...