Sperenberg Airfield

The site was eventually equipped with a theatre, cinema, shops, bakery, schools, kindergarten, hospitals and other civilian facilities.

While air transport across the Soviet Union was accessible to on-duty military personnel and their families while in transit to/from the base, for non-military use there was a daily train service to and from Potsdam and onwards directly to Moscow.

After the 1989/1990 reunification of Germany, the Soviet Army agreed to return all former bases to the new German Federal Government by the end of 1994.

However, after the issuing of arrest warrants for the former Head of State of East Germany Erich Honecker in 1991, he spent his last night on German soil at Sperenberg before being flown to Moscow the next day.

While supporters liked the existing airfield infrastructure and underlined the hidden forest location and associated low noise, critics saw too great a distance from the federal capital as a negative criterion.

In 2009, the 2400 hectares of land covering the airfield and the surrounding former developments were handed back from the Federal Government to the state of Brandenburg.