BERLIN-TEMPELHOF, Hitler’s favourite airport, may be rescued from closure by Ronald Lauder, one of the world’s most influential philanthropists for Jewish causes.

The extraordinary design of the Tempelhof complex — the terminal has huge cathedral-like ceilings — prompted Norman Foster, the British architect, to call it the “mother of all airports”.

Its future is in doubt because the cash-strapped Berlin city government wants to close it next year and move all flights to an airport east of the city. Now the Estée Lauder perfume empire has, according to Finance Ministry sources, submitted a proposal to convert the terminal into a luxury clinic. One landing strip would be retained so that wealthy patients could land and take off within reach of the city hospital. The Estée Lauder group has been investing in health spas and aesthetic surgery.

The heirs to Estée Lauder, Ronald and Leonard Lauder, are significant shareholders in the profitable group, which has 22,000 employees worldwide. Ronald Lauder also has a foundation that is sparking the revival of Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe: it has sponsored restoration work in Auschwitz concentration camp, set up Jewish colleges and encouraged the training of rabbis.

It is ironic then that Mr Lauder is being mentioned in connection with the rescue of one of the few remaining pieces of Nazi architecture left in Berlin. Although it was used as an airport before the Nazis came to power, Hitler and his master planner, Albert Speer, put their decisive stamp on it from 1936.

“It was supposed to be the gateway to Europe,” says Professor Manfred Goertemacher, a historian at Potsdam University.

“Hitler wanted people to be impressed when they arrived in Berlin.” Hitler wanted the airport to be capable of transporting six million people a year. The front of the terminal is a 3,000ft (900m) concave curve looking out on to the aerodrome and seems, even now, to have been designed with swastika banners in mind.

The architect Ernst Sagebiel — who designed Hermann Goering’s air ministry with a flat roof long enough to land a plane — was commissioned to convert Tempelhof into a massive celebration of fascist power. Sagebiel created a raised stand for 65,000 spectators on the roof of the terminal to cheer the Führer. When work ceased because of the war, he had already built 14 staircases. Most of the airport was ready by 1941 — already too late for Nazi triumphalism, but still a favoured spot for the Führer.

Since the war Tempelhof has been a symbol of freedom rather than fascism for West Berliners — hence the energetic campaign to save it from closure.

Economically, though, Tempelhof has become a liability for Berlin. Last year it ferried fewer than 500,000 passengers out of a total of 13 million who passed through Berlin. Planners have been searching desperately for a use for the airport after its formal closure.

DICTATOR'S MARK

All that remains of the Reich Chancellery, built by architect Albert Speer on Hitler’s orders, is the stone taken from the demolished building to construct a war memorial for the Soviet Union

Times Recommends

• The Japanese Prime Minister is doomed: or is he?
• Brighton company 'involved in cyber attack'
• The art of survival: it’s all in the mind