The new Rhine-Main airport opens in Frankfurt’s city forest
Deutsche Luftschifffahrts-Aktiengesellschaft, the world’s first airline, was founded in 1909 and domiciled at an airport in Frankfurt-Rebstock. As this site could not be expanded to accommodate the increasing level of air traffic, the decision was taken in 1930 to build a new airport in Frankfurt’s city forest. However, the Great Depression meant that the project could not begin until 1934. First, a large area of forest west of the Frankfurt–Darmstadt motorway was cleared and the world’s largest Zeppelin hangar was built on the airport grounds. Construction of the entire installation was completed a year later and the Rhine-Main Air and Airship Port was officially opened on 8 July 1936. The first aircraft to land had taken off from the old Frankfurt-Rebstock Airport.
Although airship travel was abandoned in 1937 following the spectacular crash of the Hindenburg, the new airfield developed rapidly and came under the control of the German air force following the outbreak of the Second World War. The US air force repaired the facility after 1945 and it played a central role in the Berlin Air Lift. A large proportion of Frankfurt Airport was returned to German civil control after the establishment of West Germany. Newly sovereign over its air space, West Germany saw a rapid increase in international civil passenger traffic in the mid-1950s, and Lufthansa made Frankfurt its home base. Although repeated moves to expand the airport met with strong local resistance, by 2023 Frankfurt Airport had become the largest German airport in terms of passenger volume, ranking sixth in Europe and 16th in the world.
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