Neukölln is the northernmost inner-city quarter (Ortsteil) of Neukölln, one of the twelve boroughs of Berlin. The quarter's history begins with its foundation as a Knights Templar stronghold during the Ostsiedlung era in the late 12th to early 13th century. Following its demilitarization and rededication as an agricultural Templar estate around 1245, its ownership was transferred to the Knights Hospitaller in 1318. The estate was legally elevated to the status of village in its foundational charter of 1360, which is the earliest source for its original toponym, Richardsdorf, which was later contracted to Ricksdorf.
In the 15th century, Ricksdorf became a shared treasury village of the Cölln and Alt-Berlin magistracies, a status that lasted for three centuries through the breakup and reunification of Cölln and Berlin. In the 18th century, its official modern name Rixdorf emerged, and the village was expanded with a large colony of Bohemian refugees. In the 19th century, the colony Böhmisch-Rixdorf eventually united with the historical Deutsch-Rixdorf, and the new village grew into the largest town of Prussia, becoming an important industrial center of the region. In 1899, Rixdorf was granted the status of an independent and free city. In 1912, the city was renamed to Neukölln.
With the 1920 Greater Berlin Act, Neukölln merged with the city of Berlin and, together with the former villages and towns of Britz, Buckow and Rudow, formed Neukölln, a large borough of Germany's capital, which stretches all the way from the city center's lower east side to the southern border with Brandenburg. Since the Weimar Republic, Neukölln's fate has been closely intertwined with the history of Berlin. Over its long history, the quarter Neukölln has always been a popular destination for colonists, migrant workers, refugees and immigrants.
Etymologies
Rixdorf: Richard's village At its official foundation in 1360 as a Knights Hospitaller angerdorf, Rixdorf had already been called Richarsdorp (Richardsdorf, "Richard's Village") for a long time.A proposed earlier toponym for the preceding Knights Templar hamlet is *Richardshof ("Richard's Court"); cf. Heike Schroll, Das Landesarchiv Berlin und seine Bestände: Übersicht der Bestände aus der Zeit bis 1945 (Tektonik-Gruppe A), Berliner Wissenschaftsverlag, Berlin, 2003, p. 134; in Low German the toponym would have been Richarshove; compare Tempelhof as Tempelhove. A potential date for the emergence of this hypothetical toponym is the stronghold's demilitarization into a manor (ca. 1245); however, the Templar yard or court could as well have been called Richarsdorp from the beginning, as that was already its toponym at the time of the village's official foundation in 1360. The foundational charter emphasizes the legal elevation to village status, and does not mention any renaming, earlier toponyms or planned extensions; furthermore, even as a yard, Richardsdorf had for a long time had several facilities and buildings (Eugen Brode, Geschichte Rixdorfs, Rixdorf 1899, p. 4 sq.), so the designation as a Dorf ("village") is more likely even for its Templar era before the legal status change in 1360. Two alternate Low German spellings, Richarstorp and Richardstorff, are already present in the foundational charter. The village's name was usually pronounced with mostly elided or shifted consonants (). Alternate spellings of the 14th century were Richardsdorp and Richardstorpp, while the 15th century introduced Reicherstorff, Richerstorp and Rigerstorp (1435).Sometimes written as Riegenstorp in later secondary sources.
From the 16th century onward, vernacularly contracted forms took hold.Compare e.g. engl. Richard or Rickard → Rick. Ricksdorf (1525) became a widely accepted spelling for two centuries, with many alternate forms appearing in historical records, for example Reichstorff (1541), Richstorff, Rigstorff (1542) and Richsdorf (1543), and in the 17th and 18th century Rechsdorff, Rechsdorp, Risdorf, Reichsdorp, Rieksdorf, Ryksdorf, Riecksdorff (1693) and Riechsdorf (1737). The earliest known source for Rixdorf is from the year 1709, and it became the official modern High German spelling in 1797. Still, the central historical localities Richardplatz and Richardstraße have retained the town's original etymology, and were never renamed to Rixplatz ("Rix Plaza") or Rixstraße ("Rix Road").This is because the x in Rix- also originated from the original toponym's genitive s (Richardsdorf, "Richard's Village"), which was never part of the plaza's and street's toponyms.
The mainstream theory on the etymology of Richardsdorf, and therefore of Rixdorf, assumes an eponymous individual called Richard,Main contemporary spellings were e.g. Richart and Rikard or latinized variants Ricardus and Richardus. Generally, the name Richard means "strong ruler" and stems from the Proto-Germanic roots *rīk- ("ruler", "leader") and *hardu- ("hardy", "strong"), originally from PIE *reg- ("to move in a straight line", "to lead", "to rule") and *kar- ("hard"). The syllable -dorp (Dorf, Old English thorp, "village") stems from the Proto-Germanic root *thurpa- ("pen", "compound", "fenced area"), and possily from PIE *treb- ("dwelling"). Taking into account the proposed older toponym *Richardshof, the word Hof (hove) is a cognate of Hufe ("oxgang") from Proto-Germanic *hōfaz and the root *hōfa- ("hoof"), possibly originating from PIE *kop- ("to beat", "to strike"). allegedly a local Knight Templar, bailiff or commander of the Tempelhof commandery, or even the original administrator or chief settler (Lokator) of Richardsdorf in the early 13th to 14th century. However, no Richard is mentioned in historical sources in connection with the Templar villages of the Teltow, let alone an actual Knight Templar per Alemanniam et Slaviam, so alternate etymologies were eventually propagated,A prominent contemporary Richard with at least indirect connections to the Templar Order was Richard of Cornwall (died 1272), who in 1241 during the Barons' Crusade negotiated a proper burial for the Templars killed at the Battle at Gaza, and who also transferred sovereignty over Ascalon castle to the German king Frederick II, who had already laid the groundwork for the German colonization of the Teltow region after the Northern Crusades (see below); Richard became King of the Romans (and therefore of Germany) in 1257, however against the vote by Brandenburg's Margrave John I. The only prominent contemporary Knight Templar called Richard was Richart (Richardus) de Bures (Richard de Bures), who, at the time when Rixdorf's original Templar stronghold was demilitarized into a manor (ca. 1245, see below), served as Templar grand master after the death or capture of his predecessor Armand de Périgord in 1244, and who himself died a Templar martyr on 9 May 1247 during the battle at Lake Tiberias, which was followed by the destruction of Tiberias. However, only the former of these two Richards has ever been proposed in Richardsdorf etymologies. For the later Hospitaller era (since 1318), no person called Richard has been associated with Richardsdorf or Tempelhof in the extant historical records. while exaggerating folk etymologies also emerged and tried to connect the toponym to important historical or canonized Richards.Among them were nobleman and Christian saint Richard the Pilgrim (died 720), famous crusader king Richard the Lionheart (died 1199), and primarily bishop Richard of Chichester (died 1253), who was canonized in 1262 and eventually became a popular saint in Europe, but possibly too late to have influenced the toponym Richarsdorp. Still, in 1930 he was chosen as the eponymous patron saint of the original St. Richard chapel in Rixdorf. In modern times, alternate spellings like Reichsdorp spawned secondary folk etymologies different from Richard, namely from Reich ("empire") or the surname Reich or Ryk, but without taking the documented earlier variants and vernacular contractions into account.The latter hypothesis was presented in Friedrich Nicolai, Beschreibung der königlichen Residenzstädte Berlin und Potsdam, Berlin 1779–86, Vol. 3 (1786), p. 1047, s.v. "I. Anhang: Umgebung von Berlin – Ryksdorf, Britz – IV. Vor dem Kottbusserthore"; Nicolai propagated an origin from the Ryke (Reiche) family, one of Cölln's and Berlin's old patrician dynasties (see also Rykestraße), who allegedly had founded the hamlet in the 13th century. Apart from the toponym's known etymological progression from Richardsdorf, the theory created chronological problems, because the Ryke history in Tempelhof only began in the 14th century: in 1344, Johannes Ryke, a patrician citizen of Cölln, had been given the schultheiß court of Marienfelde south of Tempelhof by Herrenmeister (Lord of the Knights) Hermann von Werberg, bailiff and Statthalter (Governor) of Brandenburg, who in turn would play an important role in the official foundation of Richardsdorf (see below), which might have been the impetus for Nicolai's alternate theory; this, however, demanded that the Ryke family's local political influence needed to be backdated by at least a century (Eugen Brode, Geschichte Rixdorfs, Rixdorf 1899, p. 6). Generally, for the theories on Neukölln's Rixdorf, no primary sources exist that would refute the Richard etymology and corroborate a clear distinction between the later contracted form Rixdorf and its sufficiently documented toponymic origin as Richarsdorp. Ideas of a Slavic origin were non-academic and anecdotal at best, and are disregarded in modern literature.One etymological hypothesis surmised an origin from Slavic *rъžь ("rye"), leading to Rixdorf as Roggendorf ("rye village"); alternatively, the Slavic *rykъ (*rykati, ricas, "to growl, roar"), with Rixdorf roughly as Lärmerdorf ("village of bawlers"), was also said to be a possible etymological root. However, Slavic origin theories had already been rejected in the 19th century; cf. Eugen Brode, Geschichte Rixdorfs, Rixdorf 1899, p. 6; Gundakkar Klaussen, "Rixdorf, Preußens jüngste Stadt", in: Adolf Kröner (ed.), Die Gartenlaube 8, Leipzig 1899, p. 246 sq. A hydronymic origin from *rěka (reka, "river"), alluding to the river Spree, whose eastern shores belonged to the Tempelhof dominion, after a dialectal shift from reka to rika, with Rixdorf as Flussdorf ("river village"), is not possible, because ikavisms or similar yat reflexes to /i/ did not exist in the West Slavic dialects of the region. Instead, Rixdorf is regarded as a classic example of a toponym based on a founder's or important leader's name, comparable to other localities of Berlin like Heinersdorf (from Hinrick, Heinrich) and Reinickendorf (from Reginhard, Reinicke, Reinhard).
Neukölln: the new colony