A settlement on the small Nuthe creek was first mentioned in the 1375 Landbuch (domesday book) by Emperor Charles IV of Luxembourg, who also ruled as Margrave of Brandenburg since 1373.

In the mid-18th century the new village of Nowawes was founded by King Frederick II of Prussia[1] and settled with Protestant Bohemian deportees, predominantly weavers who as descendants of the Unity of the Brethren had fled from the Counter-Reformation's suppression of their faith in the lands of the Habsburg monarchy during Empress Maria Theresa's rule.

Marika Rökk, Sybille Schmitz, Lilian Harvey, Willy Fritsch and Brigitte Horney lived and worked here when film production by the UFA continued without a break in the Nazi period, while many Jewish actors and directors were dispossessed and had to flee from Germany.

[2] During the 1945 Potsdam Conference, the representatives of the victorious Allies, Joseph Stalin, President Harry S. Truman, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill (until July 26, when he was succeeded by Clement Attlee) resided in mansions of Neubabelsberg.

In 1833, Prince Wilhelm I, German Emperor had obtained the consent of his father King Frederick William III of Prussia to build a summer residence for him and his spouse Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach on the slope of the Babelsberg hill, overlooking the Havel river.

The first plans were designed in a Neo-Gothic style by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, but soon did not satisfy the growing demands of Wilhelm, who - as the marriage of his elder brother King Frederick William IV produced no children - meanwhile had achieved the status of Prussian crown prince.