Neighbouring municipalities are the town of Teltow in the east and Kleinmachnow in the north, both immediately bordering the Berlin city limits.

It originally consisted only of its old village green on a formerly important merchant road from Leipzig in Saxony via Güterfelde and Stahnsdorf, crossing the Bäke creek (the present-day Teltow Canal) at Kleinmachnow, and running northwards to Spandau.

With the construction of the Teltow Canal in the early 20th century, the opening of the large Stahnsdorf South-Western Cemetery in April 1909, the Wilmersdorfer Waldfriedhof and Friedenauer Waldfriedhof in 1913, and the opening of the S-Bahn route from Berlin-Wannsee station in June 1913 the development in a Berlin suburb began.

In the following decades, the current site was created by the development of privately owned homes, the connection to Berlin-Lichterfelde by a tram and building a settlement for workers at the Bosch manufactures in Kleinmachnow.

Seats in the municipal assembly (Gemeindevertretung) as of 2014 local elections: Stahnsdorf is one of the three home towns of the basketball team TKS 49ers.