The former airport and surroundings are now a park called Tempelhofer Feld, making it the largest inner city open space in the world.

These localities grew from historic villages on the Teltow plateau founded in the early 13th century in the course of the German Ostsiedlung.

Tempelhove was first mentioned in a 1247 deed issued at the Walkenried Abbey as a Komturhof (commander's court, the smallest holding entity of a military order) of the Knights Templar, whose leadership and many fellow knights had been expelled from the Kingdom of Jerusalem upon its downfall in 1291.

After Pope Clement V officially abolished the Order of the Temple in 1312, the knights of Saint John (the Johanniter), backed by Margrave Waldemar of Brandenburg, took over the villages of Tempelhof, Mariendorf, and Marienfelde.

One, the Krummer Pfuhl, located in the Franckepark, after being turned into public swimming baths in the nineteenth century, has completely dried out and is now an enclosed deer park.