Neukölln (locality)

Neukölln (German: [nɔʏˈkœln] ⓘ), formerly Rixdorf (German: [rˈɪksdɔɾf]), from 1899 to 1920 an independent city, is a large inner-city quarter of Berlin in the homonymous borough of Neukölln, and evolved around the historic village of Rixdorf. With 162,548 inhabitants (2025) the quarter has the second-largest population of Berlin after Prenzlauer Berg. Since the early 13th century, the local settlements, villages and cities down to the present day have always been a popular destination for colonists and immigrants. In modern times, it was originally shaped by the working class and gastarbeiters, but western immigration since the turn of the millennium has led to gentrification and a rejuvenation of the quarter's culture and nightlife.

Geography

Neukölln is on the North European Plain, which is typically characterized by low-lying marshy woodlands with a mainly flat topography. The quarter lies on the geological border between the shallow Weichselian Warsaw-Berlin Urstromtal glacial valley and the northernmost edge of the Teltow young drift ground moraine plateau, specifically the Rollberge, a small range of glacial hills rising to the south of Hermannplatz and the street Hasenheide, and to the west of Rixdorf and the street Karl-Marx-Straße. Neukölln's average natural elevation is 43.6 m (143 ft) above NHN, ranging from 32.3 m (106 ft) to 54.8 m (180 ft), with the highest man-made elevation at 67.9 m (223 ft) achieved by the Rixdorfer Höhe, a schuttberg in the Volkspark Hasenheide. Neukölln's geographical center, based on a minimum bounding plane, is located east of Richardstraße 101 near Kirchgasse at a linear distance of approximately 2.3 km (1.4 mi) to the river Spree with an elevation of 34.8 m (114 ft).

Location

Neukölln forms the lower east side of Berlin's city center within the Ringbahn, and is the northernmost quarter in the homonymous borough of Neukölln, with the borough stretching all the way to Berlin's southern border with Brandenburg. The quarter, administratively abbreviated Neukö, is officially an Ortsteil, and the borough a Verwaltungsbezirk (administrative district), in Berlin designated Bezirk (district). Different from the borough, the smaller quarter of Neukölln has no mayor or representative assembly of its own. To distinguish the quarter from the borough, the latter is sometimes informally called Groß-Neukölln ("Greater Neukölln"), while the quarter is also called Berlin-Neukölln or Nord-Neukölln.

In the south, the quarter Neukölln is adjacent to the quarter Britz, which is also part of greater Neukölln, and to Späthsfelde in the quarter Baumschulenweg east of Britz. In the north and north-west, it borders on the quarter Kreuzberg in the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough, namely the southern part of the historical Luisenstadt district in the SO 36 neighborhood, and the Graefekiez and Bergmannkiez in the Kreuzberg 61 neighborhood, which were once part of the historical Tempelhofer Vorstadt district. Neukölln's northernmost tip is also adjacent to Kreuzberg's neighborhood Wassertorplatz in the southern part of the historical Friedrichstadt district. In the west and south-west, Neukölln borders on the quarter Tempelhof in the Tempelhof-Schöneberg borough. In the north-east to south-east, Neukölln borders on the quarters Alt-Treptow, Plänterwald and western Baumschulenweg, which, together with Späthsfelde, are all part of the Treptow-Köpenick borough in former East Berlin.

Neukölln is separated from Kreuzberg by the park Volkspark Hasenheide, the Landwehr Canal, and the streets Kottbusser Damm and Hasenheide as far as the city square Südstern, which conforms to Berlin's historical Weichbildgrenze (1861–1919). With Tempelhof, Neukölln shares the Tempelhofer Feld, the vast field of the former Tempelhof Airport, now a popular recreation area. The Britz Canal, the green corridor Heidekamppark with the trench Heidekampgraben, the Kiefholzstraße and several urban streets in the Harzer Kiez separate Neukölln from the quarters of Treptow-Köpenick in former East Berlin. Finally, the Stadtring motorway with the Carl-Weder-Park, streets like Britzkestraße, Juliushof and Grenzallee, as well as the southern end of the Neukölln Ship Canal, form the administrative border with the Britz quarter.

The Teltow Canal, on the other hand, forms the geographical and demographic border within the borough Neukölln. The canal separates the dense urban areas of Neukölln and northern Britz with their higher share of immigrants and lower-income citizenry from the borough's southern residential areas, which, with the exception of Gropiusstadt, are mainly characterized by a larger number of family homes and middle-class households.

Subdivisions

Neighborhoods

Neukölln has nine primary neighborhoods (Kieze), administratively called Ortslagen, among them the historical sites of Neukölln's foundation south-east of the quarters's geographical center,

• Richardplatz-Süd

to the south and south-east of the central plaza Richardplatz, and

• Böhmisch-Rixdorf

to the north and north-west, which together are commonly referred to as Rixdorf or Alt-Rixdorf ("Old Rixdorf"). The other primary neighborhoods are (from north to south):

• Reuterkiez,
• Flughafenkiez,
• Schillerkiez,
• Rollberg,
• Weiße Siedlung,
• Körnerpark, and
• High-Deck-Siedlung.

Other sites

Several commonly recognized secondary neighborhoods exist in Neukölln. The most important and oldest central urban community is the Donaukiez along Donaustraße between Sonnenallee and Karl-Marx-Straße, including Hermannplatz at its western end. The oldest suburban community is the historically important Dammwegsiedlung just south of the Weiße Siedlung, an early modern housing estate from the 1920s. A recently evolved neighborship of cultural importance is the Weserkiez with its famous party mile around Weserstraße north of Sonnenallee. Due to urban development and expansion, many other kiez communities have formed over the decades, sometimes distinguished in the city's official LOR framework (see below) or the focus of current or former neighborhood management, while an outlier is Kreuzkölln, which is a meta-neighborhood and loosely defined cultural sphere, described by a berolinism, a modern jocular toponym, which since the mid-2000s has often been used by new residents and younger natives for the northern parts of the quarter and the surrounding regions of Kreuzberg.

Urban planning

Berlin's official urban planning framework, on the other hand, divides Berlin's boroughs and quarters into so-called Lebensweltlich orientierte Räume ("lifeworld-oriented regions"). In this LOR framework, the quarter of Neukölln, non-administrative district 10 in borough 08, as of 2025, is divided into five regions, each of them further compartmentalized into a total of 21 LORs, also called Planungsräume (planning areas).

Nature

• Tempelhofer Feld
• Hasenheide
• Körnerpark
• Emmauswald
• Neukölln Ship Canal
• Rixdorfer Teich, Hasenheide
• Red fox, Tempelhofer Feld
• Common kestrel, Tempelhofer Feld

As of 2024, Berlin ranks among the greenest cities in Germany with only 44.5% of sealed ground, an average of 4.24 m3/m2 (4.64 cu yd/sq yd) of vegetation, and a 50.6% share of surface area with green space (44%) or water bodies (6.6%), which provides a cooler urban climate and many options for natural habitats and urban recreation. Similarly, the borough of Neukölln has only 45.6% of sealed ground, mainly due to its extensive recreational parks, which, together with other nature areas, have a share of ca. 43%, with green spaces at 35%, of which 19.9% are parks and meadows, and up to 8% of water surfaces. However, due to the absence of large-scale true forests (see below), the borough only has an average of 3.0 m3/m2 (3.3 cu yd/sq yd) of vegetation. Nevertheless, from 2019 to 2024 this was still enough to ensure an average maximum summer midday surface temperature of 36.01 °C (96.82 °F), more than one degree Celsius (two degrees Fahrenheit) lower than Berlin's hottest borough of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, which measured 37.22 °C (99.00 °F). Together with Pankow, this makes Neukölln one of the coolest boroughs in Berlin's inner city, and places it slightly below the class of boroughs that is categorized by an above-average risk of heat exposure for its residents. However, average estimates for the northern quarter of Neukölln with 72.5% sealed ground and only 15% green areas would result in a much higher heat exposure compared to the borough's southern quarters, even though at approximately 7.5%, the quarter Neukölln (including Kreuzberg's Landwehr Canal) has a rather high share of water surface area.

Parks and forests

The borough of Neukölln, and especially its homonymous quarter, is densely populated and urbanized, and only has 3.1% (2019) of original natural land and true forests left, second to last before the borough Tempelhof-Schöneberg. However, the lack of true forests, which in Neukölln are only 0.1% of the overall surface area, is offset by many green plazas, parks and other vegetated recreational areas at an overall share of 35%, not counting active cemeteries, which actually make Neukölln one of the greenest of all Berlin boroughs, even taking the city's top spot with 19.9% of parks and meadows.

Green space in the quarter Neukölln has a relatively low share of approximately 15% and is dominated by small to medium-sized parks, but the two major parks in the western part of Neukölln, the Volkspark Hasenheide and the Tempelhofer Feld, more than make up for the lack of large green areas in other spots. Smaller parks are found in all neighborhoods, many of which are among Neukölln's historical garden monuments, for example the Anita-Berber-Park (Schillerpromenade), a former cemetery, and the stadium park of the Werner Seelenbinder sporting grounds, both of which connect to the Tempelhofer Feld, the recently decommissioned cemetery Neuer St. Jacobi Friedhof (Schillerpromenade), now mostly used as a park, with parts under management by the Prinzessinnengärten gardening project, Lessinghöhe and Thomashöhe (Körnerpark), the Körnerpark itself, a former gravel quarry, with the Rübelandpark connecting Thomashöhe and Körnerpark, the Comenius Garden (Rixdorf), Herbert-Krause-Park and Von-der-Schulenburg-Park near High-Deck-Siedlung, and extensive stretches of garden allotments like Helmutstal and Märkische Schweiz close to the quarter's eastern border, including the Heidekamppark, a long green corridor adjacent to the trench Heidekampgraben. On the southern and south-western borders to the quarters Britz and Tempelhof respectively is the Carl-Weder-Park, a stretched park above the underground Stadtring autobahn west of the Britzer Damm. Immediately adjacent to the north is the 3.8 ha (0.04 km2) or 9.4 acres (0.01 mi2) Emmauswald, often called Emmi by Berliners, a former cemetery and the quarter's only true natural forest, with the Emmauskirchhof, a still active graveyard, connecting to the east. Furthermore, several inner-city squares and building complexes have been designed with green stretches.

Water bodies

In the borough Neukölln, water bodies are up to 8% of the whole surface area, with the northern quarter at approximately 7.5% trailing behind Rudow and especially Britz, two of Neukölln's four other quarters. Like its parks and forests, with the exception of the Emmauswald, all of Neukölln's water bodies are man-made. Several of the quarter's parks contain artificial lakes and ponds, for example the Volkspark Hasenheide (Rixdorfer Teich), the Comenius Garden (Weltenmeer), the Karma Culture Garden in Rixdorf, and the Von-Der-Schulenburg-Park (High-Deck-Siedlung). Neukölln's prominent waterway is the Neukölln Ship Canal, which connects the Teltow and Britz Canals with the Landwehr Canal and (through Kreuzberg) the river Spree. The Neukölln Harbor, consisting of an upper and lower basin and connected via the Neukölln Watergate, was built in tandem with the Britz Harbor north of the Teltow Canal. Smaller landing stages are located along the Neukölln Ship Canal until Kiehlufer, and these Neukölln Docklands are currently subject to extensive redevelopment.

Wildlife

Like all of inner-city Berlin, Neukölln, despite its high level of urbanization, has a diverse and thriving population of urban wildlife. The quarter's sufficient share of vegetation, parks and other green areas (see above) not only provides a cooler urban climate, but also promotes the settlement of wildlife. Wild species in Neukölln have usually found their safe retreats along the waterways and in the bigger parks and cemeteries, while using migration routes into the central neighborhoods along train tracks and through the interconnected park and cemetery areas, for example from Tempelhofer Feld to Lessinghöhe. Greener quarters adjacent to Neukölln in the south and east also promote migration into the quarter.

Neukölln's nature and wildlife are primarily managed by rangers from Berlin's Stiftung Naturschutz (Charity for Nature Conservation). Political measures over the past years have improved natural habitats and the ecological component of Berlin's path toward a more sustainable development. Among them are a strict urban tree planting and replacement policy, an emphasis on discreetly controlled rank growth, both in parks and on median strips, protected nature areas in larger parks, and more neighborhood-oriented action like roof gardens, for example the Kranichgarten at the Neukölln Arcaden, vegetated and partially fenced Baumscheiben around road trees instead of tree grates, as well as vegetated parklets. The Tempelhofer Feld is home to several protected and endangered plant and animal species like the Italian locust and the wood white butterfly. Almost half of the vast park's bird species are on the list of highly endangered species, among them the whinchat and the wheatear.

Generally, Neukölln's wildlife is no different from that of other inner-city quarters of Berlin, so red foxes, rabbits and smaller rodent species like the red squirrel and several muroidea as well as urban birds like doves, crows and (on the quarter's canals) swans, geese and ducks are almost ubiquitous. Less noticeable species include the badger, the beech marten, the hedgehog, bats, the true toad and other species of frog. In recent years, otters and beavers have also made a comeback in Neukölln, for example at the Landwehr Canal. To date, no sightings of wild boar have been recorded for the quarter Neukölln.

While the plain and unadorned surfaces of modern architecture have all but pushed out traditional urban bird species like the common swift and the house martin, Berlin, unlike other German cities, is still a safe haven for many others. A prominent example is the sparrow, and Berlin is now regarded as the "sparrow capital" of Germany. Only few predatory birds, which are common to Berlin, are native to the quarter of Neukölln, for example the sparrowhawk in the Emmauswald. Most other species intrude from peripheral areas, for example the common kestrel from the borough's southern quarters. Rank growth and gardening policies have been the basis for a slight revival of the urban insect population, including endangered or almost extinct species like the vine weevil, which also reattracts bird species to the urbanized areas. Furthermore, Neukölln is now home to 300 species of wild bees.

Like all cities in today's globalized world, Berlin and Neukölln are also home to several invasive species like the raccoon or the Himalayan balsam. Neukölln in particular has a fairly large population of nutria and muskrat. Several foreign species of fish and crustaceans have settled in Berlin's waterways, and have markedly shifted the balance of indigenous species. Especially the population of red swamp crayfish has risen sharply in the past decade, including in the Landwehr Canal, and the reintroduction of eels into Berlin's waterways is planned as a countermeasure.

History

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.

Demographics and social statistics

As of 2025, Neukölln with its 162,548 inhabitants has the second-highest population of Berlin's quarters after Prenzlauer Berg. The borough's current budget deficit stands at €10.2 million ($11,39 million), and in 2024 Neukölln's district office declared the third spending freeze in a year. In 2023, the unemployment rate in Neukölln was at 14.1%. The poverty rate was at 29%, more than a third of Neukölln's children and adolescents were poor or at risk of poverty, and the borough is currently the only German district with its own poverty commissioner.

As of 2025, 58.3% of residents in the quarter Neukölln are German or foreign first or later-generation immigrants, up from 46% in 2019 and 48% in 2021, with roots in more than 155 countries. The overall share of foreigners in the quarter currently stands at 36%, and has continued to rise in the past years due to western immigration and the ongoing European migrant crisis, while the number of Ukrainians in the borough Neukölln increased by 11.9% in 2023 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Due to the quarter's dense urban character, only far less than five percent of Berlin's refugees can be accommodated in Neukölln. As of 2025, the percentage of foreigners without German citizenship is 21.6% on the low end in Bouchéstraße (LOR 100313), and as high as 42.9% in Treptower Straße Nord (LOR 100419), while the highest share in the quarter's historical center stands at 40.3% in the Donaustraße neighborhood (LOR 100314). The bulk of the most recent migration originated in Islamic countries and Vietnam.

Crime, police and fire safety

Two out of Berlin's seven so-called "crime-burdened locations" (kriminalitätsbelastete Orte, kbOs) are in Neukölln, Hermannplatz with Donaukiez including Sonnenallee, and Hermannstraße around Hermannstraße Station, with the local U-Bahn lines connecting to four of Berlin's five other kbOs. Especially in these two kbOs and their surrounding city blocks, Neukölln is also characterized by social and religious conflicts, manifesting in educational challenges, violent felonies including occasional gun violence, organized crime by Islamic clans, ranging from recurring gang and drug violence to protection racketeering, and occasional rioting and arson, transphobia and homophobia. Among the critical annual events for the Berlin Police are the so-called Revolutionary 1st of May Demonstration, which usually takes place in Kreuzberg and Neukölln as part of the local May Day, and the New Year's Eve festivities, which in recent past have often resulted in rioting and arson. Since 2022, Neukölln has had the highest garbage pollution of all Berlin boroughs.

Neukölln, together with the borough Neukölln, is part of the Directorate 5 of the Berlin Police. The quarter Neukölln is patrolled by Precinct 54 (Sonnenallee) and Precinct 55 (Rollbergstraße), while the S-Bahn and intercity trains and stations are patrolled by the German Federal Police. For Berlin's and Neukölln's kbOs, the police have been granted special authorities, specifically identity verification and searches of persons or their belongings without a warrant, probable cause or reasonable suspicion, which is embedded in a general weapons ban including the right to warrantless searches for Berlin's public transport system, enacted by the Berlin Senate in July 2025 after amendments to Berlin's ASOG law and constitution. Additional continuous AI-assisted video surveillance of all kbOs is to commence in 2026.

As with the police, Neukölln is part of the Directorate 5 of the Berlin Fire Brigade. It is served by the Fire Stations 5000 and 5001, whereas the latter is part of Berlin's volunteer fire department. Both stations are in the center of Neukölln on Kirchhofstraße in Rixdorf, so the neighborhoods of Neukölln are often served by stations in adjacent quarters, for example the Reuterkiez by Fire Stations 1600 and 1601 on Wiener Straße in Kreuzberg nearby.

Religion

The old village of Rixdorf had been part of the Holy Roman Empire as a Knights Templar and Hospitaller settlement, so it was historically a Roman Catholic village. However, the Reformation in the 16th century changed the religious makeup of many German regions, especially in the northern and eastern parts of the empire. Furthermore, in the early 18th century, Rixdorf came under Prussian political and cultural hegemony, which included Protestantism as the effective church of the state, so the Christian affiliative distribution gradually shifted away from the Roman faith. Rixdorf in particular was a prominent example of this development, because it eventually obtained a strong Protestant community, descended both from the early 18th century Moravian colonists and the industrial immigrants from the Eastern parts of the German Empire (1870–1910). In the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, the Christian parishes of Berlin, and in particular of Neukölln, hemorrhaged a significant share of their members. Following the secularization in the age of Enlightenment after the Reformation, many of the 20th century's global secular, atheist and sometimes downright antireligious political ideologies like communism, socialism and national socialism flourished (and clashed) in Berlin (see History of Neukölln § Berlin-Neukölln), and a Marxist-Leninist regime eventually ruled over the Eastern parts of Germany and East Berlin for many decades. For this reason, a large part of Germany's population today is not affiliated with any religion, and Berlin in particular is often called the "atheist capital of the world". Beyond that, Neukölln had always been a left-leaning working class district, and a home to progressive voices from social reformists to Biblical critics like Bruno Bauer, so the effects with regard to irreligion are visible to this day.

German statistics offices are not required to gather information on the religious affiliations of the citizenry. The German church tax system, however, offers insight into the membership strength of at least the two primary Christian denominations in the borough of Neukölln. As of 2025, only 19.02% of Neukölln's residents are Christian, of which 7.18% are Catholic, while 11.84% belong to one of Germany's associated mainstream Protestant denominations (EKD). At roughly 72%, the vast majority of Berlin's residents, however, is irreligious, while 1.5% are of other faiths, not counting Islam, with similar numbers to be expected for Neukölln. Due to the quarter's ethnic makeup and history of Ottoman, Turkish and modern Muslim immigration, a significant minority adheres to the Islamic faiths, of which the Sunni branch forms the majority. Statistics for the quarter itself do not exist, but based on reliable, but partially outdated numbers for the whole of Berlin (4%) and the borough Neukölln (7–9%), the share of the Muslim population in the quarter Neukölln would be at least twice as high as the borough's overall share. In 2012, residents of Turkish descent made up 45% of the immigrant and 12% of the overall population, accounting for two thirds of the quarter's Muslim population, which at the time stood at a share of 18%. Increasing immigration from Islamic countries since 2015 therefore suggests that unofficial estimates of at least 20% and up to 25% (2024) are not false. Either way, Islam and (more precisely) Sunni Islam forms the largest religious cohort in the quarter Neukölln, dwarfed only by the number of irreligious residents at approximately 50–60%.

Within Neukölln's cosmopolitan citizenry, many other religions and denominations are present and thriving. The borough of Neukölln is home to several thousand Hindus, mainly from India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and especially the number of Indian expats has been rising steadily since the 2022 enactment of the Deutsch-indisches Migrationsabkommen (German-Indian Treaty on Migration). Still, the religious and cultural diversity of German society, not least in Berlin, has suffered greatly in the past 90 years, namely from the loss of Jewish culture due to the Shoa and Jewish exodus from Germany. Jewish life cautiously resurged in the 1990s with the immigrating late repatriates from Eastern Europe, and the trend continued with the 21st century influx of young people from all around the world, many of whom come from Israel. However, in 2022 only 1% of Berlin's residents had been Jewish.

Transport

The latest modal share data, based on a 2023–24 survey, shows that Neukölln's residents have changed their behavior significantly since the previous 2018 study. Pedestrian traffic rose to 33.3% of all routes, while automobile use fell to 21.3%, which roughly corresponds to citywide figures and is mainly due to altered work and mobility patterns since the COVID-19 pandemic. While bicycle use in Berlin is stagnating at 18%, it rose significantly to 21.8% in Neukölln, and is now slightly more prevalent than motorized individual transport, especially in the highly developed northern quarter. Public transport use has fallen from 24.9% to below 24%, and remains lower than the citywide share of 26%, which is also due to Neukölln's dense urban character with a high variety of retail and service options in close proximity, not least in the north, which reduces the need for longer trips. The main factor is the size of the Neukölln borough: many southern areas like the Buckow quarter and parts of Britz are not connected to the S- or U-Bahn network, so in many of Berlin's suburbs beyond the Ringbahn, using a private car is therefore still more attractive than riding a bus.

Public transport

In Berlin, urban railway services are managed by the S-Bahn Berlin GmbH, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn, while all other public transport systems are managed by the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG). Together with the Brandenburg public transport providers, they form the network group Verkehrsverbund Berlin-Brandenburg (VBB). The closest BVG service center is located at Alexanderplatz U-Bahn station.

U-Bahn

Neukölln is served by two U-Bahn (subway) rail lines, the northwest-to-southeast U7 (Rathaus Spandau ↔ Rudow) via Jungfernheide and Wilmersdorfer Straße/Charlottenburg, and the north-to-south U8 (Wittenau ↔ Hermannstraße) via Alexanderplatz, with an interchange between the two at Hermannplatz. Within Neukölln, the U7 has three additional eastbound stations along the Karl-Marx-Straße: Rathaus Neukölln, Karl-Marx-Straße and Neukölln, the latter being an interchange between U- and S-Bahn. The U8 has three additional southbound stations along the Hermannstraße: Boddinstraße, Leinestraße and Hermannstraße, the latter being the quarter's second interchange between U- and S-Bahn.

Three U-Bahn stations just outside of the quarter offer quicker access to certain neighborhoods of Neukölln: Südstern (U7) to the western parts of Hasenheide, Schönleinstraße (U8) to the Reuterkiez, and Grenzallee (U7) to the southern and south-eastern industrial parks including the Neukölln Harbor.

During workday nights, approximately between 1:00 and 4:00, Berlin's subways are not operational, but are replaced by buses. In Neukölln, the U7 and U8 are replaced by the bus lines N7 and N8 respectively. During nights before Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays, the U-Bahn lines operate continuously.

S-Bahn

Neukölln is served by four S-Bahn (urban railway) lines, with U-Bahn interchanges at Berlin-Hermannstraße (U8) and Berlin-Neukölln (U7), each for all of the four lines. The shorter S47 connects the quarter to Südkreuz in the west, and via Baumschulenweg station, Niederschöneweide and the Schöneweide–Spindlersfeld branch line to Spindlersfeld in the south-eastern Dahme suburbs of Berlin's city center. The long-haul S46 connects Neukölln to Westend in the far west via Südkreuz, Westkreuz and Messe Nord/ZOB close to the Messe Berlin exhibition grounds, the ICC and Berlin's central bus station. In the opposite direction, the S46 connects to the town Königs Wusterhausen south-east of Berlin via Baumschulenweg station, Adlershof, Grünau and the town Zeuthen. Two additional important services are the Ringbahn circle lines S41 (clockwise) and S42 (counter-clockwise), providing access to numerous U-Bahn and S-Bahn interchanges, and connecting through all of Berlin's crosses, Südkreuz, Westkreuz, Gesundbrunnen (Nordkreuz) and Ostkreuz with many intercity travel options. Overall, Neukölln has four S-Bahn stations, the aforementioned Hermannstraße and Neukölln as well as Sonnenallee on the Ringbahn at the outskirts of Rixdorf, and Köllnische Heide on the southeastbound railway, providing S-Bahn access to the inhabitants of Weiße Siedlung, High-Deck-Siedlung and Schulenburgpark.

Bus

Due to sufficient access to U- and S-Bahn for most areas of Neukölln, the quarter is currently not served by any of Berlin's ExpressBus lines. Still, Neukölln has several regular bus lines, connecting for example Marzahn (194) and Marienfelde (277). There are also four MetroBus lines, the most important ones being the M29 connecting via Checkpoint Charlie and the southern Potsdamer Platz area to the western city center including Kurfürstendamm, the M41 to Berlin Central Station via Potsdamer Platz, and the southbound M44 via Britzer Garten to Buckow-Süd, the terminus of a potential extension of the U-Bahn line U8 (see below). In addition to the N8 and N7 U-Bahn replacement bus lines during night hours (see above), Neukölln is served by several regular night bus lines, for example the N94, which connects Hermannplatz and Lichtenberg railway station via Ostkreuz.

Airport connections

Since the closing of the airports Tegel and Tempelhof, whose airfield was partially situated in Neukölln, Berlin only has one remaining international airport, Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER), the former (and greatly extended) Berlin Schönefeld Airport just outside of Berlin. Since the 2025 timetable change, which included the cancellation of the S-Bahn line S45, the quarter Neukölln has no direct daytime connection to the BER anymore.

When exclusively using the U-Bahn, an interchange between subway and the airport express bus lines X7 and X71 is necessary at the current U7 terminus Rudow. If the S-Bahn is the primary mode of transport, BER passengers to and from Neukölln can use interchanges at Südkreuz station between S-Bahn and the FEX airport express train or the regional express train RE20, which both connect to the BER, and are usually the fastest routes between Neukölln and the airport. A slightly longer alternate route is possible with an interchange at Schöneweide station between the S-Bahn lines S46 or S47 and the regional express trains RE24 or RE32. When exclusively using the S-Bahn, BER passengers to and from Neukölln need to use interchanges at Baumschulenweg station between the S46 or S47 (to and from Hermannstraße, Neukölln and Köllnische Heide) and the southern lines S85 and S9. During the night, the service on the U-Bahn line U7 is replaced by the night bus line N7, which directly connects Neukölln and the airport.

Ferry

Neukölln does not offer any regular ferry transport, but several landing stages for a variety of charter tours exist in Neukölln. Berlin shipping company Stern und Kreisschiffahrt, which is based at the Treptow Harbor, operates a landing at the Estrel Hotel on the Neukölln Ship Canal, with one route through Neukölln along the Landwehr Canal. Former Kreuzberg shipping company Reederei Riedel, which is now based at the Rummelsburg Harbor in Oberschöneweide, operates two landings, the Kottbusser Brücke at the Landwehr Canal, and the Wildenbruchbrücke at the Neukölln Ship Canal. One of their ships is the 1962 Rixdorf, which has been in their service since 1987 and is authorized for 250 passengers and crew.

Future

U-Bahn

There are concrete medium-term plans to extend the U7 south beyond Rudow to directly connect the airport BER to Neukölln and the rest of Berlin via U-Bahn, adding a minimum of two and up to seven additional stations inbetween, with Schönefeld also functioning as an S-Bahn interchange. In 2024, two performance audits for the extension began, with the Berlin audit still under way, while the audit by the Schönefeld municipality ended with a positive result in April 2025. The U7 would then be the first of Berlin's U-Bahn lines to reach beyond the city's borders. The planned extension will not open before 2035.

As Greater Berlin has been steadily growing since German reunification to now almost 4.8 million inhabitants, with extensive residential construction happening in Berlin's immediate surrounding regions, public transport extensions to the city's periphery are propagated frequently. With regard to Neukölln, an internal 2023 BVG feasibility study on long-term U-Bahn network expansion included a southbound extension of the U8 beyond Hermannstraße, terminating in the south of Buckow on the border to Brandenburg's Gartenstadt Großziethen, which would tilt southern Neukölln's modal share toward public transport, and away from private car use (see above).

S-Bahn

The borough administrations of Treptow-Köpenick and Neukölln have often pushed for an additional station on Berlin's Ringbahn, primarily at the Kiefholzstraße on the border of the two boroughs. However, the Berlin transport providers aim at one Ringbahn revolution every 60 minutes. Under this guideline, only one station can be added to the lines S41/42 for the whole of Berlin. The Kiefholzstraße therefore competes against four other proposed stations, one of them in Neukölln as well, namely Oderstraße at the south-eastern corner of the Tempelhofer Feld.

Bus and DRT

Two new MetroBus and ExpressBus lines are planned, the M94 to Friedrichsfelde-Ost via Treptow and Ostkreuz station, and the X77 from Hermannstraße to Marienfelde via Alt-Mariendorf.

Mainly two neighborhoods of Neukölln are insufficiently connected to the Berlin public transportation system, either because they were never developed (Schillerpromenade), or because the old and narrow streets prevent the establishment of bus lines (Alt-Rixdorf). Therefore the Berlin Senate and the BVG plan to create a network of DRT bus lines (Rufbus) for large parts of Neukölln, from the western neighborhoods at the Tempelhofer Feld to the Sonnenallee in the east, covering Schillerpromenade, Flughafenstraße, Rollberg, Körnerpark and both Rixdorf neighborhoods.

Tram

Despite Rixdorf's and Neukölln's important role in the historical development of Berlin's tramway, the quarter currently has no connection to the city's modern MetroTram system. Due to the Teltow slopes and narrower streets in places like Flughafenstraße, only Neukölln's northern neighborhoods in the glacial valley are immediately suitable for tram expansion. A long-gestating plan proposes to extend Berlin's so-called "party tram" line M10 by the year 2031 from Kreuzberg (SO 36) through the Görlitzer Park and crossing the Landwehr Canal into Neukölln, with stations in the Reuterkiez planned at Framstraße, Pannierstraße and U Hermannplatz on Urbanstraße via Sonnenallee. This would create a direct public transport connection from Neukölln (Reuterkiez) to Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain, Prenzlauer Berg, Mitte, Moabit via Berlin Central Station, and Jungfernheide station in Charlottenburg-Nord.

To replace Neukölln's overstrained "ghetto bus" line M41, the Berlin Senate also has concrete plans to create a new tram line from Schöneweide S-Bahn station (or further east from Oberspree station) through Johannisthal along the Königsheide, part of the former Cölln Heath, through Baumschulenweg, Neukölln and Kreuzberg 61 along Sonnenallee and Urbanstraße via Hallesches Tor to Potsdamer Platz.

Maglev

The Berlin Senate's forthcoming mobility program for the year 2035 is expected to contain plans for urban transit maglev trains, with one line to connect Berlin's ICC and exhibition grounds with the BER airport. One already proposed potential route would lead along the A100 autobahn and through the southern parts of the Neukölln quarter. The proposal has been met with harsh rejection and criticism by public transport experts, who stated that the chances of this technology being used as part of Berlin's public transport network were slim. They emphasized that maglev trains would merely strengthen something that is already covered by the city's traditional public transport infrastructure, without increasing efficiency, and that the technology would neither provide the necessary last-mile and suburban extensions nor give more residents access to the city's existing network.

Individual transport

Motorized individual transport

Since Neukölln is densely populated and highly urbanized, most of its streets come with a speed limit of 30 km/h (19 mph) for motorized vehicles, including more aggressive urban planning measures in recent years aimed at reducing traffic with one-way roads and concepts like the Spielstraße ("play street"), modal filters or larger-scale neighborhood blocks (Kiezblock, LTN). Furthermore, in 2024 the Senate of Berlin and the borough's administration have begun to monetize public parking space in the northern neighborhoods to steer away some of the excess traffic.

Nevertheless, several main roads function as important arterial connections to other parts of Berlin: Columbiadamm, Urbanstraße and Hasenheide connect to the western parts of Berlin south of the city center via Tempelhof and the western neighborhood of Kreuzberg 61 respectively, while Sonnenallee, Karl-Marx-Straße and Hermannstraße connect to southern and south-eastern parts of Berlin via Britz and Baumschulenweg respectively. The Kottbusser Damm is the main road to the SO 36 neighborhood of Kreuzberg in the north, but traffic calming measures have reduced its importance in recent years. Except for the Columbiadamm, all of the above arterial roads converge at Hermannplatz.

The A100 autobahn at Neukölln's border with Britz connects to the western parts of Berlin, and via its most recent extension through parts of eastern Neukölln to Alt-Treptow. The A100 offers three exits and on-ramps in the Britz and Neukölln quarters, Britzer Damm with Hermannstraße, Buschkrugallee with Karl-Marx-Straße, and Sonnenallee. A highly contended final extension is planned to extend the A100 further into Friedrichshain and Lichtenberg via Ostkreuz. At the interchange Autobahndreieck Neukölln, the A100 connects to the A113 autobahn, which leads south to BER airport and the A10, Berlin's orbital autobahn. At the interchange, the A113 also has a direct on-ramp from Grenzallee, and an indirect exit to Grenzallee via Bergiusstraße.

Neukölln is part of Berlin's tight inner-city network of taxi and ridehailing services. Furthermore, free-floating carsharing is relatively widespread in urban Berlin. Still, the quarter Neukölln alone has more than ten dedicated carsharing stations, several of them also for transport vans.

Bicycle traffic

Most of Neukölln's one-way streets are two-way for cyclists. In 2017, the western parts of Weserstraße opened as Neukölln's first bicycle boulevard, and in the following years, several side streets have been rededicated as such, at first especially in the trendier districts of Reuter- and Schillerkiez, but now slowly expanding into other neighborhoods. Larger main roads have been reconstructed to include properly separated bike lanes, for example Kottbusser Damm and Hasenheide, with plans for more reconstruction in the coming years. Neukölln's most ambitious project is the 20.2 km (12.55 mi) "Y route" (Y-Trasse), a forked dual bicycle highway (Radschnellverbindung) from south-eastern Berlin through Neukölln to Kreuzberg. Berlin and Neukölln have several bicycle-sharing systems with a large fleet of standard and electric bicycles, as well as cargo bikes and e-scooters.

Pedestrian traffic

Due to Berlin's usually broad sidewalks, extensive speed limits, especially on side streets, and other measures like play streets and an increasing number of one-way streets, Neukölln has become a rather safe environment for pedestrians. However, compared to other German cities, very few pedestrian zones exist in Neukölln, currently only the "youth street" Rütlistraße (Reuterkiez) and the Tempelhofer Feld. There are proposals and concrete plans to rededicate certain locations as either pedestrian zones or mixed zones for pedestrians and cyclists, for example the Elbestraße and Weichselstraße in the Reuterkiez.

Several hiking trails exist along the waterways within or bordering Neukölln, primarily the Landwehr Canal, parts of the Neukölln Ship Canal, the Britz Canal, and the Heidekampgraben in the east, which is part of Berlin's Mauerweg. Other green trails are limited to Neukölln's parks, especially the Hasenheide, the Tempelhofer Feld, the Carl-Weder-Park, and the eastern garden plots. However, due to Neukölln's highly urbanized and partially industrialized character, few of the trails are sufficiently interconnected, as it is often found in the suburban quarters of Berlin. Still, Trail 18 of Berlin's officially designated Grüne Hauptwege (main green trails) leads from the Tempelhofer Feld through Neukölln's western cemeteries and parks, Alt-Rixdorf and along the Neukölln Ship Canal via Trusepark into Kreuzberg and beyond.

Freight transport

• Neukölln Harbor and Watergate
• Freight yards, Neukölln station
• Neukölln–Mittenwald industrial railroad
• Treptow freight yards, Neukölln, 1986
• Industrial through track, Lahnstraße, Neukölln Harbor

Almost all of Neukölln's industrial parks are situated in the southern and eastern parts of the quarter. Both the A100 and A113 highways function as vital access ways, not least for connecting to the BER airport's freight terminals. Especially the A113 exit and on-ramp to and from Grenzallee and Bergiusstraße respectively connect the autobahn directly to both the Neukölln Harbor area and the industrial park Nobelstraße.

The Neukölln Harbor itself, alongside Berlin's other waterways, also plays a prominent role in the transportation of goods, because all major canals of Berlin are part of the network of German Federal Waterways, which connects many German industrial regions, all important international maritime and inland ports, the North and Baltic Sea, and all of Germany's neighboring countries. The infrastructure of Neukölln's harbor sans railways (see below) is managed by the state-owned Berliner Hafen- und Lagerhausgesellschaft (BEHALA). The Neukölln Ship Canal, together with Neukölln Harbor and the Neukölln Watergate, is owned by the state of Berlin and managed by Neukölln's district office. All of Neukölln's other waterways, including many rivers and canals outside of the quarter and borough, are managed by the Neukölln branch of the federal Wasserstraßen- und Schifffahrtsamt Spree–Havel (Office of Spree–Havel Waterways and Shipping), which is situated in the eastern Britz docklands south of Neukölln Harbor.

Besides S-Bahn services, the stations Hermannstraße, Sonnenallee with its northern terminals along the western shore of the Neukölln Ship Canal into the freight terminus Güterbahnhof Treptow, and especially Neukölln offer additional capacities for freight traffic via railways. The main lines connect eastbound via Köllnische Heide and westbound alongside Berlin's orbital S-Bahn infrastructure, continuing either westbound via Südkreuz or southbound and southwestbound via Tempelhof.

A smaller and mainly single-track historical railroad, whose northern parts within Berlin are still in operation for industrial transport, is the Neukölln–Mittenwald railroad (NME). It originates at Berlin Hermannstraße freight station and branches off in the Tempelhof quarter south of the Tempelhofer Feld and traverses the Teltow Canal to connect other industrial areas in the south of Berlin, with the first (and primary) freight station Berlin Teltowkanal located in Tempelhof near Saalburgstraße south of the canal, which also services Neukölln's Britz quarter via auxiliary through tracks along Gradestraße. The railroad leads further south back into the Neukölln borough via the decommissioned station Berlin-Britz at Mohriner Allee and the non-operational terminal Berlin-Buckow at Kölner Damm, ending at the small dual-track freight yards Berlin-Rudow Nord west of Wutzkyallee. An adjacent secondary freight line is still in operation, the Rudow industrial through track (Industriestammgleis Rudow) east of Gropiusstadt, which branches off at the NME's Berlin-Rudow Nord yards and leads north-east via Zwickauer Damm and Stubenrauchstraße to a diesel fuel facility at the Teltow Canal near Massantebrücke.

Furthermore, industrial through tracks, which are managed by the Industriebahn Berlin, connect Neukölln station via the Treptow freight yards north of Sonnenallee to several industrial plants in the Neukölln quarter, which are mainly located within the industrial park Nobelstraße north of the Britz Canal near High-Deck-Siedlung. They connect through the eastern parts of the Neukölln Harbor, with several auxiliary tracks currently or permanently decommissioned. Due to Neukölln's dense urban development and its inner-city industrial areas, the quarter's freight trains always needed to be switched and shift directions several times.

Culture and notable sights

Main sights

• Neuköllner Oper: opera house that hosts a wide range of performances including musicals, baroque opera, operetta, or experimental music theatre. Famous for its aim to bring elitist culture to a wider audience.
• Stadtbad Neukölln, the local swim hall which consists of antique thermal baths inspired by Greek temples and basilicas.
• Körnerpark: park in neobarock style with fountains, orangerie, exhibition rooms and a cafe, founded 1910.

Places of worship

Even though the quarter's number of Christians has been steadily decreasing in the past decades (see above), Neukölln has a diverse Christian heritage, on the one hand as a historically Roman Catholic Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller village, and as the seat of the Holy See's Apostolic Nunciature, and on the other hand as a prominent Protestant center of Germany, not least due to Moravian immigration in the 18th century. Furthermore, Neukölln is also an important place for the Islamic faiths due to the decades-long Muslim immigration. Most of the major religions are well represented in Neukölln today. Generally, most of Neukölln's places of worship have converged around the quarter's historical neighborhoods of Reuterkiez, Flughafenstraße, Schillerpromenade and especially Rixdorf.

Christianities

Roman Christianities

• St. John's Basilica
• St. John's Basilica
• St. Clara
• St. Christopher
• St. Richard
• St. Edward
• St. Boris the Baptist Cathedral
• Catholic-Apostolic Church

The most prominent Roman Catholic church is the Basilica of Saint John the Baptist at the western edge of the Volkspark Hasenheide next to the Holy See's Apostolic Nunciature near Südstern. A Basilica minor since 1906, it was constructed by August Menken between 1894 and 1897 in the Rhenish-Romanesque style, and to this day remains the largest Roman church of Berlin. It is also home to the expatriate Polish Catholic community. Originally constructed as a garrison church for Berlin's Roman Catholic soldiers, it today still serves as the cathedral for the Military Ordinariate of Germany. It is the oldest Roman church in Neukölln, with construction having begun shortly before Rollberg's St. Clara.

The youngest original Roman church is St. Christopher at the Reuterplatz, built between 1929 and 1930 in the new objective style, while postmodernist St. Richard in Rixdorf was technically constructed in 1975, but replaced an older chapel at the same location. Overall, together with St. Edward in the Silbersteinkiez, Neukölln has five Roman Catholic churches.

The only church in Neukölln belonging to one of Berlin's Roman Orthodox denominations is Saint Boris the Baptist Cathedral of the Bulgarian Orthodox parish, which is located near Hermannstraße on the grounds of the cemetery Jerusalem und Neue Kirche. Finally, the church on Rollberg's Roland-Krüger-Straße near the park Lessinghöhe is home to the free Catholic Apostolic community.

Mainstream Protestantism

• Bethlehem Church
• Church of Mary Magdalene
• Genezareth Church
• Martin Luther Church
• Phillipp Melanchthon Church
• Tabitha Church
• Nicodemus Church

The most famous Protestant church, while also the oldest church in Neukölln, is the historical village chapel of Rixdorf, which had originally been built in late Gothic Margraviate style around the year 1400, but might actually be at least a century older, preceded by a smaller field chapel (see History of Neukölln § Richardsdorf). It was partially destroyed in the 1639 Rixdorf firestorm and reconstructed the same year, but only the nave's plinth and three choir walls could be saved. It was renamed Bethlehem Church in 1912 and discretely renovated and expanded in the 1930s. Originally a Catholic chapel, it was later also used by both the Catholic and one of the three Protestant Bohemian parishes of Rixdorf, before eventually becoming a purely Protestant place of worship of the Bohemian-Lutheran denomination.

In addition to Bethlehem Church, Neukölln has six other mainstream Protestant churches. The most prominent is the Church of Mary Magdalene, which was constructed between 1877 and 1879 in Rixdorf on Karl-Marx-Straße. Two other notable ones are the 1903 Genezareth Church in the Schillerkiez on Herrfurthplatz, and the 1909 Martin Luther Church in the Reuterkiez on Fuldastraße, both of them Gothic revivalist buildings. Philipp Melanchthon Church on Kranoldstraße, constructed between 1914 and 1916 in a mixed style of early modernism, classicism and Jugendstil, has been using two of the three old church bells of the original Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, which were transferred and installed there on 24 December 1960. The only Christian church in the problematic neighborhoods of south-eastern Neukölln is the modernist Protestant Tabitha Church (Tabeakirche) between High-Deck-Siedlung and Weiße Siedlung, whose main building was inaugurated in 1957. The seventh Protestant church of Neukölln is Nicodemus Church in the central Reuterkiez, which was constructed in 1912/13 in a mixed style of Renaissance revivalism and Jugendstil with special emphasis on acoustics, and is today recognized as a Kulturkirche ("culture church") for exhibitions, concerts and professional music recordings.

Other Protestant denominations

• Reformed Bethlehem parish hall
• Hussite parish hall
• St. Paul
• Salem Church
• Baptist church

As a denominational counterpoint to the original Rixdorf chapel, the second Bohemian community had founded the Reformed Bethlehem Church on Richardstraße, which is the parish of Germany's President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. In turn, the traditional Moravians (Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine) had settled in their own oratory on the Kirchgasse. The historical Moravian oratory had already been built there in 1771, but was destroyed during World War II and rebuilt in 1962 as a late-modernist oratory and parish hall.

Some of Neukölln's churches house additional denominations, faiths and associations. The Martin Luther Church not only serves as the home to the Romanian Orthodox parish of Neukölln, but also to five other minority Protestant faiths, for example the Evangelical Blood of Jesus Foundation Ministry, the Indonesian Reformed Evangelical Church, the House of Prayer of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ghana, and the free Evangelical Missionaria da Paz Mundial association. The Genezareth Church is also home to the Pentecostal Precious Blood of Jesus Christ Ministries. The Church of Mary Magdalene is shared with the Evangelical United Brethren in Christ, and the Reformed Bethlehem Church on Richardstraße with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Iran and the Free Evangelical Bible association, one of Neukölln's two Baptist communities.

The Haus Gotteshilfe on Rollberg's Werbellinstraße belongs to the Evangelical Landeskirchliche Gemeinschaft (state church association), an independent member of Germany's Protestant churches. St. Paul at the Kranoldplatz in the Silbersteinkiez is home to the independent Evangelical-Lutheran community. Right beside it is the Salem Church of the Evangelical Methodist community. Neukölln's nameless Baptist church is on Herzbergstraße, informally called Kiezkirche Rixdorf (neighborhood church), and it belongs to the Evangelical free church parish of Neukölln. The quarter has two Seventh-day Adventists parishes, one in the Schillerkiez on Lucy-Lameck-Straße, the Adventgemeinde an der Hasenheide, the other in the Flughafenkiez on Isarstraße. Finally, Jehovah's Witnesses maintain a Kingdom Hall on the Naumburger Straße in southern Rixdorf.

Other major religions

• Synagogue Isarstraße, 1910
• Synagogue Isarstraße commemorative plaque
• Fraenkelufer Synagogue, ca. 1917
• Şehitlik cemetery
• Şehitlik Mosque
• Şehitlik Mosque
• Al-Nur Mosque
• Sri Ganesha Temple

Judaism

All Jewish places of worship in Berlin were destroyed or severely damaged during the National Socialist reign over Germany. In Neukölln, the synagogue on Isarstraße (Flughafenkiez) was demolished during the Kristallnacht of 1938, and only a commemorative plaque remains. There are no plans to reintroduce a new Jewish house of prayer in Neukölln, even though the number of Jewish citizens is rising. However, the Fraenkelufer Synagogue, an important center for Berlin's former Orthodox and now conservative Judaism, still exists. It is situated at the Landwehr Canal near the Reuterkiez just beyond the border to Kreuzberg. Construction to augment the remaining historical building is planned to begin in 2027, which will again elevate it to one of the most important synagogues and Jewish cultural centers of Berlin beside the New Synagoge in Mitte and the Rykestraße Synagogue in Prenzlauer Berg.

Islam

Neukölln has a large number of Sunni mosques, most of them founded originally for Neukölln's Turkish Muslims. Almost all of them exist as nondescript Vereinsheime (club houses) in smaller associations and with different ideologies, from moderate like the mosque of the Zentrum für Religion, Mensch und Gesellschaft (ZRMG, Center for Religion, Man and Society) on Rixdorf's Finowstraße, to mainstream conservative like the Hamidiye mosque on Sonnenallee or the Dar Assalam mosque on Flughafenstraße, to fundamentalist like the Al-Nur mosque near High-Deck-Siedlung, which together with the Furkan association in southern Körnerpark is one of Berlin's main Salafi centers under surveillance by the German domestic intelligence agency. Three mosques are home to specific national or ethnic branches of Sunni Islam, Isa Beu on Karl-Marx-Straße (Rixdorf) for the Albanian Muslim community, Baitul Mukarram Masjidis for the Bengali Muslims on Fontanestraße in the Schillerkiez, and Mizgefta Navenda Mezopotamya for the Kurdish Muslims on Karl-Marx-Allee in the Körnerkiez.

The largest mosque, and one of the most important in Germany, is the Şehitlik Mosque on Columbiadamm at the edge of the Tempelhofer Feld. The mosque derives its name from the surrounding Islamic graveyard next to the historical Tempelhof military parade ground and exercise area. The cemetery was especially meant for the Ottoman military şehitler ("martyrs", "fallen") of the Prussian Army. It was laid out between 1863 and 1866, and was also a successor to a smaller diplomatic burial ground on the Tempelhof lot (modern-day Kreuzberg near Urbanstraße), which had been acquired from Frederick William III and established in 1798 for Ottoman politicians and luminaries. After the foundation of a small makeshift mosque in 1985, the new building was constructed between 1999 and 2005 in grand Ottoman style by Hilmi Şenalp and can house up to 1,500 people.

The Shia branch of Islam is less represented in Germany than Sunni Islam, but Neukölln nevertheless has several Shiite places of worship, for example the mosques Markaz Al-Qaim on Flughafenstraße in the Schillerkiez, or Imam Riza on Reuterstraße in the Flughafenkiez. The Lebanese Shiites have a home at the mosque Al-Mustafa on Kienitzerstraße in the Schillerkiez.

Furthermore, many of Berlin's and Neukölln's residents with Turkish roots are Alevi, who in Neukölln are organized through associations like Sivasli Canlar in the Donaukiez. The prominent German Sufi Rabbaniyya association left Neukölln for Eigeltingen in 2014. Still, the Sufi community in Neukölln remains organized, for example in the Turkish Sufi order Tekke-i Kadiriyye Mescidi in Rixdorf.

Hinduism

The borough of Neukölln is home to several thousand Hindus, mainly from India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and especially the number of Indian expats has been rising steadily since the 2022 enactment of the Deutsch-indisches Migrationsabkommen (German-Indian Treaty on Migration). 2025 estimates for the borough of Neukölln range from 6,000 to 30,000 Hindu residents.

In order to relieve the mainly Sri Lankan Sri Mayurapathy Murugan Temple in Britz, and to also provide a home for Neukölln's Indian Hindus, the new Sri Ganesha Temple at the edge of the Volkspark Hasenheide opened in 2024, with further construction still underway, which will eventually make it the largest Hindu temple in continental Europe. Construction of the temple's first stage is planned to finish in October 2025.

Minority religions

Other religions, denominations and belief systems are represented marginally at best, but have found ways to organize, for example at the Buddhist centers on Neckarstraße (Flughafenkiez) or the Yun Hwa Dharma Sah on Nannsenstraße (Reuterkiez), the Turkish Mormon chapel and the Rosicrucian Lectorium Rosicrucianum, both on Rixdorf's Richardstraße, and the Baháʼí prayer rooms on the Sonnenallee.

Interfaith dialog

Many of Neukölln's interfaith associations have achieved citywide to sometimes national prominence, for example the Islamic ZMRG (see above) or the Neuköllner Begegnungsstätte (NBS, Neukölln Meeting Place) at the Dar Assalam mosque, the Protestant Interkulturelles Zentrum Genezareth (IZG, Intercultural Center Genezareth) on Herrfurthplatz, formerly known as the Treffpunkt Religion und Gesellschaft, the Jewish–Islamic Salaam-Schalom Initiative, the Protestant–Muslim ecumenical working group, run by the Rixdorf parishes and the Gazi Osman Paşa mosque, the Jewish outreach project Schalom Rollberg! on Morusstraße (Rollberg), the Protestant city mission Refugio on Lenaustraße in the Reuterkiez, and a branch of the Mennonite Friedenszentrum (Center for Peace) with their Café Abraham–Ibrahim at the Roman Catholic International Pastoral Center on Kranoldstraße in the Silbersteinkiez.

Secular outreach projects exist as well, like the private German–Arabic language school Ibn Khaldun with four facilities across Neukölln, which also runs a Jewish exchange project together with Hillel Berlin. The prominent Werkstatt Religionen und Weltanschauungen (Working Group for Religions and Worldviews), which was originally part of the transcultural Werkstatt der Kulturen, continues to operate after the latter's closure.

Agriculture and livestock farming

The borough of Neukölln has 40 ha (0.400 km2) or 99 acres (0.15 mi2) under cultivation, but only very few areas of the highly urbanized northern quarter of Neukölln are officially designated as agricultural land. Agriculture and livestock farming are usually found on small lots for school and preschool projects or in larger parks. Examples are the urban garden at St. Jacobi cemetery, the academically maintained community garden Allmende-Kontor for urban gardening and cultivation on the Tempelhofer Feld, and the Tierpark Neukölln (animal park) in the Volkspark Hasenheide, which together with the Naturhaus Hasenheide (nature house) also emphasizes farm animals for educational purposes. Urban beekeeping is relatively widespread, for example on the Tempelhofer Feld or in the Lern- und Nachbarschaftsgarten (Educational Neighborhood Garden) between Kottbusser Damm and Hobrechtstraße (Reuterkiez). Furthermore, a permanent grazing herd of one hundred Skudde sheep as well as a couple of Coburg Fox sheep are kept on the Tempelhofer Feld. In most cases, however, the cultural aspect of Neukölln's nature and agriculture is for the purpose of environmental education, managed by the city-wide project Naturstadt Berlin ("environmental city") and the borough's own Koordinierungsstelle Umweltbildung (Office for the Coordination of Environmental Education).

Cannabis cultivation

Since the 2024 partial legalization of cannabis in Germany, citizens are allowed to grow and cultivate their own cannabis plants, either privately or in special associations called Cannabis Social Clubs (CSCs), which started operating in July of the same year. In Berlin, the city's administration at first failed to create the necessary state authority and framework in time, and passed responsibility to the blindsided boroughs instead, so many CSCs established their farming areas in Brandenburg to avoid Berlin's bureaucratic gridlock. As of 2025, Neukölln has no registered clubs yet. However, the offices of Germany's governing body Dachverband deutscher Cannabis Social Clubs (CSCD) are located on Siegfriedstraße in the Rollbergkiez.

Garden allotments

An often overlooked part of domestic agriculture in Germany, and especially Berlin, is the Schrebergarten or, in its organized form, the Kleingartenanlage (KGA, lit. "small garden site"), which is an agglomeration of privately leased garden allotments. Especially large cities contain wide areas of these KGAs, and Berlin takes the top spot with more than 65,000 allotments—two for every hundred residents. Since these allotments usually contain shacks or small summer houses, the KGAs have occasionally been called the "German shanty towns". The Kleingarten was originally meant as a small private nursery to counter malnutrition in the urban citizenry, but in modern times evolved into a place for local recreation. In recent years, increased ecological awareness has reintroduced the agricultural aspect, and a new generation of young people have been rediscovering the Kleingarten, especially with cultivation in mind. Neukölln has large swaths of KGAs, most noteworthy the areas on both sides of the former border to East Berlin. Smaller ones have also formed in the west near the Tempelhofer Feld, and even in the central urban locations of Neukölln, for example near Reuterplatz, north of Sonnenallee and south of the Ringbahn.

Wineries, distilleries and breweries

Since 13 April 1973, winegrowing had been part of Neukölln's culture in the Schulgarten Dammweg south of the Weiße Siedlung, supported by the Weinbruderschaft der Pfalz (Wine Fraternity of the Palatinate), but the business was forced to move to the Britz quarter in 2019. The wine itself (Rixdorfer Weinmeister) is still auctioned off at the annual Rixdorf Christmas market (see below). Neukölln has only a few small distilleries, for example the Ratzeputz on Weserstraße (Reuterkiez), which sells its own schnaps.

Like many other places around the world, Neukölln has also witnessed the rise of small breweries and entrepreneurial craft brewing in recent years. The Sudhaus of the former Kindle brewery now also houses the Privatbrauerei am Rollberg, offering guided tours, and includes a taproom. Other breweries have formed all over Neukölln, for example the Lager Lager brewery and taproom on Pflügerstraße (Reuterkiez), and the Berliner Berg Brauerei in Neukölln's north-east corner on Treptower Straße (Rixdorf), whose brewery comes with a beer garden, with their official taproom Bergschloss located on Kopfstraße (Rollberg). Far more than taprooms are offered by the breweries Brauhaus Südstern on the street Hasenheide, which is combined with a pub, a restaurant and a beer garden, and the Brauhaus Neulich on Selchower Straße (Schillerkiez), a rustic tavern with occasional live music performances.

Street markets

Unlike Berlin, the former city of Neukölln never had a traditional market hall, and the closest one still in operation is the Markthalle IX in Kreuzberg nearby. However, Neukölln has many popular street markets instead. The Maybachufer (Reuterkiez) along the Landwehr Canal has four market days, hosting the famous weekly general market on Tuesdays and Fridays, colloquially called Türkenmarkt ("Turks' market"), and a smaller handicraft market on Saturdays (Neuköllner Stoff), both of them situated just east of the Kottbusser Brücke, as well as the flea market Nowkoelln Flowmarkt east of the Hobrechtbrücke, usually hosted from March to October every second Sunday.

Rixdorf has two weekly market days, with a general market hosted on Wednesdays and Saturdays on the Karl-Marx-Platz near the historical center around Richardplatz. A general weekly market for local and regional produce is the Dicke Linda ("Fat Linda"), which is hosted every Saturday on the Kranoldplatz in the Silbersteinkiez. The Kranoldplatz is also the location of a small flea market, hosted on the second Sunday of every month from March to November. A smaller, but popular mixed market is the Schillermarkt, which is hosted every Saturday on the Herrfurthplatz in the Schillerkiez. The Hermannplatz hosts general markets on the plaza's central island Monday through Friday in varying sizes.

The association Berliner Fahrradmarkt (BFM) conducts regular bicycle markets across four locations in Berlin, two of them in Neukölln. Twice every month, the market is hosted in the Rütlistraße (Reuterkiez) and on the Herrfurthplatz (Schillerpromenade) respectively.

Christmas markets

The annual Christmas market in Rixdorf takes place at the Richardplatz on the weekend of the second advent Sunday. The quarter's Christmas market was resurrected in December 1974 after a long hiatus following the historical Rixdorf Christmas market, which had been conducted since at least the 19th century. A modern Christmas market is hosted at the venue Klunkerkranich, the popular rooftop bar of the Neukölln Arcaden. In addition, some of the regular markets and flea markets will usually expand into Christmas markets in December, for example the Nowkoelln Xmas Flowmarkt on the Maybachufer and the Dicke Linda on Kranoldplatz. Since 2024, the German Christmas shopping event Holy Shit Shopping has been organized at the CANK, a pop-up event venue in a former mall in Rixdorf.

Cinemas

Neukölln has one modern multiplex movie theater, the Cineplex Neukölln in the Neukölln Arcaden. The shopping mall was constructed in the late 1990s as the Forum Neukölln, and the multiplex with nine auditoriums opened its doors in the year 2000. It is operated by UCI Cinemas and the German Cineplex group.

The Yorck Cinema Group, an association of formerly independent and often historical movie theaters, operates several cinemas in Berlin, three of them in Neukölln, the single-auditorium Neues Off, originally a 1919 vaudeville theater, which became a movie theater in 1926, renovated in the 1950s and fully restored in the 1990s, the Passage with four auditoriums, a movie theater since its 1910 inception, but extensively renovated at the end of the 1980s, and the Rollberg Kinos with five auditoriums, which opened in 1996 next to the site of the Mercedes-Palast, which since 1927 had housed Europe's largest movie theater, later destroyed at the end of World War II.

Neukölln still has two truly independent movie theaters, which mainly rely on arthouse films. Both locations offer a blend of cinema, café and bar. The single-auditorium Il Kino in the Reuterkiez opened its doors in 2014 as a branch of the Roman movie theater of the same name. The newest addition to Neukölln's family of cinemas is the Wolf in the Weserkiez, which opened its two auditoriums in 2017, together with the Wolf Studio, a modular location for screenings, exhibitions and workshops.

On the Kreuzberg side of the Kottbusser Damm, just outside of the Reuterkiez, lies the Moviemento, which has three auditoriums. It opened as a small bioscope in 1907 and has been a movie theater ever since, which makes it the oldest continuously operating cinema of Germany, now mainly showing arthouse and documentary films, while also being a major player in Berlin's independent film festival scene.

Film screenings in other locations are commonplace, either officially like the outdoor movie theater in the Volkspark Hasenheide, which opens its gates in the summer months, or at more informal gatherings, such as silent film screenings with live music accompaniment in the bar Froschkoenig.

In recent years, theater owners have adapted to the ever more diverse international citizenry, so all of Neukölln's movie theaters are also screening many of their movies without the usual German dub in their original languages, sometimes with German subtitles. In particular, the Cineplex Neukölln has cornered the market for original Turkish movies.

Film festivals

Beside the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale), more than a hundred independent film festivals are hosted in Berlin annually, many of them with venues in Neukölln or at the Moviemento theater on the border to Kreuzberg. The interfilm short film festival including the KUKI festival for young filmmakers is also screening at the Rollberg Kino. Most of Berlin's other independent festivals usually have their Neukölln screenings only at the quarter's independent movie theaters, namely the Moviemento, Il Kino and Wolf. Among the more important festivals are Achtung Berlin, one of the more prominent independent festivals highlighting film works by young and aspiring filmmakers, the XPOSED queer film festival, the Pornfilmfestival Berlin, the KinoKabaret short film festival, the Female Filmmakers Festival, as well as Berlin's Jewish and Arabic film festivals. Furthermore, important films from the previous Berlinale usually receive second showings in the Hasenheide open air movie theater during the summer season.

Architecture

Aside from Neukölln's numerous places of worship, many of them more than a hundred years old (see above), the quarter offers many architectural highlights from various epochs. These range from the oldest structures of the early 15th century via stately Wilhelmine Gründerzeit era buildings and estates to 20th century modernist and 21st century postmodernist development, which began to take hold in the 1920s.

Modern residential architects still have to adhere to the city's regulations regarding a uniform eaves height, but have broken with almost all of the other classical concepts of style, structure and dimension, at first based on social reformist ideals, then out of necessity to quickly rebuild after the bombing of Berlin in World War II, but in later and more recent decades also due to new academic architectural ideologies, fast digital design phases, and less erudite urban planners in the city's administration. While this has broken Berlin's and Neukölln's original homogenous urban design, it has also visually boosted the character as an ever-changing and wildly diverse, albeit sometimes unaesthetic urban sphere. Still, classical styles and traditional construction, including reconstructions, have made a cautious comeback in recent years. A grand example is the planned expressionist reconstruction of the Karstadt department store on Hermannplatz, which was built in the late 1920s, but destroyed by the SS at the end of World War II except for a small piece of the original facade on the street Hasenheide.

Gründerzeit

• Richardplatz 20, Rixdorf
• Jonasstraße 1, Körnerpark
• Bürknerstraße 22–23, Reuterkiez
• Emser Straße 102, Körnerpark
• Fuldastraße 45–46, Flughafenkiez
• Herrnhuter Weg 17, Rixdorf
• Isarstraße 3, Flughafenkiez
• Turmblock, Sonnenallee 125–33, Rixdorf
• Idealpassage, Fuldastraße 55–56, Flughafenkiez
• Schillerpromenade

As a general makeup, like most of Berlin's inner-city quarters, many parts of Neukölln belong to the Wilhelmine Ring with its historicist Gründerzeit residental houses, which are most prominent in the older neighborhoods of Reuterkiez, Flughafenstraße, Rixdorf, Körnerpark and Schillerpromenade. Part of the homogenous nature of Berlin's so-called Altbauten (old structures) stems from the city's regulations regarding a uniform eaves height. Furthermore, Berlin's classically trained architects had never strayed far from the dimensional design of the adjacent buildings, especially the height of their floors. These measures all contribute to the harmonious nature of Berlin's old residental blocks from the Gründerzeit era.

Alt-Rixdorf

• Blacksmith's shop, Richardplatz
• Blacksmith's shop, Richardplatz
• Villa Rixdorf, Richardplatz
• Backyard, Richardplatz 17
• Backyard, Richardplatz 3
• Bethlehem Church
• Bohemian duplex house, Richardstraße 36–37
• Bohemian house, Richardstraße 80
• Reformed Bethlehem parish, Richardstraße 97
• Belfry, Reformed Bethlehem Church
• Comenius Garden
• Hussite school building, Kirchgasse 5
• Bohemain house, Kirchgasse 6
• Cemetery Böhmischer Gottesacker

The oldest areas of Neukölln are to be found in the historical center of Rixdorf around Richardplatz and along both Richardstraße and Kirchgasse. Among them are the 15th century Bethlehem Church, partially reconstructed after a fire, the historical blacksmith's shop, Berlin's oldest forge still in operation, a few old eclecticist residential houses like the Villa Rixdorf, the Bohemian cemetery Böhmischer Gottesacker, and two original estates (Richardstraße 36–37), which represent the Moravian colony's traditional style of duplex houses and have retained backyard structures from as far back as the year 1670, even before the first settlers arrived. Other Bohemian remnants can also be found, like traditional backyards, stables, old narrow streets, the former Hussite school on Kirchgasse, the oldest school building of Neukölln and now a museum, and the Reformed Bohemian parish house with its separated wooden belfry on Richardstraße.

Modern architecture

• Bürknerstraße 12–14, Reuterkiez
• Oderstraße 45, Schillerkiez
• Ossastraße 6, Reuterkiez
• Die Ringe, Rollberg
• Weiße Siedlung
• High-Deck-Siedlung
• Apostolic Nunciature, Hasenheide
• School entrance wing, Drorystraße, Rixdorf
• Estrel Berlin, Rixdorf

On the other end of the spectrum are the early modernist estates like the projects by Bruno Taut, among them the 1910 estate on Bürknerstraße 12–14, the 1927 Ossastraße settlement, both in the Reuterkiez, and the 1927 buildings on Oderstraße (Schillerkiez). Later modernist developments originated from the public housing projects of the 1960s to '80s like Weiße Siedlung, High-Deck-Siedlung and most of Rollberg. While the Weiße Siedlung was still built using the high-rise concept of urbanity through concentration, the High-Deck-Siedlung as well as the Rollberg redevelopment, with its meandering estates in the east and Die Ringe (The Rings) in the west, used a more open and locally interconnected approach instead, especially the High-Deck-Siedlung with its eponymous pedestrian skyways. Due to the quarter's older compact urban characteristics, 21st century postmodernist stand-alone buildings or estates are more scarce in Neukölln than in other quarters of Berlin. Examples are the perimeter block estate at Böhmische Straße 38 in Rixdorf, the Apostolic Nunciature near Südstern, or the primary school in Rixdorf's Drorystraße. One of the most prominent redevelopment undertakings in the whole of Berlin, comparable to the 1990s construction on Potsdamer Platz, is happening in the Neukölln Docklands, an industrial neighborhood along the Neukölln Ship Canal north and south of the Sonnenbrücke at the outskirts of Rixdorf, which will include the Estrel Tower, Berlin's tallest skyscraper and Germany's tallest hotel at 176 m (577 ft), providing an upgrade to the nearby Estrel, Germany's largest hotel, and its convention center.

Reinhold Kiehl

• Rathaus Neukölln (City Hall), Rixdorf
• Stadtbad Neukölln (public bath house), Rixdorf
• Stadtbad Neukölln (public bath house), Rixdorf
• Orangerie, Körnerpark
• Pump room kiosk, Richardplatz, Rixdorf
• Sonnenallee station, Rixdorf
• Chapel, Alter Friedhof St. Jacobi
• Dammwegsiedlung

The most popular architectural locations, however, originated from Rixdorf's boomtown phase, which spanned the mid-19th to early 20th century. Aside from the ubiquitous Gründerzeit apartment blocks, many important stand-alone buildings and representative locations were constructed in this era, in which Reinhold Kiehl played a central role, both as an architect and as director of Rixdorf's Hochbauamt (office of public works service) in charge of urban planning and development. Together with development official Hermann Weigand, architect Heinrich Best and design director John Martens, Rixdorf's building authority received a stellar reputation across the German Empire, which attracted young architects like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Bruno and Max Taut, Franz Hoffmann and others, who all earned their stripes in Rixdorf before becoming renowned independent architects. After Kiehl stepped down in 1912, most of his remaining projects were finished by his colleague Heinrich Best or under Neukölln's new building official Friedrich Zollinger (1912–18).

Kiehl's two most important projects, both of them in Rixdorf, are the 1905 Rathaus Neukölln (city hall) on Karl-Marx-Straße, inspired by the German Renaissance and expanded in the 1950s, and the 1912 neoclassicist Stadtbad Neukölln (public city bath) on Ganghoferstraße, with a green neoclassical atrium and interior stylistic callbacks to the thermae and temples of Roman and Greek antiquity. Among his lesser known, but nonetheless important works, are the Baroque orangerie in the Körnerpark, the central pump room kiosk on Richardplatz, and the 1911 entrance building at the Sonnenallee S-Bahn station. Kiehl is buried on the cemetery Alter Friedhof St. Jacobi, whose chapel (near Hermannplatz) he had designed in the style of ancient Roman temples. After his death in 1913, more of his original plans were implemented, for example the modern-day Carl Legien School on Leinestraße (Schillerkiez), which was originally constructed in 1924 as a building academy (Baugewerbeschule Neukölln), and the proto-modernist settlement in the south-eastern outskirts of Rixdorf, the Dammwegsiedlung, which was finished in 1922 south of modern-day Weiße Siedlung.

Other representative buildings

• Alte Post (old post office), Rixdorf
• Kindle Ballrooms, Flughafenkiez
• Amtsgericht Neukölln (municipal court), Rixdorf
• Neue Welt, Hasenheide, Schillerkiez
• Neuer Rollkrug, Flughafenkiez
• Hermannplatz U-Bahn station (U7)

Many other architects have added to Neukölln's important historical building structure. Examples are the 1905 imperial Alte Post (Old Post Office) on Karl-Marx-Straße, primarily styled after Renaissance buildings, the 1893 Kindl Ballrooms on Hermannstraße, and the 1899–1901 Renaissance revivalist Amtsgericht Neukölln, the borough's municipal court and former prison on Karl-Marx-Straße, which replaced the original 1879 Amtsgericht. The beer hall Neue Welt (New World) on the street Hasenheide close to Hermannplatz, originally founded in 1865 as a beer garden, was constructed in 1902, and is today a concert venue called Huxleys Neue Welt (see above). Directly on Hermannplatz is the 1907 Neuer Rollkrug, an old office building which was built at the location of the demolished Rollkrug, Rixdorf's most famous historical tavern. Next to it is the plaza's U-Bahn station, of which the lower U7 platform is especially noteworthy due to its spacious Art Deco design and direct access to the Karstadt department store. Both were constructed together in 1923, and the subway station's main hall opened in 1926.

Commercial and industrial buildings

• Passage, Rixdorf
• Banking house, Alfred-Scholz-Platz, Rixdorf
• Reichsbank building, Ganghoferstraße, Rixdorf
• Eisenwerk Franz Weeren, Körnerpark
• Industrial villa, Eisenwerk Franz Weeren, Körnerpark
• Hermannshof, Hermannstraße, Schillerkiez
• Niemann factory, Sonnenallee, Rixdorf
• Transformer station, Richardstraße, Rixdorf
• Neukölln water tower, Rollberg
• Geyer film factory, Reuterkiez
• Sudhaus, Kindl brewery, Rollberg
• Bergschloss-Brauerei, Schillerkiez
• Institute for Disinfection, Rixdorf
• Jacobs factory, High-Deck-Siedlung

Neukölln's central industrial and commercial areas evolved in the same boomtown period. Important buildings from Rixdorf are Reinhold Kiehl's 1909 arcade building (Passage) between Richardstraße and Karl-Marx-Straße, which now houses a cinema and Neukölln's opera (see above), the 1912 banking house at the Alfred-Scholz-Platz, and the former Reichsbank branch office on Ganghoferstraße, built between 1912 and 1914. Industrial buildings of note are the 1887 Franz Weeren Eisenwerk (ironworks) with industrial villa on Glasower Straße (Körnerpark), the 1904 Hermannshof on Hermannstraße (Schillerkiez), the 1916 Niemann factory on Sonnenallee, the 1928 Umspannwerk (transformer station) on Richardstraße, the heating power plant on Weigandufer with many of the old factory buildings still intact, the Neukölln Water Tower in the Rollberg neighborhood, the 1914 Geyer film factory on Harzer Straße, and the 1926 expressionist Gothic revivalist Sudhaus der Berliner Kindl-Brauerei, an old brewery and today a center for arts and culture, including a museum of modern art (see above). Another notable brewery is the Bergschloss-Brauerei near Hermannplatz, which has been housing cultural centers for many years. In Rixdorf's periphery south of Neukölln's industrial railroad around Mittelbuschweg, some old factories and workshops have survived, for example a former liquor factory, or the 1914 former Institute for Disinfection, another building supervised by Reinhold Kiehl. After World War II, many newer factories and industrial plants were built further south, for example the Jacobs factory at the Britz Canal south of the High-Deck-Siedlung, and many of them are already under industrial monument preservation as well.

Nightlife

Clubs

Berlin's club scene, while famous around the world, was mostly dominated by the establishments that formed in vacant residential and industrial lots in the inner-city neighborhoods of former East Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall during the nonregulated, often ephemeral and highly diverse subcultural boom of the 1990s and early 2000s. Since the 2010s, the successors in Berlin's nightlife scene became more professional, but have mainly used the same urban areas for their venues. Similar open spaces were at first unavailable in Berlin's western boroughs, whose nightlife remained in limbo for almost two decades, because it was still relying on long-established clubs and discotheques of the Cold War era.

The status quo slowly changed in the 21st century, as more and more young creatives moved to Berlin. Since then, western industrial lots have been repurposed in higher numbers, and even Neukölln has seen its share of prominent clubs that have already come and gone, for example the Loftus Hall, its successor Christa Kupfer, the Griessmühle, the 1990s-style underground club Loophole, and the SchwuZ, Germany's oldest queer club from 1977 until its closure in 2025. Nevertheless, the quarter's club life is still not dominated by large venues or local centers of attraction.

However, Berlin has always had smaller clubs and bars with (sometimes tiny) dancefloors, which were initially created out of necessity due to the finite space in the urbanized enclave of former West Berlin, but have since become a staple of Berlin's nightlife. In this respect, Neukölln is no exception and still offers many clubs, especially in the northern neighborhoods closer to the gravitational centers of Berlin's nightlife in Friedrichshain, Mitte and Kreuzberg, for example Sameheads and the Arkaoda in Rixdorf. Gentrification further south has also spawned clubs in the Schillerkiez like the Promenaden-Eck on Schillerpromenade with two dancefloors.

Bars

In Berlin, the city once called the Bar des Planeten ("bar of the planet"), bars and pubs are a dime a dozen, and Neukölln, as the spiritual heir to the historical vice of Rixdorf, never dared to be an exception. While for some locals, the spätis can work as the be all and end all, most visitors only frequent them for pre-gaming and eventually prefer a club, a corner pub, whether modern or traditional, or one of Neukölln's many bars, whether with live music, a dancefloor, dining options, or as a traditional cocktail lounge or wine bar. The range in Neukölln spans from extravagantly creative to charmingly regular, like the Ankerklause, one of Neukölln's long-lasting pubs in the style of a harbor tavern on the border to Kreuzberg at the Landwehr Canal, or in the quarter's center like the Klunkerkranich, a popular rooftop bar atop the Neukölln Arcaden on Karl-Marx-Straße (Flughafenkiez). The main areas for the widest variety of bars with the most Rixdorfian torchbearers are found in the northern neighborhoods like the Donau-, Weser-, Reuter- and Friedelkiez. Especially the area around the western part of Weserstraße has become one of Berlin's most prominent locations in this respect and a downright invitation to bar-hoppers. The Weserkiez offers many standouts like the Thelonius Bar, Jaja Naked Wine, the Beuster Bar and Wax On, but in the end there are effectively too many to count. Other central neighborhoods seldomly fall behind, like Alt-Rixdorf with Velvet, Drei Flaschen and Herr Lindemann, which operates at the location of Rixdorf's very first village tavern. Since the gentrifying wave in Neukölln has slowly been moving south, other neighborhoods like the Donaukiez, Flughafenstraße and Schillerpromenade are now experiencing the same explosion of nightlife, with many new bars now revalueing their surroundings, for example Donau 115, Klunkerkranich, Paolo Pinkel, Zweiners, the Muted Horn or Villa Neukölln.

Beer gardens

Densely packed Neukölln has little open spaces left, and many historical places like the Neue Welt garden were closed and redeveloped, so beer gardens are far and few between. However, most cafés, restaurants, bars and pubs extend their patron space outside as early in the year as possible, and Berlin's usually broad sidewalks provide enough room for this specific part of the city's street life. Some bars even utilize the backyards for this purpose, like the TiER on Weserstraße. Still, some beer gardens do exist, for example the Klunkerkranich terrace, the Tempelgarten on the Tempelhofer Feld, the Zosse in Rixdorf, and the outdoor areas of two breweries, Berliner Berg Brauerei in the Harzer Kiez, and the Brauhaus am Südstern near Hasenheide.

Corner pubs

The Altberliner Eckkneipe (old Berlin corner pub) used to be one of the mainstays of Berlin nightlife, and the historical tavern Rollkrug near Hermannplatz, originally founded in the early 16th century, was doubtlessly the big bang for Neukölln's corner pub scene. To save these traditional establishments from extinction, the Berlin administration even went so far as to effectively exempt most of them from the city's non-smoking rules. Overall, Neukölln still has a lot of these traditional pubs to offer, but in the course of gentrification, many of them were replaced by restaurants, cafés or stores. Especially in the Reuterkiez, traditional corner pubs suddenly became hard to find, though some managed to survive, either still run in their traditional guise like the Lenau-Stuben on Hobrechtstraße, or continued under new management, for example Zum Böhmischen Dorf on Sanderstraße, the Mondhügel Bar on Bürknerstraße, Goldberg on Pflügerstraße, Ä on Wesertraße, or Kauz & Kiebitz on Reuterstraße with its semi-secret back room bar Truffle Pig. However, in other less gentrified neighborhoods of Neukölln, corner pubs are still prevalent, like the traditional Bäreneck on Hermannstraße, but modern iterations like the Trude Ruth und Goldammer on Flughafenstraße can also be found.

Notable people

• Bruno Bauer
• Lena Braun
• Horst Buchholz
• Lee Lawrie
• Jutta Limbach
• Susan Neiman
• Antonio Rüdiger
• Wilhelm Voigt

Many of Rixdorf's and Neukölln's natives became world-renowned in their respective professions, for example architectural sculptor Lee Lawrie, actor Horst Buchholz, president of Germany's Supreme Court Jutta Limbach, or Real Madrid's centre-back Antonio Rüdiger. Other important people have lived or settled in Rixdorf and Neukölln, for example Bible critic Bruno Bauer, philosopher Susan Neiman, artist Lena Braun, or Wilhelm Voigt, the infamous Captain of Köpenick.

Resistance against National Socialism

• Ursula Goetze
• Klaus Gysi
• Heinz Kapelle
• Fritz Lange
• Werner Seelenbinder
• John Sieg
• Frieda Unger
• Martin Weise

Many of Germany's resistance fighters and activists against National Socialist rule operated from Neukölln, for example Heinz Kapelle and Ursula Goetze, who coordinated with the Red Orchestra in the quarter. Some activists also moved to socialist East Germany after World War II and became prominent state officials and politicians, for example Klaus Gysi and Frieda Unger.

Mayors and other local politicians

• Hermann Boddin
• Heinz Buschkowsky
• Franziska Giffey
• Martin Hikel
• Marie Juchacz
• Curt Kaiser
• Ferat Koçak
• Alfred Scholz

Rixdorf became an independent city in 1899 and was incorporated as a borough of Berlin in the 1920 Greater Berlin Act, so the city of Rixdorf (later Neukölln) has only had three mayors and lord mayors respectively. Both the Hermannstraße and the Boddinstraße, together with the corresponding plazas, were named after Rixdorf's first mayor, Hermann Boddin. None of Rixdorf's and Neukölln's three city mayors were natives, while only Alfred Scholz' political party affiliation is known from historical sources. As part of the borough Neukölln, the quarter of Neukölln has been administered by the borough mayor since 1920. As of 2025, the incumbent is Martin Hikel (SPD).

Local building officials

• Karl Bonatz
• Franz Hoffmann
• Reinhold Kiehl
• John Martens
• Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
• Hans Heinrich Müller
• Bruno Taut
• Josef Zizler

During the tenure of Reinhold Kiehl and his colleagues, for example fellow architect Heinrich Best (1876–1916), Rixdorf's Hochbauamt (office of public works service) and building authority received a stellar reputation across the German Empire, which attracted many young architects, who all earned their stripes in Rixdorf and Neukölln before becoming often renowned independent architects, for example Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Franz Hoffmann and Bruno Taut.

Awards and international relations

Neukölln as part of the borough Neukölln

• has been a Municipality of Europe since joining the Council of European Municipalities and Regions as a cooperative member on 1 April 1967;
• was awarded the Council of Europe's Europe Prize in 1987 for outstanding commitment to European integration before the fall of the Berlin Wall;
• was awarded as an Ort der Vielfalt ("place of diversity") by the federal government on 23 September 2008;
• is a Pilot City of the Intercultural Cities Programme, also known as the International ICC Programme, organized by the Council of Europe together with the European Commission;

Neukölln as part of the borough Neukölln maintains relationships with several German and international twin or partner cities, municipalities or communes:

• Belgium Anderlecht, Belgium (1955)
• Israel Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv, Israel (1978)
• France Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris, France (1955)
• Turkey Çiğli, İzmir, Turkey (2005)
• Germany Cologne, Germany (1967)
• England Hammersmith and Fulham, London, United Kingdom (1955)
• Germany Leonberg, Germany (1970)
• Italy Marino, near Rome, Lazio, Italy (1980)
• Russia Pavlovsk-Pushkin, Saint Petersburg, Russia (1991)
• Czech Republic Prague 5 (Smíchov), Prague, Czech Republic (2005)
• Czech Republic Ústí nad Orlicí, Czech Republic (1989)
• Germany Wetzlar, Germany (1959)
• Netherlands Zaanstad, near Amsterdam, Netherlands (1955)

Neukölln as part of Berlin

Neukölln as part of Berlin maintains relationships with several international twin or partner cities:

• Beijing, China
• Brussels, Belgium
• Budapest, Hungary
• Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Istanbul, Turkey
• Jakarta, Indonesia
• Kyiv, Ukraine
• London, United Kingdom
• Los Angeles, United States
• Madrid, Spain
• Mexico City, Mexico
• Moscow, Russia
• Paris, France
• Prague, Czech Republic
• Tashkent, Uzbekistan
• Tokyo, Japan
• Warsaw, Poland
• Windhoek, Namibia

Rixdorf and Neukölln in media and popular culture

Literature

As an urban hotspot and important quarter of Berlin, Neukölln has always been the focus of many nonfiction books and academic works in the fields of history, education, social and political sciences. A few prominent natives and residents of Neukölln received biographies, such as architect Reinhold Kiehl and actor Horst Buchholz, or have written memoirs, for example actor Inge Meysel or Neukölln's integration commissioner Güner Balcı with Heimatland (2025). Many consumer nonfiction books about Neukölln exist as well. Notable examples are In den Gangs von Neukölln – Das Leben des Yehya E. (2014) by Christian Stahl, and the satirical Gebrauchsanweisung für Neukölln (1988) by Johannes Groschupf, which he wrote as a student under the pseudonym Olga O'Groschen, while the most popular book to this date has been the critical Neukölln ist überall (2012) by former borough mayor Heinz Buschkowsky.

In fiction, several authors have written about or set their stories in Neukölln, for example Käsebier takes Berlin (Käsebier erobert den Kurfürstendamm, 1932) by Gabriele Tergit, Katharina oder Die Existenzverpflichtung (1992) by Iris Hanika, Hinterhofhelden (2009) by Johannes Groschupf, Hund, Wolf, Schakal (2022) by Behzad Karim Khani, Allegro Pastel (Allegro Pastell, 2020) by Leif Randt, the semi-autobiographical Die halbe Stadt, die es nicht mehr gibt (2012) by Ulrike Sterblich, Jesus von Neukölln (2022) by Wolfgang Priewe, or the children's book Nelly und die Berlinchen – Die Schatzsuche (2019) by Neukölln author Karin Beese. Over the decades, urban lyricists have written many poems about Rixdorf or Neukölln, for example Ede Petermann aus Rixdorf singt in der Verbannung by Otto Julius Bierbaum, published in Ausgewählte Gedichte (1921). The alternative literary artist collective around Uwe Bremer chose the name Werkstatt Rixdorfer Drucke, but in fact operated from a squat on Oranienstraße in Kreuzberg.

Theater and stage

Horst Pillau wrote the comedy play Der Kaiser von Neukölln, which premiered in 1987 at the Hansa Theater. Since 1980, Ades Zabel has created several musicals, plays and stage performances around the long-term unemployed Neukölln character Edith Schröder, for example Tatort Neukölln and Einfach Edith! 25 Jahre Edith Schröder. Kurt Krömer, himself a Neukölln native, has regularly emphasized the quarter in his stand-up comedy and other works, for example Pimp my Ghetto (2010) in support of the Körnerkiez. Neukölln author Abdullah Eryilmaz has written monodramatic works like Der Pfarrer von Neukölln (The Priest of Neukölln). Commissioned by theater manager and Neukölln resident Matthias Lilienthal for the inauguration of the new Hebbel am Ufer theater company, choreographer Constanza Macras and her dance ensemble Dorky Park produced the dance theater play Scratch Neukölln, which premiered in 2003 at the Hebbel-Theater.

Film and television

Neukölln has been a favored location for national and international film and television productions, from German blockbusters like Fack ju Göhte (2013) by Bora Dağtekin to American reality TV shows, as well as special effects work for many Babelsberg productions, most notably by Simon Weisse's Prop & Model Maker Berlin, which have worked on films by the Wachowskis or Wes Anderson, and on TV series like Homeland. Some film works, however, have focused primarily on Neukölln, either as a cultural setting or as an integral part of the narrative, often treating the quarter or borough as a perceived hotspot for the precariat, criminal gangs and alternative concepts of living.

Neukölln feature films include the 1983 children's fantasy drama Conrad: The Factory-Made Boy (Konrad oder Das Kind aus der Konservenbüchse) by Claudia Schröder and Christine Nöstlinger, the 2006 crime drama Tough Enough (Knallhart) by Detlev Buck, Zoran Drvenkar and Gregor Tessnow, the 2007 romance and crime drama Straight by Nicolas Flessa, the 2009 young adult crime melodrama Gangs by Rainer Matsutani, Peer Klehmet and Sebastian Wehlings, the 2011 science-fiction melodrama Dr. Ketel (Dr. Ketel – Der Schatten von Neukölln) by Linus and Anna de Paoli, the 2013 comedy drama Ummah – Among Friends (Ummah – Unter Freunden) by Cüneyt Kaya, the 2014 television legal drama The Limits of Patience (Das Ende der Geduld) by Christian Wagner and Stefan Dähnert, and the 2025 Shakespearean criminal tragedy No Beast. So Fierce. (Kein Tier. So Wild.) by Burhan Qurbani and Enis Maci.

Several television or streaming series have focused on Neukölln as well, for example the 2015 miniseries Ecke Weserstraße by Johannes Hertwig and Hayung von Oepen, the 2017 gang melodrama 4 Blocks by Richard Kropf, Hanno Hackfort and Bob Konrad, and the 2025 medical melodrama Berlin ER (KRANK Berlin) by Samuel Jefferson and Viktor Jakovleski. The 2018 legal melodrama Die Heiland – Wir sind Anwalt by Viola Jäger and Nina Philipp is heavily inspired by the life of Neukölln's former resident and Germany's first blind attorney Pamela Pabst.

Many documentary works have been produced on Neukölln, for example the TV documentary miniseries Kiez knallhart: Berlin-Neukölln (2021) by Story House Productions, and otherwise mainly feature-length films, for example Berlin-Neukölln (2002) by resident director Bernhard Sallmann, Neukölln Unlimited (2010) by Agostino Imondi and Dietmar Ratsch, Berlin: Hasenheide (2010) by Nana Rebhahn, Gangsterläufer (2011) by Christian Stahl, a precursor to his 2014 book (see above), or Survival in Neukölln (2017, Überleben in Neukölln) by Rosa von Praunheim. As part of its local and regional mandate, Berlin's public broadcaster RBB has co-produced several documentary films and series about Neukölln over the years, including history formats, for example Mein Neukölln – Wo gehste hin? Wo kommste her? (2015) by Neukölln native Wolfgang Ettlich or Neukölln wie es einmal war (2024) by Svenja Weber.

Music

Songs referencing Neukölln or its residents are mostly from German artists, for example the 2017 hip hop song Sonnenallee by AOB (Army of Brothers) and Said, the 2004 indie rock song Wovon lebt eigentlich Peter? by Winson, the 2008 rock song Neukölln (also known as Neukölln, Du alte Hure) by Kalle Kalkowski from the album Liebesgrüße aus Neukölln ("From Neukölln with Love"), the 2021 pop song Sonnenallee by Tina Naderer, the 2022 farewell elegy Neukölln by Madeline Juno, the 2013 hip hop song Das ist Neukölln by Exxar and Kiddkey, the 2008 hip hop song Neukölln 44 feat. Kreuzberg 361 by DJ AK in cooperation with several local German and Turkish rappers, the 2011 satirical folk song Neukölln ist auf Scheiße gebaut by Otto Kuhnle, the 2022 alternative hip hop song Sonnenallee by Lena Stoehrfaktor, or the proletarian love letter Dit is Neukölln ("This is Neukölln") by Kurt Krömer and Gabi Decker, originally from a television skit and sung to the tune of I Got You Babe, while tangential references are usually found in Deutschrap songs, for example the 2019 U7 Freestyle by Luvre47. Italian progressive rock band Barock Project published their concept album Coffee in Neukölln in 2012.

Several instrumental works also reference Neukölln, most notably the 1977 David Bowie and Brian Eno track Neuköln [sic!] from the album Heroes, which was later reworked for orchestra by Philip Glass as the fifth movement of his Symphony No. 4 – Heroes (1996), and also inspired the fusion jazz diptych Neuköln (Day) and Neuköln (Night) by Dylan Howe (2007/14). Other instrumental works include the 1953 march Die Rixdorfer Blasmusik ("The Rixdorfian Brass Music") by Otto "der zackige Otto" Kermbach, the 1983 electronic composition Hasenheide by Dieter Moebius, the 2004 track Neukölln 2 by Kittin, the 2012 deep house track Neukölln Burning by resident producer Deepchild, the 2011 Mogwai release Hasenheide, or the 2012 tech house track Neukoelln Mon Amour [sic!] by Swayzak.

Der Rixdorfer

• Benjamin Bilse, 1870
• Bilse'sche Kapelle, 1871
• Heinrich Littke-Carlsen, caricature, ca. 1890
• Gruß vom Rixdorfer, postcard, ca. 1899
• Berlin nightlife and the schieber, caricature, 1912
• Gustav Schönwald, ca. 1905

The song that cemented Rixdorf's infamy as a city of vice across Germany, which eventually prompted the renaming to Neukölln, is the 1889 satirical couplet Der Rixdorfer ("The Rixdorfian"), also known under the title In Rixdorf ist Musike, with music in the style of a polka march by Eugen Philippi (1856–1920) and lyrics by Oskar Klein (ca. 1852–1923). The couplet ranks among the first widely popular songs (gassenhauer) of the early schlager genre, which came under fire from conservative music commentators for its artistic inferiority and socially corrosive potential after the turn of the century.

The polka's original instrumental version was already performed in 1871 as a carnival song by Benjamin Bilse and his ensemble Bilse'sche Kapelle ("Bilse's Band"), the precursor to the Berlin Philharmonic, at Berlin's Concerthaus on Leipziger Straße, where the ensemble had a regular engagement from 1867 to 1885. It had been adapted from a traditional polka melody, which had been imported from the Bohemian Forest by two of the ensemble's woodwind musicians, who had served in Bohemia as part of the Kaiser Franz regiment during the 1866 Austro-Prussian War.

After the polka had fallen into oblivion for many years, it suddenly exploded in popularity when the music was appropriated by Philippi and adapted to Klein's pre-existing lyrics in 1889. The new song was at first performed live by satirist Heinrich Littke-Carlsen in the late 19th century at Rixdorf's concert hall Neue Welt and Berlin's variety theater Wintergarten. It soon became "probably the most widespread local dance", fostered the adoption of new dancing styles like the indecent schieber, spawned several imitations around Berlin like the Minna-Polka by Paul Lincke (1902), and eventually spread throughout the empire's dance halls.

Several recordings of the song were published over the decades, the first being the Rixdorfer Bauern-Polka ("Rixdorfian peasants' polka"), a semi-instrumental version arranged by Max Büchner (1862–1906) with an accompanying comedic skit written by Martin Bendix, recorded 1905 in Berlin onto an Edison cylinder, performed by the Büchner-Kapelle with actor and media pioneer Gustav Schönwald, and widely released for the first time in 1914 by Homokord. A recording in the style of the popular all-male close harmony groups followed in 1938, performed by Georg Grohrock-Ferrari and his ensemble. An early East German recording of the song in an arrangement by Reiny Roland used alternate toned-down lyrics, originally written by Josef Freudenthal, and was recorded in 1949 by actor Erwin Hartung, while the most prominent version with the original lyrics was recorded in 1959 by actor Willi Rose, both versions with Otto Kermbach's orchestra. The Rixdorfer remained popular through modern times, recorded in 1976 by James Last or in 1981 by Manfred Korth and the brass ensemble Spreeathener Blasmusik. A symphonic version, recorded by baritone Hermann Prey with the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, was published in 2009.

Instrumental versions of the Rixdorfer have been released since the first recordings by Schönwald in 1905, for example a 1928 foxtrot couplet by Georges Boulanger and arranged by Hermann "Ben Berlin" Biek for Vox Records, a 1937 recording by Otto Kermbach's orchestra, or a 1981 version for barrel organ by Georg Kuwest. The most well-known instrumental version of Neukölln's unofficial anthem is the 1954 recording by conductor Heinz Winkel with the music corps of Berlin's Schutzpolizei.

The song's original adulterous lyrics are usually recited with a strong Berlin dialect in the first person by a protagonist called Franz. They describe his free and easy Sunday partying and dancing spree in Rixdorf, and his meeting his long-time companion, an older woman called Rieke, who insinuates to also be a prostitute.

Quotes

All things which occur through time, vanish with time. Therefore, it is necessary to make them steady, and to cement them, in deeds and tangible form.

— Richardsdorf foundational charter, 1360

In Rixdorf and Neukölln, aspirations, fears and hopes temporarily concentrated, to escape the "old" homelands and their provincial constrictions, their mental and social hardships. Neukölln as utopia, thus as a non-place, where suffering and happiness fatefully coalesced, and where the desire for escape seems to have a timeless presence.

— Udo Gösswald, "Immer wieder Heimat", 1997

If we continue to only observe, we in Neukölln-Nord won't be far from Whitechapel in 10 to 15 years.

— Borough mayor Heinz Buschkowsky, interview, 2008

Depending on how you look at it, you can say: here [in Neukölln] people manage to get along with each other pretty well in a confined space; or: it is more of a side by side, at times also a head-to-head.

— Berlin integration commissioner Derviş Hızarcı, interview, 2024

It is always a boon and bane at the same time, when a district [like Neukölln] is far ahead of its time.

— Neukölln integration commissioner Güner Balcı, interview, 2025

Gallery

• Hermannplatz, Donaukiez
• County Court
• County Court and City Hall
• Public bath house
• Buddy Bear Rixi at City Hall
• Volkspark Hasenheide in winter, 2013
• Hall of Honor, Lilienthalstraße cemetery, Hasenheide

Notes

Adjacent localities

External links

• (district office website; Neukölln borough)
• (online web magazine; Neukölln)
• (neighborhood management website; Donaukiez) (neighborhood management online magazine)
• (neighborhood management website; Berlin including Neukölln)
• (private news website; Neukölln borough)
• (free local newspaper; Neukölln and Neukölln borough)
• (private news blog; Neukölln and Neukölln borough)
• (private neighborhood blog; Rixdorf, Neukölln and Neukölln borough)
• (private information website; Rixdorf, Neukölln and Neukölln borough)
• Related media at Wikimedia Commons: Quarter of Neukölln Borough of Neukölln Quarter of Neukölln (categories)