Why Rixdorf Is a Small Story of Democracy

Rixdorf looks like an ordinary Berlin neighbourhood: cobblestones, old courtyards, a village green with a forge. But look closer and you find a small story of democracy here — told not by kings and grand politics, but by ordinary people who shaped their own place.

People who stood up for their beliefs

In 1737 the first Bohemian families came to Rixdorf. They had left their homeland because they would not give up their Protestant faith — in the Catholic Habsburg empire they were persecuted for it. King Friedrich Wilhelm I granted asylum to over 350 of these refugees and the right to practise their faith freely. Standing up for your own conviction, even against power: that is a very early, very concrete democratic value.

A village that governed itself

Bohemian Rixdorf long organised its own affairs. The community had its own village mayor, its own lower court and far-reaching freedoms — until it merged with German Rixdorf in 1874. People organising their life together themselves: local democracy in miniature, hands-on.

Building from nothing

The Bohemian families built a new life in Rixdorf — houses, courtyards, a congregation that shapes the place to this day. Descendants of some families still live around Richardplatz. Migration is no footnote here but the founding story: participation and building as local history.

Education for all: Comenius

The namesake of the Comenius Garden, Johann Amos Comenius, was himself a religious refugee and the last bishop of the old Unity of the Bohemian Brethren — the tradition the Herrnhut Moravian Church continues today. His guiding idea: learning is for everyone. A deeply democratic ideal, because education is the basis of participation. And to persecution he responded not with resignation but with creating: he wrote the world's first picture textbook, the Orbis Pictus. It is exactly this attitude — making something new out of hardship — that Localnauts passes on.

What kids take from it today

All of this works without wagging a finger. No appeal, no pressure — just the quiet invitation to think for yourself: what would I build? What would I stand up for? While playing, the kids experience that people like them made this neighbourhood. They decide as a team, dare to try things and see Rixdorf with new eyes. It works — for the kids and for the adults walking along.

With Localnauts the Bohemian Village becomes a walkable time-travel to 1737: across ten stations a crew solves puzzles, steps into the families of back then and finds the lost chest at the end. No app, for kids age 8 and up.