The first building of Rummelsburg was a brickyard, which was located on the shore of the Rummelsburg lake (then: Stralauer See) from 1669. In the 18th century it developed into a dairy, which was initially called Charlottenhof. After 1775, fisheries and market gardens are also documented. When the dairy was bought by the wine merchant Johann Jakob Rummel and converted into an inn, he called it Rummelsburg. This name was transferred to the emerging settlement.
In 1861 Rummelsburg, until then an exclave of Berlin in the district of Niederbarnim, was incorporated into the Boxhagen estate district. In 1859 the Friedrichs-Orphanage was opened here, and in 1867 the Gesellschaft für Anilinfabrikation mbH, the forerunner of Agfa, was founded. Between 1872 and 1875, Victoriastadt was built – partly by British civil engineers – and from 1877 to 1879 the municipal Arbeitshaus Rummelsburg (later: Rummelsburg Prison). Between 1890 and 1892 the protestant Church of the Redeemer was built.
On 30 January 1889 the estate district was dissolved and the independent community of Boxhagen-Rummelsburg was formed, which now consisted of four settlement cores – the Boxhagener Vorwerk with its settlement colony, the Rummelsburg establishments, the colony of Victoriastadt and the colony of Lichtenberger Kietz. Benefiting from the construction of the Stralau-Rummelsburg railway station in 1882 (today: Ostkreuz railway station), the following years saw rapid growth in residential and industrial development.
The number of inhabitants in the 19th century increased with the rapid industrial development from 2,135 in 1875 to about 20,000 in 1895 and more than 50,000 in 1910.
In 1912 Boxhagen-Rummelsburg came to the city of Lichtenberg and with the formation of Greater Berlin on 1 October 1920 to the Lichtenberg district of the German capital.
From May 21, 1927 until the 1950s, Köpenicker Chaussee 1-4, directly at the Rummelsburger See, was the location of the Municipal River Bath Lichtenberg. In addition to 26,000 m² of sandy beach, there was a smaller school pool, a large sports pool (25 m × 100 m) and a smaller warm pool, whose water was heated in the cooler season with the waste heat from the neighbouring Klingenberg power station. A fourth pool was reserved for the ten-meter diving tower. The total area of the pool was 50,000 m².
When the district was reorganized in 2002 (one year after the Berlin district reform) Rummelsburg became an independent district.