A fortress overlooking the Finow valley and a
ford across the river was erected about 1220, after the area settled by
Polabian Slavs had been conquered by the
Ascanian margraves of
Brandenburg. The foundations of the parish church date back to around 1250. The settlement itself was first mentioned in a 1334 deed issued by the
Wittelsbach margrave
Louis I. Temporarily held by Count
Henry Matthias of Thurn, the estates were sold to the
Pfuel noble family in 1614. During the indecisive stance of Brandenburg in the
Thirty Years' War, Hohenfinow was devastated by a contingent under
Ernst von Mansfeld in 1626, and again by
Imperial,
Saxon and
Swedish troops in the following years. The rebuilding began with three remaining farmsteads. In 1780 the cornfields of Hohenfinow were mentioned in a travel account by
Johann III Bernoulli. From 1815 to 1947, Hohenfinow was part of the
Prussian Province of Brandenburg. In 1855 the Hohenfinow manor was purchased by Felix von Bethmann Hollweg (1824–1900), scion of a
Frankfurt banking dynasty and father of the later German chancellor
Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, who was born here in 1856. In the last days of World War II, a unit of the "
Army Detachment Steiner" rested near Hohenfinow before the troops withdraw to Eberswalde. From 1947 to 1952, Hohenfinow was part of the State of
Brandenburg, from 1952 to 1990 of the
East German Bezirk Frankfurt and since 1990 again of Brandenburg. ==Demography==