OP
Andy,
The most common name modification that happened to Germans who came here was, I think, the elimination of the umlaut, followed by the dropping of the letter 'c' from some names. For examples of the latter, look up Schulz and then Americanize it to Shulz...or Schaefer vs. Shaefer. We think of them both as common German names, but the website doesn't agree.
To properly spell the English equivalent of German words with umlauts, such as the name Jürgen, you have to add an 'e' in back of the 'u'...thus it would become Juergen. But many Americanizations of those German words never did that. In some cases, the absence of the umlaut completely changes the definition of the word.
Schönefeld is the name of a town outside Berlin. Your neighbors' name certainly sounds like an immigration official who didn't speak or understand German spelled it phonetically. It could also be that the immigrants thought they were being asked where they were from, and their town ended up becoming their name. (You might remember from The Godfather that this is how little Vito Andolini became Vito Corleone at Ellis Island.)
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