Named after Jan Petersen (1906–1969), writer.
Jan Petersen was the pen name of Hans Schwalm, a bricklayer’s son born in Berlin and a KPD member. After 1933 he led the league of proletarian-revolutionary writers illegally, and in 1935 spoke at a writers’ congress in Paris wearing a black mask. He went into exile and returned to East Berlin in 1946. The street was named in 1981.