Named after Ernst Knaack (1914–1944), resistance fighter against Nazism.
Ernst Knaack, a Berlin communist active in Prenzlauer Berg, was jailed in 1936 and later joined the resistance group around Robert Uhrig. Arrested again in 1942, he was sentenced to death and executed in Brandenburg in August 1944. Until 1952 the street was called Tresckowstraße, after the Prussian officer Hermann von Tresckow.