Named after Mierendorffplatz, which honours the Social Democrat Carlo Mierendorff.
The square was originally named after King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden; its gardens were laid out in 1912–1913. In 1950 it was renamed after Carlo Mierendorff (1897–1943), an SPD member of the Reichstag who voted against the Enabling Act in 1933 and spent five years in concentration camps. Later active in the resistance, he was killed in an air raid on Leipzig.