Named after Poelchaustraße, which honours the prison chaplain Harald Poelchau (1903–1972).
As chaplain at Tegel and other Berlin prisons, Poelchau accompanied about a thousand people to their execution up to 1945. He belonged to the resistance circle around Helmuth James von Moltke (the Kreisau Circle) and helped Jews who went into hiding. The station opened in 1979 as Karl-Maron-Straße, after a GDR politician; street and station were renamed in 1992.