Named after Ruhleben, an old estate between Spandau and Charlottenburg.
The estate was first called Neues Vorwerk bei Spandau; the name Ruhleben is first recorded in 1704. Electress Sophie Charlotte received the estate in 1695, and Friedrich, by then King in Prussia, had a pleasure palace built on the Spree, completed in 1710. In the First World War the Ruhleben trotting track was an internment camp, mainly for British civilians. The U2 station opened in 1929.