Only Karstadt department store section belongs to the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district; the rest of the plaza is owned by Neukölln (property numbers 1–9).

The crossing path has led along the southern edge of the marshy Spree Valley at the foot of the Teltow Plateau since primeval times.

[1] In August 1543, when Richardsdorf (later: Rixdorf) came under the ownership of the city Cölln, an inn already existed on the south side of the future Hermannplatz.

[3] Around 1737, the Rollkrug Inn was built at the same location and derived its name from the rolling mountains that began in the south, an Ice Age ridge.

For a long time, the Rollkrug Inn was the only building on the plaza, and it almost seemed like a foreign body until the Gründerzeit, when a metropolitan atmosphere emerged within a few decades.

[4] Towards the end of the 19th century, Rixdorf, a suburb of Berlin, had gained a reputation as an entertainment district, with its restaurants also having a questionable image.

[5][6] The 1846 situation plan shows an additional inn called Zur guten Hoffnung next to the Rollkrug at Hermannplatz.

Although the building was still standing at the beginning of the 20th century, it had to be removed to make way for the widening of Hermannstraße and the construction of the new subway at Hermannplatz.

[4] The front building of Hermannstraße 4 was demolished to make room for a transformer station, which provided a temporary fix to the subway's power supply.

However, in the mid-1920s, the residential buildings on the west side of the square were demolished again to make way for the construction of the subway and a retail store.

The 1st Guards Tank Army, whose soldiers marched into Neukölln from the southeast, was the source of the artillery whose shells unexpectedly reached the square.

The people standing in front of the Karstadt department store on Hermannplatz raised their heads in amazement and listened.

"The cannonade impacted the entire downtown area, with Soviet troops advancing slowly in the forefront near Köpenick, Karlshorst, and Buckow.

[8] "The building with the two blue light towers, which rose on the huge roof garden as an air signal for nearby Tempelhof, gave the cityscape a new sensory stimulus.

To show how comfortable its stairways were, Karstadt had school rider Cilly Feindt ride her white horse up from the first floor to the roof garden.

The SS blew it up to prevent the 29 million marks worth of supplies they had stored in the cellars from falling into the hands of the Russians.

Krukenberg "thought his men too bad to be 'burned out' on a comparatively unimportant section, so he managed to get his force moved from Neukölln to the city center.

Signa Holding, the owner of the Karstadt department store in Hermannplatz, revealed plans in January 2019 to erect an interpretive restoration of the façade damaged during WWII, including the distinctive towers.

The height of this new structure was designed to match the eaves of the neighboring buildings and a hotel was subsequently established inside it.

[13][14] The transformation of the traffic facilities in Hermannplatz that took place in 1929 during the subway's construction, including rearranging streetcar stops and streets, continued until the mid-1980s.

Since then, it offers a vast pedestrian and market space, including the bronze sculpture Dancing Couple by Joachim Schmettau in the center.

The sculpture stands on an approximately six-meter high partially hexagonal base, which is covered with yellow clinker bricks.

A hand-knitted patchwork dress that reaches a height of almost four meters was added to the pedestal in February 2022, making it extremely appealing.

[15] This would be transformed into a pedestrian area where only BVG buses would travel through at night for their stops, and during the day, cafes and bars could set up tables and chairs.

[17] In 2014, the Senate announced the removal of the requirement to utilize the bike lane, but the timeline for additional measures remains uncertain.

This leads to a peculiar situation where the department store, located entirely in Kreuzberg territory, protrudes into the airspace of Neukölln, and Karstadt must pay the district a fee for the "special use of public street space."

Line 95 continued to run tangent to Hermannplatz on the Urbanstraße-Sonnenallee axis as of 2 May 1965, but service was eventually terminated after the closure of the Britz depot in 1966.

Since German unification, there have been attempts to extend the tram from the eastern part of Berlin (e.g. Warschauer Straße) to Hermannplatz.

On 17 July 1927 Hermannplatz's second platform became operational, coinciding with the launch of the GN-Bahn (Gesundbrunnen-Neukölln) for the relatively short section from Boddin- to Schönleinstraße, which was later designated as the U8 line.