When was the Berlin Observatory created?
2512514#0
The Berlin Observatory (Berliner Sternwarte) is a German astronomical institution with a series of observatories and related organizations in and around the city of Berlin in Germany, starting from the 18th century. It has its origins in 1700 when Gottfried Leibniz initiated the "Brandenburg Society of Science″ ("Sozietät der Wissenschaften") which would later (1744) become the Prussian Academy of Sciences ("Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften"). The Society had no observatory but nevertheless an astronomer, Gottfried Kirch, who observed from a private observatory in Berlin. A first small observatory was furnished in 1711, financing itself by calendrical computations.
Berlin Observatory
2512514#13
The construction of the new Berlin Observatory proceeded from a cabinet order of 10 November 1830 according to the design of Schinkel. An approximately one hectare plot was acquired at a price of 15,000 Thalers in the present-day area of Berlin-Kreuzberg. The foundation stone was laid on 22 October 1832 and the observatory was ready by 1835, on the area currently bounded by the streets ″Friedrichstraße″, ″Besselstraße″ and ″Lindenstraße″. The southern end of the ″Charlottenstraße″ was later named ″Enckeplatz″ in honor of the director at that time and the observatory acquired the address of Enckeplatz 3 A (now: ″Enckestraße 11″).
Berlin Observatory
2512514#9
When the time came to seek a successor by virtue of Bode's retirement, both Carl Friedrich Gauß and Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel turned the post down. On the recommendation of Bessel, Johann Franz Encke, since 1822 Director of the Seeberg Observatory near Gotha, was called to Berlin by King Frederick William III in 1825 and named director of the Berlin Observatory. Thanks to the influence of Alexander von Humboldt, expensive instruments were obtained and with his aid Encke was also able to get the Prussian King to agree to the construction of a new observatory, situated on the edge of the city at that time. A condition was that the observatory should be made available to the public on two evenings in the week.
Berlin Observatory
2512514#7
Johann III Bernoulli served from 1764 to 1787 as Director of the Old Observatory and was succeeded by Johann Elert Bode. Lambert fetched Bode to Berlin in 1773, in order to publish an almanac; after Lambert' death, Bode became the sole editor. The first edition of the "Berliner Astronomisches Jahrbuch" (for 1776) had already appeared by 1774, initiating the longest-lasting publication series in astronomy, lasting until 1959. By virtue of this medium, Berlin Observatory developed into an information source of prime importance within Europe. Originally Bode had the venerable Christine Kirch to assist him with the work on the calendar. In 1774, he married a granddaughter of one of her sisters; she was likewise entrusted with astronomical work in line with the Kirch family tradition. Christine Kirch died in 1782. As director of the observatory, Bode was able, through favors from Frederick William III of Prussia, to extend the till then rather third-class-equipped institution with a second observing level. When Bode entered a petition to this effect on 2 November 1798, space for observing within the tower was still limited to the third storey. The two storeys over it were united to a single spacious level. From there, the observing activities could be extended, once the calculated cost of 4465 Thalers and the plan was approved on 7 April 1800 and the required conversion was completed by June 1801. The construction work was supervised by Oberhofbaurat and Schlossbaumeister Bock.
Berlin Observatory
7059317#6
In 1946 the city of Berlin renamed the observatory "Archenhold-Sternwarte". On 1 June 1948 Diedrich Wattenberg, who had been working with Archenhold, was made director. Annual visitor numbers rose from 8,000 in 1946 to 25,000 in 1949. In 1958, the Great Refractor was decommissioned, but retained as a monument of technology. From 1959 onwards, the observatory was increasingly used for school education in physics and astronomy. To support this, in the 1960s, two further domes were erected in the grounds. A lecture theatre was also added, and in 1966 the #Solar physics cabinet][solar physics cabinet was created, which could project the Sun at diameter or a solar spectrum at length.
Archenhold Observatory
2512514#4
In September 1699, the Reichstag decided to introduce an "improved calendar" to the Protestant German states without having to take on the Gregorian Calendar, introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. The 'improved calendar' was introduced the following year and resulted in 18 February 1700 being followed by 1 March. A patent for the calendar was granted to the planned Berlin Observatory by Prince-elector Frederick III on 10 May 1700 and eight days later Gottfried Kirch was appointed to Director of the Observatory. On 11 July (his 43rd birthday) the Kurfürst signed a document formally founding an Academy and an Observatory in Berlin. Therefore, Berlin received an academy just like those already existing in London, Paris and Rome - the Prussian Academy of Sciences (originally German name: ″Kurfürstlich-Brandenburgische Societät der Wissenschaften″), based on the plans of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Leibniz became the first president of the Academy. The fees resulting from the calendar patent were the almost single financial basis of the institution for a long period. The society originally had no actual observatory of its own and Kirch carried out his observations at various private observatories including, from 1705, the private observatory of Geheimrat Bernhard Friedrich von Krosigk on the Wallstrasse, in Cölln. Kirch was assisted by his wife Maria Margarethe and his son Christfried. Maria Margarethe discovered, among other things, the comet of 1702. In the meantime the Kurfürst had been raised in 1701 to the rank of King in Prussia. On 1 January 1710, the capital was expanded by uniting the previously independent towns of Dorotheenstadt, Friedrichstadt, Friedrichwerder, and Cölln and Berlin (the oldest ones).
Berlin Observatory
2512514#21
Wilhelm Foerster led the observatory until the end of his life in 1903. It was his impulse that led to the erection of the Astrophysikalischen Observatoriums Potsdam in 1874 for on the Telegrafenberg in Potsdam. On the Telegrafenberg stood formerly the „Telegraphenstation 4" which given the hill its name. In the same year Foerster founded the Berlin Astronomische Rechen-Institut (as "Rechen-Institut zur Herausgabe des Berliner Astronomischen Jahrbuchs"), on the basis of the ever-growing extent of calculation of astronomical ephemerides, which occupied its own building at ″Lindenstraße 91″, but on the grounds and in association with the observatory. Most of the astronomers now worked in this theoretical section – separate from the practical, observational section. The section was led by Friedrich Tietjen, who had been working at the obervatory since 1861. In 1865 he discovered the asteroid (86) Semele. After Tietjens death, Julius Bauschinger was called to Berlin in 1896 as his successor. In the following year he achieved in making the institute fully independent of the observatory. In 1912 it moved into a new building in Berlin-Lichterfelde. In 1944 it was placed under the control of the Navy and transferred to Sermuth in Saxony to avoid the bombing. After the Second World War the greater part was brought to Heidelberg in 1945. Only a small remaining section returned to the observatory, which by now had moved to Potsdam-Babelsberg and it was again incorporated in 1956.
Berlin Observatory
2512514#18
On 23 September 1846, Galle and astronomy student Heinrich Louis d’Arrest, since 1845 assistant at the observatory, discovered the planet Neptune, on the basis of positional calculations send by the Frenchman Urbain Le Verrier. After an initial lack of success they conferred the Le Verrier data with a newly published sheet of the „Berliner Akademische Sternkarte", edited by the Prussian Academy of Science. The letter from Le Verrier had coincidentally reached his close acquaintance Galle on the same day as Encke's 55th birthday, who gave his permission to search around the given celestial positions. At other observatories, the request of the French astronomer was viewed as not having sufficiently promising chances of success, of detecting another large planet on the basis of the deviations between theory and observations for the orbit of Uranus. This included Paris Observatory, whose director Le Verrier later became. By virtue of the discovery of Neptune, Berlin Observatory gained worldwide renown.
Berlin Observatory
2512514#27
In 1913, the Berlin Observatory moved again after 78 years in its second home to Babelsberg (since then it is often referred to as Babelsberg Observatory). The Observatory in Kreuzberg was cleared out and torn down in August 1913. The sale of the land covered the cost of the construction of the new building (1.1 million Goldmarks and the purchase of new instruments to the sum of 450.000 Goldmarks). The land itself on the Babelsberg in the Schlosspark cost the Royal establishment nothing. The hill giving the area its name is situated about three kilometers north-east of the Telegrafenberg.
Berlin Observatory
2512514#22
Because Foerster was not a member of the Academy, the Observatory was separated from the Academy in 1889 and affiliated to the Berlin University. The original Academy Observatory had already been used by the University since the founding of Berlin University in 1809. In 1890 Friedrich Simon Archenhold became a worker at the Observatory and erected on the instructions of Foerster a photographic outpost on the Halensee in Grunewald for the photographing of nebulae.
Berlin Observatory