Berlin Observatory
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.
Diedrich Wattenberg
In 1946 the Treptow Observatory was renamed to honour Friedrich Archenhold, and on 1 June 1948 Diedrich Wattenburg was appointed Director of the Archenhold Observatory in succession to , who a couple of years later moved to Heidelberg following the foundation, in 1949, of West and East Germany as separate stand-alone states. The observatory was in Potsdam which since 1945 had been part of the designated Soviet occupation zone and from 1949 till 1989 would be included in the German Democratic Republic. In addition to his Potsdam appointment, in 1948 Diedrich was appointed President of the Bremen centred , an astronomical group of which he had been a member since 1927. He also belonged to the Berlin Astronomical Society.