Berlin Observatory
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
The first of the new instruments arrived in spring 1914. In the year after, the placing of a 65 cm refractor was completed; it was the first large astronomical instrument from Carl Zeiss in Jena. In 1924 followed the completion of a 120 cm reflecting telescope, at the time the second-largest telescope in the world and the largest in Europe. After the Second World War, the reflecting telescope was dismantled and was shipped off to the Soviet Union as reparations (a fate shared by other observing instruments) It was sent to the Crimea complete with its dome;– to reconstruct the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory, Simejis, destroyed in the war. – where it is still in service today. In 2002, the remaining torso of the building was fully restored and completed and received a new dome; since then the library of the Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam has been accommodated there.