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.
Berlin Observatory
Gottfried Kirch died in 1710, a year before the official opening of the Academy and the Observatory. His assistant Johann Heinrich Hoffmann moved up to replace him as the head of the observatory. After his death in 1716 Christfried Kirch, the son of Gottfried Kirch, became his successor. He was aided in his work on the calendar by his mother Maria Margarethe Kirch and his sister, just like he and his mother once helped his father. His mother died in 1720. From 1720 until 1736 he was assisted with the practical activities by J. G. Schütz. After the death of Christfried Kirch he took on the post of director in 1740. For many years the calculations for the calendar were continued the most part by Christine Kirch; she was also responsible for the keeping of the accounts. During the years of "Old Observatory" questions of astronomy were also discussed and grappled with in Berlin by the likes of, among others, Leonhard Euler, Joseph Louis Lagrange and Johann Heinrich Lambert. In 1765, Giovanni_Salvemini (aka Johann Castillon) received the position of First Astronomer. In 1768, the Observatory received a mural quadrant constructed by John Bird, their first really important observing instrument. This device can now be seen in Babelsberg Observatory.