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.
Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam
After test observations by Paul Guthnick in the summer of 1906 a new site was found on a hill in the eastern part of the Royal Park of Babelsberg. The ground was placed at the observatory's disposal by the crown free of charge. The costs of the new buildings and the new instruments amounted to 1.5 million Goldmark and could be covered by selling the landed property of the Berlin Observatory. The old observatory built by Schinkel was pulled down later. In June 1911 the construction of a new observatory began in Babelsberg and on 2 August 1913 the removal from Berlin to Babelsberg was complete.