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 Palace
In 1992 von Boddien co-founded with Kathleen King von Alvensleben, (an American architect who had married into a German noble family), what evolved to be the Berlin City Palace Sponsoring Association – which became the most influential lobby group. The Association accumulated plans that had been believed lost, and funded a research project at the Technical University of Berlin to measure surviving photos and drawings of the Palace to create precise architectural plans. In 1993, on the world's largest scaffolding assembly, it audaciously erected a "trompe-l'oeil" mockup of two frontages of the Stadtschloss facade on a 1:1 scale on plastic sheeting. Privately funded by donations and sponsorship this "coup de théâtre" stood for a year and half. Showing a vision of central Berlin lost for fifty years, and how the palace could provide the missing link to the historical ensemble of the Zeughaus, the Altes Museum, and the Berlin Cathedral, the spectacle brought the debate to a temporary climax in 1993/4. While opinion continued to remain divided, it succeeded in winning over many politicians and other key figures for the endeavour.