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.
Mannheim Observatory
In 1859 Eduard Schönfeld was appointed Director with a salary. The observatory equipment at his disposal was somewhat antiquated, his largest telescope being a small refractor of 73 lines aperture, but he selected a line of work to suit the instruments at his disposal, observing Nebulae, for which he soon made a name for himself, and variable stars and keeping a watch on comets and new planets.
The results of his observations of nebulae are contained in two catalogues published in the "Astronomische Beobachtungen der Grossherzoglichen Sternwarte zu Mannheim", 1st and 2nd parts (1862 and 1875), and those of his variable star observations appeared in the "Jahresberichte des Mannheimer Vereins für Naturkunde", Nos. 32 and 39 (1866 and 1875). His work contributed significantly to the "Bonn Survey", a star catalogue still in use today. Moreover, he organized several astronomical meetings. At one such a meeting, 28 August 1863 in Heidelberg, the Astronomische Gesellschaft, the second oldest astronomical society after the Royal Astronomical Society. was founded. Schönfeld was on the founding board. Among many other activities, he was a member of the 1871 Advisory Commission in preparation for the 1874/82 Transits of Venus.