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
On 20 June 1898 the "Großherzogliche Bergsternwarte" at Königstuhl (the present day Heidelberg Observatory) was ceremonially inaugurated by Frederick I, Grand Duke of Baden. The astronomical institute comprised two competing departments, the Astrophysics Department under Max Wolf, containing the instruments from his private observatory and the new foundation's instruments, and the Astrometry Department under Karl Wilhelm Valentiner, containing the Karlsruhe instruments. Valentiner was director of the Mannheim Observatory and had initiated the move to Karlsruhe. After Valentiner's retirement in 1909, both departments were amalgamated under the administration of Max Wolf.
Wolf worked on many areas of astrophysics, he investigated the structure of the Milky Way, star spectroscopy and gas nebula, and searched intensively for Asteroids, of which he discovered more than 800. As an honorary citizen of Heidelberg, he was buried in the cemetery on the mountain in 1932.