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
The first Berlin Observatory was sited in the Dorotheenstadt quarter. The Marstall Unter den Linden had been erected from 1687 to 1688 according to the plans of the architect Johann Arnold Nering, originally for 200 horses, and a second storey was added from 1695 to 1697 for the Academie der Mahler-, Bildhauer- und Architectur-Kunst, founded in 1696. From 1696 to 1700, Martin Grünberg extended the complex northwards for the new Societät der Wissenschaften, doubling the perimeter out to the Letzten Straße (later: Dorotheenstraße) ). From 1700 until 1711, the observatory, a tower built by Grünberg with three levels, was added to the northern wing of the installation. The 27-meter-high building was one of the first tower observatories of the 18th century. The observatory became partly usable in 1706 and by 1709 was more or less completed. On 15 January 1711 the ″Königlich Preußische Sozietät der Wissenschaften″ held its first meeting in the tower and four days later its first formal gathering, at which the observatory was officially handed over. It became an important focus of the Society. In time, its library and natural history collection also came to be housed under the same roof. The Society was reorganized by Frederick II in 1744 as the ″Royal Academy of Sciences″ (″Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften″) and retained its base there until 1752.