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.
Wilhelm von Freeden
In Hamburg, in 1867, he founded the private North German Naval Observatory ("Norddeutsche Seewarte"), which he directed until 1875 when it became the German Naval Observatory ("Deutsche Seewarte"), an agency of the German Empire. The purpose of the observatory was to promote and to facilitate maritime intercourse. It was composed of a department of maritime meteorology; a bureau of nautical, meteorological, and magnetic instruments; a department of coast meteorology and signal service; and a bureau for testing chronometers. In 1945, the tasks of the German Naval Observatory were turned over to the German Hydrographic Institute ("Deutsche Hydrographische Institut"), and in 1990 that agency in turn became part of the present day Federal Department of Shipping and Hydrography ("Bundesamt für Seeschifffahrt und Hydrographie").