Behrens was discovered on 23 April 1936, by French astronomer Marguerite Laugier at Nice Observatory in southeastern France.
[10] Astronomers Laurent Bernasconi and Stéphane Charbonnel obtained a rotational lightcurve of Behrens from photometric observations made in August 2001.
It gave a longer than average rotation period of 34.34 hours with a brightness variation of 0.16 magnitude (U=2).
[4][5][6][7] The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes an albedo of 0.24 – derived from 8 Flora, the largest member and namesake of this orbital family – and calculates a diameter of 10.31 kilometers with an absolute magnitude of 12.1.
[3] Based on a proposal by Otto Kippes, who verified the discovery, this minor planet was named after Johann Gerhard Behrens (1889–1978), German amateur astronomer and pastor at Detern, in lower Saxony.