Berlin Observatory
In 1825 Johann Franz Encke was appointed director by King Frederick William III of Prussia.
On 11 July (his 43rd birthday) the Kurfürst signed a document formally founding an Academy and an Observatory in Berlin.
On 1 January 1710, the capital was expanded by uniting the previously independent towns of Dorotheenstadt, Friedrichstadt, Friedrichwerder, and Cölln and Berlin (the oldest ones).
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)[1]).
[4] 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.
[7] During the years of "Old Observatory" questions of astronomy were also discussed and grappled with in Berlin by the likes of, among others, Leonhard Euler, Joseph Louis Lagrange and Johann Heinrich Lambert.
[8] The first edition of the Berliner Astronomisches Jahrbuch (for 1776) had already appeared by 1774, initiating the longest-lasting publication series in astronomy, lasting until 1959.
In 1774, he married a granddaughter of one of her sisters; she was likewise entrusted with astronomical work in line with the Kirch family tradition.
As director of the observatory, Bode was able, through favors from Frederick William III of Prussia, to extend the till then rather third-class-equipped institution with a second observing level.
From there, the observing activities could be extended, once the calculated cost of 4465 Thalers and the plan was approved on 7 April 1800 and the required conversion was completed by June 1801.
[12] In 1805 Jabbo Oltmanns came to Berlin and assisted Bode with his astronomical observations and his work on the Jahrbuch, in which also the first of his own articles appeared.
Thanks to the influence of Alexander von Humboldt, expensive instruments were obtained and with his aid Encke was also able to get the Prussian King to agree to the construction of a new observatory, situated on the edge of the city at that time.
The main instrument was a new refractor from the München (Munich) workshop of Joseph von Fraunhofer with an inner aperture of 9 inches (24.4 cm) and an inner focal length of 4.33 meters.
At the same time, Humboldt received from the king the authority for the storage of associated documents in the Kultusministerium (cultural ministry) .
[17] On 7 April 1829, five days before the departure of Humboldt on his Russian expedition, he received a royal commission for the new observatory project planned by the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel and its construction at the desired location.
[18] The tower of the old observatory served as Telegraphenstation 1 between 1832 and 1849, one of the 62 stations of the Prussian optical telegraph from Berlin via Köln to Koblenz.
[19] The entire area of the Marstall complex between Dorotheenstraße and Unter den Linden was taken over in 1914 by the Berlin State Library.
The long east wing housed the living quarters of the director on the ground floor and was adorned with a temple front, which as the main frontage showed the God of Light Apollo with a quadriga in relief on the gables.
[23] From May to August 1835 the Königsberg astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel carried out pendulum observations in the ″little magnetic house″ („Magnetisches Häuschen") in the grounds of the observatory (see Freydanck's painting on this page) for the creation of a new Prussian measurement of length.
On 23 September 1846, Galle and astronomy student Heinrich Louis d’Arrest, since 1845 assistant at the observatory, discovered the planet Neptune, on the basis of positional calculations send by the Frenchman Urbain Le Verrier.
After an initial lack of success they conferred the Le Verrier data with a newly published sheet of the „Berliner Akademische Sternkarte", edited by the Prussian Academy of Science.
The letter from Le Verrier had coincidentally reached his close acquaintance Galle on the same day as Encke's 55th birthday, who gave his permission to search around the given celestial positions.
At other observatories, the request of the French astronomer was viewed as not having sufficiently promising chances of success, of detecting another large planet on the basis of the deviations between theory and observations for the orbit of Uranus.
From 1884 until the beginning of the 1890s Karl Friedrich Küstner was also employed as Observator; he discovered in this time the polar motion as a result of his measurement activities.
[33] At the end of the 19th century, the rapid growth of Berlin led to the fact that the Observatory which was once on the edge of the city was now fully surrounded by buildings, and therefore observational activities were nearly impossible to a level required for research.
The construction of the main building was carried out between 1911 and 1913 by Mertins, W. Eggert, Beringer und E. Wagnernach following the design of Thür and Brüstlein.
In the year after, the placing of a 65 cm refractor was completed; it was the first large astronomical instrument from Carl Zeiss in Jena.
In 2002, the remaining torso of the building was fully restored and completed and received a new dome; since then the library of the Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam has been accommodated there.
[43] Other workers at the observatory included, for example, Johann Friedrich Pfaff an der alten Sternwarte, und an der neuen beispielsweise Johann Heinrich von Mädler, Gustav Spörer, Franz Friedrich Ernst Brünnow, Robert Luther, Friedrich August Theodor Winnecke, Ernst Becker, Wilhelm Oswald Lohse, Adolf Marcuse, Eugen Goldstein, Erwin Freundlich and Georg von Struve.
