It is owned and operated as under public law by the State of Thuringia.

It was founded in 1960 as an affiliated institute of the former German Academy of Sciences at Berlin in GDR and named in honour of the astronomer and physicist Karl Schwarzschild (1873–1916).

In 1992, the institute was re-established as Thuringian State Observatory (Thüringer Landessternwarte, TLS).

Made by VEB Zeiss Jena (the branch of Carl Zeiss located in Jena in what was then East Germany), this instrument is known as (2m) Alfred Jensch Telescope: though its mirror is 2 metres in diameter, the telescope's aperture is 1.34 m.[3] The observatory has observed several exoplanets and brown dwarfs, as around the stars HD 8673, 30 Arietis, 4 Ursae Majoris, and around HD 13189 on 5 April 2005.

[4] The observatory also hosts an International station for the interferometric radio telescope LOFAR.