page_title: Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam
section_title: Origin
hierarchical_section_title: Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam / History / Origin
caption_attribution_description: Carl Daniel Freydanck (1811-1887): "Die Neue Sternwarte in Berlin", oil, 1838. Standort der Sternwarte: Lindenstr., Kreuzberg.
context_page_description: Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam is a German research institute. It is the successor of the Berlin Observatory founded in 1700 and of the Astrophysical Observatory Potsdam founded in 1874. The latter was the world's first observatory to emphasize explicitly the research area of astrophysics. The AIP was founded in 1992, in a re-structuring following the German reunification.
  The AIP is privately funded and member of the Leibniz Association. It is located in Babelsberg in the state of Brandenburg, just west of Berlin, though the Einstein Tower solar observatory and the great refractor telescope on Telegrafenberg in Potsdam belong to the AIP.
  The key topics of the AIP are cosmic magnetic fields on various scales and extragalactic astrophysics. Astronomical and astrophysical fields studied at the AIP range from solar and stellar physics to stellar and galactic evolution to cosmology.
  The institute also develops research technology in the fields of spectroscopy and robotic telescopes.
context_section_description: The history of astronomy in Potsdam really began in Berlin in 1700. Initiated by Gottfried W. Leibniz, on July 11, 1700 the "Brandenburgische Societät" (later called the Prussian Academy of Sciences) was founded by the elector Friedrich III in Berlin. Two months earlier the national calendar monopoly provided the funding for an observatory. By May 18 the first director, Gottfried Kirch, had been appointed. This happened in a hurry, because the profits from the national basic calendar, calculated and sold by the observatory, should have been the financial source for the academy. This kind of financing existed until the beginning of the 19th century, but the basic calendar was calculated until very recently (it stopped after the Wende in 1991).
  In 1711 the first observatory was built in Dorotheen Street in Berlin and in 1835 a new observatory building, which was designed by the famous architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, was completed in Linden Street (near Hallesches Tor). Alexander von Humboldt was then promoting astronomy by his famous "Kosmos" lectures in 1827–28. He played an important role in providing the funds for both observatory and instruments.
  The Berlin Observatory became known worldwide when Johann Gottfried Galle discovered the planet Neptune in 1846. The discoveries of the canal rays by Eugen Goldstein in 1886 in the physical laboratory of the observatory and of the variation in the altitude of the Earth's pole by Karl Friedrich Küstner in 1888 were likewise important.
  The last two scientific events took place when Wilhelm Julius Foerster was director of the observatory, which was meanwhile attached to the University of Berlin. He prepared the basis for the astronomical observatories in Potsdam: in 1874 the foundation of the AOP on the Telegrafenberg and in 1913 the removal of the Berlin Observatory to Babelsberg.
caption: Alte New Berliner Sternwarte at Linden Street
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