The Berlin Observatory (Berliner Sternwarte in German) has its origins in 1700 when Gottfried Leibniz initiated the "Societät der Wissenschaften" (Brandenburgische Science Society) which would later (1744) become the "Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften" (Prussian Academy of Sciences). The Society had no observatory, but nevertheless had an astronomer, Gottfried Kirch, who observed from a private observatory in Berlin. A first small observatory was furnished in 1711, financing itself through calendrical computations.