Prussian Academy of Sciences

• 1. Introduction

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  The Prussian Academy of Sciences was founded in Berlin on the 11th of July 1700. From its first day, its financial survival depended on a commercial idea: a monopoly on producing and selling calendars throughout Brandenburg. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the philosopher and mathematician, proposed that arrangement and became the Academy's founding president. Prince-elector Frederick III of Brandenburg approved the plan and named theologian Daniel Ernst Jablonski as vice-president. In 1701, Frederick was crowned King in Prussia, and the Academy changed its name to reflect the new kingdom. The formal design of what Leibniz had envisioned would take another decade to codify.

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• 2. How It Was Built

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  In 1710, a founding statute divided the Academy into four distinct classes: two for the sciences and two for the humanities. No comparable institution in Europe had organized itself this way before. The Prussian Academy was the first to teach both sciences and humanities together, where other academies had concentrated on a narrow range of topics. That four-class framework held for 120 years. Not until 1830 did the Academy replace those classes with two: a physics-mathematics class and a philosophy-history class. Around 1812, between those structural shifts, the institution settled into the name by which it would be best remembered. That name was the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences. In 1815, it began forming research committees staffed by employed scientists. The Greek-Roman Archeology Committee and the Oriental Committee were among the first. Some of these committees eventually gave rise to university departments, though not until after 1945. That framework would meet its first major challenge from a king who came to power in 1740. He found the Academy overshadowed by similar bodies in London and Paris.

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• 3. Frederick's Transformation

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  In 1744, Frederick II merged two institutions into one. The Nouvelle Société Littéraire and the existing Society of Sciences became a single Royal Academy of Sciences. Two years later, that body was renamed with a French title: Académie Royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres. French had already been the language of scientific exchange across Europe, and Frederick made it the Academy's official language. Publications appeared in French throughout the second half of the century. The Histoire de l'Académie royale des sciences et belles lettres de Berlin ran from 1745 to 1796. The membership Frederick attracted came from across Europe. Immanuel Kant, Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert, Pierre-Louis de Maupertuis, and Etienne de Condillac all sat on its rolls. Mathematics and philosophy were the dominant fields. The new statute introduced an obligation to pose unsolved scientific questions publicly, offering cash prizes for solutions. Among the physical resources the Academy built up during the 18th century were an observatory, opened in 1709, and an anatomical theater in 1717. A botanical garden followed in 1718; a Collegium medico-chirurgicum in 1723; and a laboratory in 1753. These were later transferred to the University of Berlin. Pierre-Louis de Maupertuis was named director in 1746, beginning a tenure that would bring both renown and controversy.

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• 4. The Great Quarrel

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  Maupertuis served as director until 1759, and his tenure coincided with the Academy's most turbulent period. For roughly two decades at mid-century, the institution was consumed by scandal and internal rivalry. The conflicts ran on two tracks. On one: the debate between Newtonian physics and the Leibnizian view, which had no shortage of champions on each side. On the other: the personal clashes between Maupertuis and the philosopher Voltaire, which went beyond any academic dispute. Maupertuis held a monarchist position. He argued that individuals were shaped by the institutions that contained them. In his view, the Academy's purpose was to serve the glory of the state. Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert took the opposite view. He framed the international Republic of Letters, not the state, as the proper vehicle for scientific advance. By 1789, those turbulent decades had given way to something different. The Academy had gained an international reputation and made major contributions to German culture and thought. One measure of that recovery was personnel: Frederick brought Joseph-Louis Lagrange in to take over from Leonhard Euler as director. Both were among the leading mathematicians of their time. Among others drawn to what was called the philosopher's kingdom were Francesco Algarotti, Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, and Julien Offray de La Mettrie. Religious writings that would have faced censorship elsewhere in Europe found their way into print in Berlin; among their authors was Immanuel Kant. That intellectual freedom was not permanent, and it would face a far harsher test in the century that followed.

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• 5. Twentieth-Century Tests

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  On the 25th of November 1915, Albert Einstein presented the field equations of general relativity to the Academy. He had become a proper member in 1914. A generation later, Nazi rule brought Gleichschaltung to the Academy. That policy of forced coordination was designed to bring various aspects of German society under totalitarian control. The process began in 1933. Compared with German universities, where Jewish employees and members were expelled from 1933 onwards, the Academy moved more slowly. Jewish members were not expelled until 1938, and only after a direct request from the Ministry of Education. On the 8th of June 1939, a new statute came into force. It reorganized the Academy according to the Führerprinzip, a Nazi doctrine placing authority in a single leader. The 1939 Führerprinzip statute did not outlast the war.

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• 6. Division and Rebirth

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  On the 1st of July 1946, the Soviet Military Administration reorganized the Academy under a new name. It became the Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin. In 1972, that institution was renamed the Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR, or AdW. At its height, the AdW supported 400 researchers and employed 24,000 people across locations in East Germany. German Reunification brought that structure to a close. A 1992 treaty between the State Parliaments of Berlin and Brandenburg formally dissolved the Academy. The Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften was established in its place. Sixty of the AdW's former members declined to join the successor institution. In 1993, they founded their own private body outside the state framework. They named it the Leibniz Society.

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