Urania (Berlin)
The Berlin society Urania was founded in 1888 with the aim of making scientific knowledge accessible to a lay public. With its wide-ranging program, Urania is now a non-profit educational institution known beyond Berlin and Germany.
prehistory
The first impetus was provided by Alexander von Humboldt in 1827/1828 with his public "Kosmos Lectures" in what was then the Berlin Singakademie , right next to the Berlin University (today: Humboldt University in Berlin ). Humboldt addressed broad sections of the population with his scientific lectures - among his listeners were both craftsmen and members of court society, including King Friedrich Wilhelm III. - and thus complemented the popular educational intentions of his brother Wilhelm von Humboldt . The astronomer Wilhelm Foerster , once a student of Alexander von Humboldt and later director of the Berlin observatory , continued his teacher's approaches. Together with the astronomer Max Wilhelm Meyer , who had moved from Vienna and who had already pursued similar plans in the Danube city, he planned a permanent establishment that should be permanently suitable for bringing solid specialist knowledge to a lay audience. The two respected scholars were able to win prominent donors for their project, including the industrialist Werner von Siemens .
History of Urania
concept
The founding concept envisaged a new type of institution, which was to consist of an observatory - the first public observatory in the world -, scientific and technical exhibitions and a scientific theater. With a donation of 205,000 marks , a very substantial sum at the time, the “Urania Society” was founded on March 3, 1888 in the form of a stock corporation. It got its name after the muse Urania , who was considered the patron goddess of astronomy in Greek mythology . The task of the new facility, formulated in the founding statute, was to "spread the joy of knowledge of nature". The first Urania building was erected on Invalidenstrasse and inaugurated on July 1, 1889. It was largely destroyed in World War II; the northeast lecture hall was retained and integrated into the new police station building.
The departments for astronomy, physics and microscopy were particular attractions . The innovative offer, in which the visitors were able to playfully participate in various experiments for the first time, generated great interest. In the first year of operation, 98,000 visitors came, six years later there were 178,000. The successful concept was adopted at home and abroad, and associations were quickly founded, for example in Magdeburg , Hamburg , Kassel , Jena , Chemnitz , Prague , Budapest , Graz and Vienna .
Observatory
As the main instrument for the Urania observatory, Carl Bamberg's company built a 12-inch refractor in 1889, which was opened to the public at the end of December of the same year. At that time the so-called Bamberg refractor with its opening of 314 millimeters and a focal length of five meters was the largest telescope in Prussia and after the Strasbourg refractor the second largest in the German Empire . With him, the astronomer Gustav Witt , who worked at the facility, discovered the asteroids Berolina and Eros . The Urania received the observatory code 537 from the Minor Planet Center . As the first astronomer at the Urania observatory, Friedrich Simon Archenhold was employed from 1889 and Bruno Hans Bürgel worked there from 1894 to 1899 .
Effects of war
A difficult phase had to be survived during the two world wars and the intervening global economic crisis towards the end of the 1920s; the second Urania building, built by Walter Hentschel in Taubenstrasse in 1895/1896 , was given up in 1928; all activities were severely restricted during this time. The Bamberg refractor was dismantled in 1951 in the destroyed Urania building and brought to the Wilhelm Foerster observatory on Papestrasse . In 1953, Urania was re-established as a registered association and began its activities on the premises of the Technical University of Berlin . Readings by famous writers such as Heinrich Böll , Max Frisch and Günter Grass attracted a large number of visitors . The areas of art and entertainment have now been increasingly included in the program planning. Urania has had its location in Berlin-Schöneberg near Wittenbergplatz since 1962 .
In the GDR , the Society for the Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge was founded in East Berlin in 1954 , also with reference to the Urania of the prewar period and as a reaction to the establishment of the association of the same name in West Berlin in 1953 . The publications of this mass organization appeared in the new Urania-Verlag , which had been founded in Jena in 1947 and took up the publishing name of Urania from the Weimar Republic . From 1966, the Society for the Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge received the additional name Urania , which was used as a written short name in capital letters URANIA.
Urania today
In 2012, the Urania Berlin e. V. over 2000 members. It is mainly funded by its members, including large companies, universities and scientific institutes. Around 20 employees plan and implement the various programs. A board of trustees , including the presidents of the Berlin universities, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and the Helmholtz Association , has an advisory role.
Events are offered for visitors of all ages. The program includes easily understandable lectures on current issues in the natural sciences and humanities, panel discussions and artistic performances, conferences, congresses and trade fairs. With two modern cinema halls, the Urania-Haus in Berlin-Schöneberg is one of the largest art house cinemas in Berlin. In the foyers , exhibitions on changing topics are shown. Around 200,000 visitors annually take part in the around 1,300 events.
Urania medal
The Urania Medal was awarded for the first time in 1988 to mark the centenary of Urania.
Prize winners:
- 1988 Rudolf Mößbauer
- 1989 Katharina Heinroth
- 1990 Gunther S. Stent
- 1991 Gerd Binnig
- 1992 Günter Tembrock
- 1993 Horst-Eberhard Richter
- 1994 Eugen Drewermann
- 1995 Gerhard Ebel , long-time director of Urania, adult educator
- 1996 Rudolf Kippenhahn
- 1997 Hans-Jochen Vogel
- 1998 Jens Reich
- 1999 Gesine Schwan
- 2000 Michael Succow
- 2001 Heinz Sielmann
- 2002 Gerhard Roth
- 2003 Jürgen Mlynek
- 2004 Richard von Weizsäcker
- 2005 Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard
- 2006 Roland Hetzer
- 2007 Sir Simon Rattle
- 2008 Klaus Töpfer
- 2009 Hans-Dietrich Genscher
- 2010 Kurt Masur
- 2011 Claudia Kemfert
- 2012 Harald Lesch
- 2013 Anton Zeilinger
- 2014 Daniel Barenboim
- 2015 Annette and Rüdiger Nehberg
- 2016 Rolf-Dieter Heuer
- 2017 Alexander Gerst
- 2018 Ulrich Bleyer
- 2019 Seyran Ateş
See also
literature
- Max Wilhelm Meyer : The Urania after its completion . In: Heaven and Earth 2/1890. Part 1, part 2 .
- Max Wilhelm Meyer (Ed.): Illustrated guide to astronomy, physics and microscopy in the form of a guide through the Urania zu Berlin, 1892
- Memorandum for the 25th anniversary of the Urania Society (1888–1913) , 1913
- 100 years of Urania Berlin. Festschrift. Science today for tomorrow Urania 1988
- Jutta Aschenbrenner: Education and the muse of astronomy . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 7, 1998, ISSN 0944-5560 , p. 38-44 ( luise-berlin.de ).
- 125 years of Urania myth and science. (PDF) The booklet accompanying the exhibition, 2013.
- 125 years of Urania Berlin , editors: Ulrich Bleyer, Dieter B. Herrmann, Otto Lührs, Berlin: Westkreuz-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-943755-14-5
- Jost Wippermann: Persecuted, destroyed and forgotten: The fate of Fritz Anselm Arnheim 2015, ISBN 978-3-944836-30-0 .
- Jana Bruggmann: Space in the age of its technical reproducibility. The scientific theater of Berlin's Urania, 1889–1905 . In: History of Technology , Volume 84, 2017, Issue 4, pp. 305–328.
Web links
- Urania
- Wolfgang Wippermann : 125 years of Urania in Berlin Science for everyone . In Der Tagesspiegel , February 5, 2013
- About the development and the goals of the company Urania Berlin . (PDF) Berlin 1888, @ edoc.hu-berlin.de
Individual evidence
- ^ Karl-Eugen Kurrer : 125 years of Urania. momentum magazine, accessed on July 15, 2020 .
- ↑ urania-stassfurt.de
- ↑ wfs.be.schule.de ( Memento from February 19, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ A Brief History of Berlin Astronomy and the Wilhelm Foerster Observatory. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on May 25, 2009 ; Retrieved April 24, 2009 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Internet presence (see web links)
- ↑ urania.de
- ^ Rescue of honor for Urania
Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 5 ″ N , 13 ° 20 ′ 53 ″ E