Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
official academic society for the natural sciences and humanities for the German states of Berlin and Brandenburg.
The Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (German: Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften), abbreviated BBAW, is the official academic society for the natural sciences and humanities for the German states of Berlin and Brandenburg. Housed in three locations in and around Berlin, Germany, the BBAW is the largest non-university humanities research institute in the region.
The BBAW was constituted in 1992 by formal treaty between the governments of Berlin and Brandenburg on the basis of several older academies, including the historic Prussian Academy of Sciences from 1700 and East Germany's Academy of Sciences of the German Democratic Republic from 1946. By this tradition, past members include the Brothers Grimm, Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt, Lise Meitner, Theodor Mommsen, Albert Einstein, and Max Planck.
Today the BBAW operates as a public law corporation (German: Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts) in cooperation with the German National Academy of Sciences, and has over 300 fellows and 250 additional staff members. Its elected scientific membership has included 78 Nobel laureates.
The BBAW operates several subsidiary research centers. Projects include compiling large dictionaries; editing texts from ancient, medieval, and modern history; and editing the classical literature from diverse fields. Notable examples include Inscriptiones Graecae, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, the German Dictionary (German: Deutsches Wörterbuch), the Ancient Egyptian Dictionary (Altägyptisches Wörterbuch), the bibliography of works by Alexander von Humboldt, and a scholarly edition of the works of Ludwig Feuerbach.
History
Society of Sciences (1700–52)
The roots of the BBAW can be traced to the Society of Sciences of the Elector of Brandenburg (German: Kurfürstlich Brandenburgische Sozietät der Wissenschaften), founded in 1700 by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz under the patronage of Frederick I of Prussia.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q219989. VIAF identifies the subject as 147024506. The Library of Congress control number is nr94016580. Authority coordinates are 52.514, 13.394. 4 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1992, 1700 and 1946.
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This entry incorporates text from “Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.