The many disputes surrounding the restoration of the lost Observatory are described. Almost all those involved had made the re-establishment of the AOP their cause: the staff astronomers, the institute's management, the Rat Deutscher Sternwarten, and also the federal government. The crucial German Science Council's report also formulated the re-establishment as a first step towards a future Max Planck Institute, but the Max Planck Society and the state government responsible for Potsdam have other plans. In one of the rare deviations from the final decisions of the Science Council, a large and unified institute is finally established in another place. It was not the work profile of the Astrophysical Observatory that was abandoned, but the old site with its buildings and domes, and that was forever.