The first promising initiatives to maintain Johannes Kepler's legacy and make it accessible to a broader public go back to the 1930s. After the large Kepler monument was erected on the market square in Weil der Stadt in 1870, which is only a few steps away from Kepler's birthplace, in which the Kepler Museum is now a magnet for visitors from all over the world. In 1935 after important preparatory work by the mathematician and long-time rector of the Technical University of Munich, Professor Walther von Dyck, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences founded the "Commission for the Publication of the Complete Works of Johannes Kepler". Professor Max Caspar, who had already been identified as a Kepler researcher at the time and had studied theology and mathematics at the University of Tübingen, was appointed head of the Kepler edition.
In 1938 the “Verein Keplerhaus” was founded with the aim of acquiring and renovating the house in which Johannes Kepler was born on December 27, 1571 in Weil der Stadt and creating a Kepler Museum there. That is the hour of birth of the Kepler Society. Professor Max Caspar becomes the first chairman. On the initiative of Max Caspar, the mayor of the town Hermann Schütz and Paul Reusch, the chairman of the Gutehoffnungshütte, the house where Kepler was born was bought and the Kepler Museum was inaugurated in 1940.
In 1951 Dr. Franz Hammer became chairman of the Keplerhaus association and, in 1956, was also responsible for the Kepler edition
at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. The Keplerhaus association is expanded to become the Kepler Society.
In 1962, Professor Walther Gerlach became the chairman of the Kepler Society. A special highlight of the Kepler Society in 1971 was the festive event and the four-day International Kepler Symposium on the occasion of Kepler's 400th birthday.
In 1972, Professor Walter Rentschler took over the chairmanship. In the years that followed, the highly regarded lecture series Great Mathematicians and Natural Scientists was held in the Kepler Hall of the Carl Zeiss Planetarium in Stuttgart.
From 2001 to 2013 Professor Manfred Fischer was chairman of the Kepler Society. In 2002 the Kepler observatory was established and the group of "amateur astronomers of the Kepler observatory (AKS)" was founded, to which a youth group has been affiliated since 2011. In 2006 the Kepler Prize was awarded and the observatory was expanded to include a lounge. In the International Year of Astronomy 2009, numerous events were held together with the Universities of Stuttgart and Tübingen on the occasion of 400 years of Kepler's "Astronomia Nova". In 2013 the 75th anniversary of the Kepler Society was celebrated.
Professor Klaus Werner has been chairman of the Kepler Society since 2013. In 2015 the 75th anniversary of the Kepler Museum was celebrated. In 2019, anniversary events for Kepler's "400 Years of Harmonice Mundi" took place in Weil der Stadt and at the University of Tübingen.