In December 2004 a group of scholars met in Vienna who were tied together by the attempts to save the Bertalanffy archive for the public: six banana boxes containing letters of Ludwig von Bertalanffy from after World War II when he left Austria to 1972, when he died, and a lot of books which belonged to his private library in Buffalo suddenly – in spring 2004 – appeared in the United States for auction (see Chroust G, Hofkirchner W. 2006. Ludwig von Bertalanffy returns home. Systems Research and Behavioral Science 23:701-703). It was the constitutional meeting of the BCSSS. The BCSSS is an association by Austrian law. Its domicile is Vienna, Austria. It is member of the IFSR.

The Bertalanffy Center is open for members of the systems movement, be they individual or organisational, who have an interest in promoting metatheoretical thinking.