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GERMANY became reunited again this week. And – at least in theory –
so too did its scientific community. In the process, Germany seems likely
to become once again by far the most powerful scientific nation in Europe,
a position which it occupied up to the last war.

But there will be one big difference. Until partition, the focal point
of German science was – as for so many of the nation’s activities – Berlin.
The nation’s capital was also the home of what was at the time known as
the Prussian Academy of Science.

Before the Second World War, the academy was a pre-eminent scientific
force not only in Germany, but in Europe. After the War, it retained its
national pre-eminence as the main body responsible for allocating research
funds to East Germany’s state-funded research institutes.

One of the chief goals of those involved in the reunification talks
has been to maintain a strong scientific effort in what used to be East
Germany. Former East German Prime Minister Lothar de Maiziere assured his
People’s Chamber last month that ‘good future prospects’ had been worked
out for the (East German) Academy of Sciences.

But life for the academy will not be the same. Under the terms of the
Unification Treaty, Berlin will once again become the single nation’s capital.
However, those responsible for research funding in the new united Germany
include the heads of what were formerly West Germany’s Federal Ministry
for Research and Technology (BMFT) and the German Research Society (DFG)
in Bonn, as well as both the Max Planck Society (MPG) and the Fraunhofer
Society in Munich. They have committed themselves to keeping science as
decentralised as possible, and as a result do not intend the academy to
return to its previous glory.

One reason is that the status of science in East Germany has declined
dramatically. More than 40 years of stewardship by the East German government
have left the academy destitute and ill equipped to carry out internationally
competitive research. The Berlin Senate has estimated that 4.3 billion marks
(Pounds sterling 1.5 billion) will be needed to maintain the research and
educational institutes in the newly reunited city alone.

Perhaps even more important, all East European countries have, over
this period, adopted a heavily centralised system of research organisation
under Soviet influence. This system is incompatible with the West German
strategy of distributing research throughout the country, originally through
its locally administered universities, with a minimal amount of central
control.

As the recently appointed president of the MPG, Hans F. Zacher, put
it somewhat controversially in his inaugural speech, East Germany came to
unification with a scientific organisation ‘that could not have been more
contradictory’ to that in West Germany.

He emphasised that the Max Planck Society was ready, as a matter of
urgency, to help reunify the two scientific communities. But Zacher added
that there were ‘limits’ in the nature of the organisation.

‘(The MPG’s) job is to promote exceptional research through its institutes.
It must not endanger this task by taking on institutes that are not appropriate,’
said Zacher. ‘It must also not endanger its task by building up project
groups, or taking on new blood, to such an extent that it is no longer true
to its institutional basis.’

Research administrators from the two sides of the former border have
decided that a complete restructuring of East German science is now required.
Not surprisingly, the West German decentralised model will be used as a
template. ‘I know it sounds very cruel, but the academy system must (now)
fit with the university system which has been established in West Germany,’
says Doris Schenk, a programme director at the DFG. ‘In Germany, research
has traditionally been done at universities. There won’t be a central academy
(in Berlin) any more – it will only be a learned society,’ she said. ‘Most
of the academy’s institutes will have to find a new home, which could mean
finding a new mother and father.’

The DFG is planning to provide some of the funds needed for this search
for new homes. The federal government in Bonn announced in June that East
German scientists will be able to apply for DFG funding as from next year.
And, according to Schenk, such opportunities could now be available as early
as late October this year.

The Max Planck Society is also offering help, for example by funding
university-based research groups for a period of up to five years, and establishing
independent groups that may later be converted into fully-fledged MPG institutes.

But will the funding come in time to save East German science? Given
the current decrepitude of East Germany’s research institutes, many fear
that the most able scientists will leave for better opportunities on the
other side of the country.

Scientific administrators in both the West and East are hoping to stem
the migratory tide by bringing research capabilities and facilities on what
was formerly East German soil up to international standards. ‘It would be
totally short-sighted to neglect the research infrastructure in East Germany,’
says Christian Patermann, a spokesman for the newly united Germany’s research
minister, Heinz Riesenhuber. ‘We must make an absolute point of keeping
science in East Germany.’

Distributing research funds to scientists and universities in the East,
however, will be the easy bit, at least in theory. More difficult will be
the task of shifting the institutions in what was formerly East Germany
to work in a decentralised way. West German admini strators insist that
decentralisation is essential for a healthy scientific community. ‘You cannot
organise science in a ‘command’ way,’ said Patermann. ‘You get different
types of development, the results of which can be seen when one compares
the scientific landscapes of the East and West.’

Patermann says that the Federal Republic has itself discovered that
‘uneven scientific development has a negative effect’. He adds: ‘Statistics
show that where a (regional) policy which emphasises research and technological
innovation is introduced, economies are less depressed and unemployment
rates are lower. It is necessary from the human resources point of view
alone; no young East German scientist should have to choose between home
and the future.’

Rebuilding East German science on the West German model will take time.
In the interim, the Bonn government has already made money available to
provide job security for employees of the academy’s institutes, where most
of the state-funded research in East Germany is currently carried out. And,
in consultation with scientific administrators from East Germany, Bonn has
developed a procedure for evaluating the quality of East German research
according to international standards.

Thus although many lower-level employees of the academy are already
being laid off, according to both East and West German officials, there
is sufficient funding for the beleaguered institutes to continue their work
through the end of 1991.

The Cologne-based ‘Wissenschaftsrat’ – or German Science Council – has
been given the task of evaluating all of the academy’s institutes. When
the task is finished, the council will recommend that some institutes receive
further funding. It will also suggest that others either become part of
West German research organisations, such as the Fraunhofer or Max Planck
Society, or be turned into self-sufficient applied science enterprises within
the German economy.

At the same time, a major effort will be made to decentralise research
funding away from control by Berlin. The five newly formed German states
(Lander) in the East will each play a role in research funding. Like the
11 states in the West, they will share responsibility for financing the
work of the scientific community with the federal government.

At present, the federal government in Bonn pays for large national research
projects, participates in the construction of universities and clinics,
and either matches the research funding provided by the individual states,
or negotiates with state governments on how the costs should be shared.

To encourage the financially over-burdened state governments in the
East to find money for science, a special arrangement has now been introduced.
Under this arrangement, the federal government will provide at least two
marks for each mark the new states spend on research.

But the slow and painstaking evaluation of former East German institutions
one-by-one could mean that some scientific establishments in the East will
slip through fiscal cracks before they can even come before the Wissenschaftsrat.
Throughout the summer, reports have been appearing in the media almost weekly
about East German scientific and educational institutions, such as the Bernauer
Geological Archive, that are on the brink of financial collapse.

Some of these institutes have found that they do not have enough funding
to get through the year; others that the funding currently allocated to
them is insufficient to allow for proper research planning – as is the case
of the Zeuthen Institute for High Energy Physics in Potsdam.

The mood at the academy is rather less optimistic and permeated by doubts
about the future. According to an academy spokesman, Horst Moritz, it is
not clear what will be left of the academy’s institutes when the dust has
settled. Although Moritz said he expected the Wissenschaftsrat to complete
its evaluation by the 31 December 1991 deadline, the financing currently
provided for the evaluation period was not enough to keep science stable.

‘Means are there to secure jobs and to provide research institutions
only with what is absolutely necessary to keep going,’ said Moritz. Because
of the lower pay in the East, Moritz said that many scientists had already
begun to look for work in the West and that this trend would continue because
of better pay and research conditions.

According to the Fraunhofer Society, there are also research institutions
in the East that are not eligible for funding either because they are not
members of the academy system, or because they are unable to draw money
under Bonn’s temporary funding arrangements.

These institutions are in a critical financial situation, the society
says. It is asking the government to provide immediate funding for the last
quarter of this year to avoid ‘the irreversible disintegration of capable
research groups’.

The Fraunhofer Society, which is concerned primarily with supporting
applied research, has its own plans to open 14 research establishments on
what was formerly East German territory. These will cost an estimated 90
million marks for 1991, rising by between 10 and 20 million marks a year
in the following years.

The organisation is relying on a special financing from the federal
government to cover this expansion. Quick action is needed, it says. ‘The
danger that East German scientists will lose their capabilities as a result
of hesitation on the part of science policy makers must be prevented.’ Such
a loss, it adds, would create a gap in efforts to strengthen science throughout
Germany.

The Wissenschaftsrat also recognises the need for haste. ‘We are operating
under enormous pressure,’ the council’s president, Dieter Simon, said at
a recent press conference in Berlin. He described as ‘science fiction’ the
idea that the process of evaluating East Germany’s research institutes can
be completed by 1991.

Despite the current weaknesses of the academy and the West German scientific
agencies’ hold on the purse strings, Berlin’s magnetism may be difficult
to resist. During the years the East German government administered science
in the German Democratic Republic, centralising science under the academy’s
roof was a main policy goal. Universities were stripped down to educational
outposts as funding for research and responsibility for equipping laboratories
was shifted to the institutes of the academy. Of the academy’s 95 research
establishments and 76 institutes, 61 per cent were located in the Berlin/Brandenburg
region. Others were concentrated in Saxony (23 per cent), Mecklenburg and
Thuringen.

To redistribute scientific installations, BMFT spokesman Patermann suggests
that when two institutions are competing for funds – one in Berlin and another
in another region – the BMFT might consider giving preference to the non-Berlin
lab if all else was equal. But according to Wilhelm Krull, head of the Wissenschaftsrat’s
research policy division, the effects of the current funding policies are
too difficult to predict. ‘It’s too early to tell now,’ he says.

But it is not too soon to discover what the Germans see as their role
in shaping Europe’s scientific future, even if they are cautious in discussing
how influential they expect this role to be. ‘In 10 or 15 years it’s going
to be a ‘European concert’,’ says DFG spokeswoman Schenk.

Schenk also says that Germany could serve as a bridge between the scientific
communities of Eastern European and European Community, but that this would
take more time than most people expect. On a recent visit to the Polish
Academy of Sciences, she noted: ‘¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵs in the East have had traditionally
good contacts with Germany. Now, they think that we have the funds to promote
research based on Germany’s past economic strength. What they forget is
that we have to rebuild the economy of East Germany first.’

Patermann refuses to speculate: ‘All I can say is that we will be richer
in variety and in the creativity of our institutions in the end.’ Schenk
sums up: ‘We’re on an adventure that no one has ever been on before.’