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Some scientists from western Germany will pay for reunification with
their jobs, the country’s research minister made clear last week. Heinz
Riesenhuber said that the budget for western Germany’s government-funded
research institutes is to be frozen. The savings will be channelled east
to raise the standards of institutes there, he said.

Germany now has 16 large national laboratories – 13 in the west – covering
a wide spectrum of research. Riesenhuber made his announcement at the opening
of the latest addition, the geophysics centre in Potsdam. Widespread sackings
would not take place, he said. ‘In many cases, we just won’t refill positions
after people retire.’

Just how much money needs to be squeezed from the western institutes
will not be known until the national budget is agreed in mid-July. Last
year the national laboratories had a budget of DM2.5 billion ( £800
million) – 29 per cent of the federal research budget.

National institutes in the east are sorely in need of renovation and
modern equipment. Å®ÉúСÊÓƵs working in them earn 60 per cent of what their
counterparts in western Germany are paid.

‘It can’t stay that way forever,’ said Jens Kruger, of the research
ministry. Last year, eastern German research was cut down to the core, he
said. ‘If the facilities aren’t good and pay remains low, good scientists
will not be attracted to the eastern laboratories and those already working
there will leave. The work already done to restructure and get eastern German
science back on its feet will be for naught.’

According to Ulrich Wahl, also at the research ministry, research into
nuclear energy technology will be hit hardest. ‘There just isn’t enough
public support for nuclear fuel reprocessing research or fast-breeder reactors
to make continuing in those areas defensible,’ he said.

However, work on new and important projects at western laboratories
will continue to grow, said Wahl. For example, a project in applied tumour
virology at the German Cancer Research Centre was considered to be a special
case. ‘We were fortunate because the project has just begun and we’ve hired
200 scientists to work on it. I think its public visibility was a factor,
too,’ said Reinhardt Grunwald, the centre’s director.

Others exempt from the freeze include ‘big science’ projects such as
the electron synchrotron in Hamburg and the research reactor at the Hahn-Meitner
Institute in Berlin, which generates neutrons for research. ‘We just got
DM20 million from the federal government to get the reactor up and running,’
said Thomas Robertson of the institute. ‘But we are going to have to cut
jobs elsewhere.