New opportunities for scientists certainly opened up in the East and the West for scientists after the fall of the wall. There are the success stories of East German scientists who benefitted from an exchange of ideas but that wasn't always the case for most scientists from East Germany, was it? br Meggin Leigh speaks to Professor Ernst Theodor Rietschel, a chemist and former president of the Leibniz Association, an organization of more than 80 German research institutes including from the former East Germany.