The road to a national academy for Germany has been a long and rocky one. Back in 1990, just months after reunification, then science minister Heinz Riesenhuber asked the Leopoldina — the learned society with the longest tradition in the German-language part of the world — to take on the role. But having just emerged from 40 years of communist quasi-isolation, the leaders of the 355-year-old academy declined to do so.

Seventeen years, two government changes and four science ministers later, Germany finally has a national academy. And it is the Leopoldina that will form its basis (see page 470).

When science minister Annette Schavan, a Christian Democrat like Riesenhuber, announced on 16 November that the Leopoldina should fill this role, it this time accepted the invitation.

Germany will benefit from a national academy that can provide genuinely independent advice on scientific questions.

Germany's seven regional scientific academies were surprised, and in some cases annoyed, by the decision. The country's Länder (states) have far-reaching autonomy in cultural affairs, which is why designating the national voice in science to a single body has been problematic in the past. As a result, Germany lacks a body that can represent the national opinion on science to the outside world and to German policy-makers in the way that the Royal Society does in Britain, or the National Academies in the United States.

Schavan's move therefore deserves applause. It resolves, by satisfyingly non-bureaucratic means, an issue that had threatened to become buried forever between folders and beneath reports. That it was made by virtual fiat, with little public consultation, doesn't spoil the effect.

Germany will benefit from a national academy that can provide genuinely independent advice on scientific questions. The challenges posed to the federal government by such matters as global warming, genetics and demographic change demand such a mechanism.

The current, fragmented academy landscape doesn't match the needs of a large modern nation such as Germany. Some would have preferred to set up a new body (see Nature 443, 371–372; doi:10.1038/443371b 2006), but this is not actually necessary. The Leopoldina, formed in 1652 and based in Halle in eastern Germany, demonstrated in communist times its independence and its moral and scientific integrity. It has all it takes to serve as a national academy, and it should take up its work with confidence.

Germany's regional academies should accept the invitation to assist it in its new task, particularly by adding their strengths in the humanities, where the Leopoldina lacks expertise (the academy will be responsible for Wissenschaft, the German word for science that actually embraces the humanities as well as hard science). If the outcome proves to be as solid and deeply rooted in science as is the Leopoldina's reputation, then this decision was worth the 17-year wait.