A STATE SECRET — DISSERTATIONS IN THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
| Date | 01 January 1994 |
| Pages | 1-9 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb026921 |
| Published date | 01 January 1994 |
| Author | LOTHAR MERTENS |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
THE
Journal of Documentation
A STATE SECRET - DISSERTATIONS IN THE GERMAN
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
LOTHAR MERTENS
Fakultät für Sozialwissenschaft, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, D-44780 Bochum
Germany
Since the early 1970s the communist regime in the German
Democratic Republic classified thousands of doctoral dissertations
as confidential, thus blocking the dissemination of research in the
various disciplines of science. More than 6,800 titles of dissertations
have not been listed in the national bibliographies. This article seeks
to give a first overview of the different fields of restricted research
and the topics which have been treated as state secrets. The study
also shows the involvement of universities and colleges in the
classification and segregation of theses into special depots and non-
public reading rooms.
1.
INTRODUCTION
IN THE FORTY-ONE YEARS of the existence of the German Democratic
Republic (GDR), one of
its
many secrets was that of the dissertations which had
been submitted at the universities and colleges of the East German state and
not made publicly accessible. Up to the present time, the extent of the doctoral
theses and the topics covered could only be a matter of speculation[1, 2]. Since
the autumn of 1989 and the unification of Germany which followed in October
1990,
this area has been opened up for research. The author of this article is
currently analysing, with the sponsorship of the Deutsche Forschungs-
gemeinschaft, which theses were classified by the regime of the
SED
(Socialist
Unity Party, the ruling communist party in the
GDR).
A full bibliography giving
all the information of the titles and the names of the authors involved will be
published in the spring of 1994[3].
The main interest of the current research is centred on the question of which
universities and colleges classified their dissertations, the number of theses
Journal
of
Documentation,
vol. 50, no. 1, March 1994, pp. 1-9
1
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