A STATE SECRET — DISSERTATIONS IN THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

Abstract

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.

Citation

MERTENS, L. (1994), "A STATE SECRET — DISSERTATIONS IN THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 50 No. 1, pp. 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb026921