Information science in the German Democratic Republic

Abstract

Purpose

The article aims to give an overview of the history and the achieved status of information science in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) with an emphasis on the organisation of information science and practice in the GDR and on the theoretical foundations of information science.

Design/methodology/approach

Primarily, this article is based upon critical literature studies, especially German-language books and journal articles, but the empirical basis also includes some unpublished sources (e.g. letters from information scientists from the GDR).

Findings

There are interesting results concerning the roots of information science in cybernetics, philosophy and the practical area of documentation. The naming of this knowledge field as “informatics”, “informatics of science” or “information and documentation science” is partly very distinct from Western conceptions. We found different theoretical foundations for information science including the approaches of Bonitz, Engelbert, Koblitz and Groß and Fuchs-Kittowski. In the GDR, information science and information practice were centralised, but through the information system science and technology, they were consistently accessible at all levels of professional work. With German reunification, information practice and its institutions, as well as GDR’s information science efforts, disappeared.

Research limitations/implications

The article gives hints on the importance on and the survival of some GDR approaches in contemporary information science, but those developments should be analysed in much more detail.

Originality/value

This is the first overview article on the state and entire development of information science in the GDR.

Citation

Stock, W.G. (2024), "Information science in the German Democratic Republic", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 80 No. 7, pp. 287-305. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-03-2024-0058

Introduction

The history of information science is an established research area. We are able to find manifold studies on the history of this knowledge field in general (see, e.g. Shera and Cleveland, 1977; Buckland and Liu, 1995; Burke, 2008) and also, however much lesser, on specific countries such as, for instance, Germany (Hapke, 1999), which is our topic. For the early time of the history of information science, mainly in the Western part of Germany, i.e. the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), there is a recent overview article by Aparac-Jelušić (2024). Additionally, Aparac-Jelušić (2023) wrote a report on information science in the German-speaking countries including Austria, Germany and Switzerland. However, what is the state of the art of the history of information science in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) (Stock, 1986; Vowe, 1978)?

The GDR was founded in 1949 and ended with the German unification in 1990. The GDR arose from the Soviet occupation zone after the Second World War in the eastern part of the remaining Germany; the influence of Soviet institutions on the complete life of the GDR stayed important throughout all four decades of its existence. Besides the Soviet Union, GDR is associated with other socialist countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) including Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Mongolia (since 1962), Cuba (since 1972) and Vietnam (since 1978). Also, information science and practice in the GDR were highly influenced by the development of this discipline in the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries.

As there are only a few articles on information science and information practice in the GDR, especially in the English language, we are going to close this research gap and sketch the history and the achieved status of our discipline in this part of Germany for the entire time of its existence. We want to report on philosophy and cybernetics as the theoretical roots of information science, terminology (“informatics” as well as “information and documentation science”), theoretical foundations (especially the approaches of Bonitz, Engelbert, Koblitz and Groß and Fuchs-Kittowski), the centralised organisation of all information work including the training of information specialists and, finally, the transition of information science into the Western Germany research landscape after the reunification.

This paper is based upon critical literature studies analysing German-language books and journal articles published in the GDR, especially from the journal Informatik (1969–1991) and its predecessors ZIID-Zeitschrift (1965–1968) and Dokumentation (1953–1964); however, the empirical basis also includes some unpublished sources (e.g. letters from GDR-based information scientists).

Prehistory of information science in the GDR: documentation, philosophy and cybernetics

Information science in the GDR had two roots: a more practice-oriented path from librarianship to documentation of scientific information and a more theoretical path from the philosophy of cybernetics to informatics. The starting point of the philosophical path was the offence of “bourgeois” scientists on materialism, which is a basic concept of all Marxist philosophy. Wiener (1948, p. 155) stated, “information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day”. For Wiener, information is independent from matter. And Günther (1957, p. 18) added, “information is information, and not mind or subjectivity” meaning that information is also independent from mind. From the view of cybernetics, information is a third independent basis entity next to matter and consciousness. It is an axiom of Marxist-Leninist philosophy that there are only two basis entities leading to the basic question of all philosophy, “the question on the relation of matter (nature, being) and consciousness (mind, thinking)”. (Kosing, 1972, p. 457) with the clear Marxist answer that matter is first and consciousness is second because it is derived from matter. If cybernetics really contradicts this axiom, this scientific discipline and its technical applications in information and communication technology (ICT) could not be used in a socialist country. The philosopher Klaus tried to find a solution for this ideological problem (Stock, 1989). For Klaus (1961), information is the sum of a physical means and a meaning, i.e. the semantic expression of the transmitted physical signals. Signals are material; it is a property of material processes to send out signals. The meaning of the signals, i.e. their semantics, is an abstraction of certain signal sets. Therefore, the meaning of information is a property (signal sets) of properties (signals). “But the property of properties does not need to have the predicate ‘material’” (Klaus, 1972, p. 190). Analogously, consciousness is not determined as a property of matter but as a property of a movement pattern of matter. Matter, consciousness and information are – for Klaus (1961) – not independent of each other but related: (1) matter is primary and consciousness is secondary; (2) matter is primary and information is secondary and (3) consciousness is primary and information secondary. “In any case, information is linked to material systems, is received and transmitted by them, stored or processed by them. Anyway, informational processes are tied up with specific signalling processes, i.e. with special types of material processes” (Klaus and Liebscher, 1974, pp. 174 f.). With Klaus’ conception of information as a predicate of predicates, the foundational question of Marxism is not involved. The signalling processes are objects of ICT and computer science; the semantic information is an object of information and documentation science. Ideologically “cleaned” cybernetics as the mother of ICT as well as information science is “particularly to be promoted” (Ulbricht, 1963, p. 345). Beginning in 1963, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED), especially its then chairman Walter Ulbricht, massively supported ICT and information science as well as its applications. Ulbricht planned and realised not only information science in the GDR but also the construction of computers and other electronic data processing advice. Especially in Saxony, computer production was forced during the 1960s, resulting in a big player on the computer market in the entire COMECON, namely Robotron in Dresden (founded in 1969) (Gräßler, 2006). However, with the disempowerment of Ulbricht in 1971 and the rise of Honecker, these developments stagnated (Barkleit, 2000).

The other path to information science had its roots in the practice of documentation. Information activities include the creation of information, its transmission, its storage and its retrieval (Koblitz, 1967). However, this is a very broad definition. Koblitz narrows it down to documentary information activities, where documentation means methods of selection and indexing of the content of relevant information (Koblitz, 1959). Now, documentary information activities or “information and documentation”, have their own objects next to scientific librarianship and scientific publishing (Koblitz, 1968). Combining the path from philosophy and cybernetics with the path from documentation, the new science performs research and practice in the information and documentation of semantic information.

How to name this new scientific discipline? There was no uniform name for this knowledge field in the GDR. Most widely used is “informatics” (we should have in mind, that this term describes information science and not computer science as in many other countries of the world), the main journal in this field in the GDR is also known as “Informatik”, and a very influential Soviet text book has the title “Основы информатики (Osnovy informatiki)” (Michajlov et al., 1968) (see also Ibekwe et al., 2019). Representatives of this name variant include, for instance, Bonitz (1978) and, as an example from Western countries, Wellisch (1972). In contrast, Koblitz (1970, 1977b) preferred the term “information and documentation science”, which was also the name of the study programme at Humboldt University in Berlin.

Information and documentation science is related to library science. In 1953, Berlin’s Humboldt University established an institute on library science with Kunze as its head (Kunze, 1970), followed by Dube (1969–1972), Kubitschek (1972–1990) and Nestler (1990) as directors. In 1966, a new department, called “Social Science Information and Documentation” and headed by Koblitz, was founded, and the institute was renamed to “Institute for Library Science and Scientific Information”. For Berlin’s staff, library science has many points of contact with information and documentation science (Aparac-Jelušić, 2024, p. 672). For Koblitz (1970), both disciplines are subfields of the information sciences (note the plural!). As for Dube (1971), Dietze (1977) and Kubitschek et al. (1975), both disciplines stand side by side. Berlin’s last head of the study of information and documentation science was Rückl (see Rückl and Schmoll, 1984). Information science was no longer continued at Humboldt University since 1992.

Organisation of information science and practice

In the GDR, as in the other socialist countries, there was a pronounced optimism about science and scientific-technical progress, as science was viewed as a productive force (Produktivkraft Wissenschaft). The feedback between people and the units of science, technology and production supports the overall process of scientific-technical as well as social progress and even the acceleration of progress desired by the state (Frommknecht, 1978). “With the scientific-technical revolution, people can become creative designers, controllers, and thus masters of the production processes” (Hörz, 1981, p. 343). There is a cycle of science, technology and production (Wissenschaft – Technik – Produktion – Zyklus), which meets the interests of the society (Albrecht and Kant, 1976). The feedback loops between the elements of this cycle as well as of the cycle and society are only possible when information can flow in an optimal way. Inside the science system, there is another feedback loop between research, teaching, and information and documentation (Kröber and Laitko, 1976) (Figure 1). Following the principle of democratic centralism, there were relatively autonomous sub-systems (in our case, science, technology and production) and a central government organising the sub-systems and their collaboration through information planning and general information work (Schönfelder, 1975). The cooperation between research and information practice is regulated by the usage of functional specification documents (Pflichtenhefte), which must be elaborated before research projects can be started. All researchers were required to provide information (Informationspflicht des Wissenschaftlers) (Grau and Ohs, 1979), regulated by law (Gbl. DDR, 1982). The information services, as stated in the Pflichtenhefte, reach from simple tasks of information retrieval via full-text delivery and supply of factual information to synthetic information products such as, for instance, world-state comparisons (Braun, 1982). Researchers in the GDR produced about 4,000 Pflichtenhefte per year (Weiz, 1983); retrospective evaluations of Pflichtenhefte showed consistently positive results (Reblin, 1985).

Especially the centralised planning and administration of research and the law for functional specification documents (Pflichtenheft-Verordnung) (Gbl. DDR, 1982) guaranteed the existence of information science, information practice and its institutions in the entire GDR. Therefore, information science and practice were very welcome in the state policy of this country.

To fulfil the extensive information tasks in the GDR, two national information systems were founded and operated: on the one hand, the (natural) Sciences and Technology Information System (Informationssystem Wissenschaft und Technik, IWT) and, on the other hand, – much smaller – the system of Social Science Information and Documentation (Gesellschaftswissenschaftliche Information und Dokumentation). As there was cooperation with the other socialist countries, the GDR-based information systems collaborated with the respective international systems.

The activities of the IWT were based on the principle of division of work including the selection and indexing of information sources and the compatibility of all data sets (Zekalle and Stöckel, 1974; Neumann and Stößlein, 1974). Compatibility covered three aspects, namely technical compatibility (compatibility of the information devices), syntactical compatibility (compatibility of the records’ data fields) and semantic compatibility (application of the same or intertranslatable information languages as the rubricator and the thesaurus) (Stys, 1985).

The most important institution of the IWT was the Central Institute for Information and Documentation (Zentralinstitut für Information und Dokumentation, ZIID), which was associated with the Ministry for Science and Technology. There was a clear hierarchical organisation with the ZIID at the top and downwards via the central control centres (Zentrale Leitstellen), control centres (Leitstellen), information agencies (Informationsstellen) and, finally, the information officers (Informationsbeauftragte) on the working group-level of the companies and other organisations (Figure 2).

By the way, a similar institution to the ZIID, called “Society for Information and Documentation” (Gesellschaft für Information und Dokumentation, GID), became established in the FRG and existed between 1977 and 1987 as the central institution for all infrastructures of information science and practice in Western Germany. In contrast to the successfully working ZIID, GID failed due to the hardly movable organisational structures of GID’s predecessor institutions, interventionism from the Federal Research Ministry, the transition of information technology from mainframe computers to personal computers, which GID’s staff was not able to manage, the emerging paradigm change from information practice as a public service to an information market and, finally, the lacking research competency of some staff members (Hauk and Stock, 2012; Stock, 2016).

Concerning computer technology, important developments were the hardware of the Unified System of Electronic Computer Technology (Einheitliches System Elektronischer Rechentechnik, ESER) and the corresponding software of the Subject-specific Programming Systems (Sachgebietsorientierte Programmiersysteme, SOPS), both produced by Robotron. In the area of information practice, the SOPS Automated Information and Documentation System (Automatisiertes Informations-und Dokumentationssystem, AIDOS) was used (Stys et al., 1983). ESER machines were stand-alone mainframe computers. Due to poor telecommunication infrastructures in the GDR, there was no remote access to the devices and, therefore, no online retrieval. Full texts were stored on paper or on microfilms (Kundorf, 1983).

Information scientists in the GDR produced about 200 specialised databases, including System der Informationsrecherche der Hauptverwaltung A (SIRA), covering the dossiers of the secret services of the GDR (Staatssicherheit, “Stasi”) with information resulting from spying activities in the GDR as well as in foreign countries (Konopatzky, 2019). In the 1970s, SIRA ran on computers manufactured by the West Germany-based company Siemens and its system GOLEM, which was replaced by the GDR-produced ESER in the course of the 1980s. Other considerable information services were specialised, for instance, on shipbuilding (produced in Rostock), wood technology (Dresden), explosive materials (Schönebeck near Magdeburg) and philosophy (Berlin).

In the GDR, we can identify two institutions for the education of information specialists at the university level, namely the Institute of Library Science and Scientific Information (Institut für Bibliothekswissenschaft und wissenschaftliche Information) at Humboldt University in Berlin (Kunze, 1970) and the Institute for Information Science, Inventions and Right at the Technical University in Ilmenau (Institut für Informationswisenschaft, Erfindungswesen und Recht, INER) (Manecke, 1981). All in all, in the times of GDR, Humboldt University graduated about 1,300 students in library science (since 1955) and information and documentation science with a degree as a Specialist Informator (Fachinformator) (since 1965). The establishment of the studies of information and documentation science in 1965 was one of the first courses on a global scale (Freytag, 2013). At Humboldt University, there were postgraduate study programmes in information and documentation science in the forms of face-to-face and distant learning including subjects such as Marxism-Leninism, theoretical foundations of information and documentation, information needs and users, information indexing, technology in information and documentation, information retrieval systems and management and planning of information work. In Ilmenau, the basis of the study of Information Engineering (with a degree as Informationsingenieur) was the programme of Electrical and Electronic Engineering with a specialisation area in scientific-technical information.

Additionally, there was a study programme of a polytechnic in Berlin (Fachschule für wissenschaftliche Information und wissenschaftliches Bibliothekswesen) with a degree as an Informator. Several institutions offered advanced training in general information and documentation as well as in subject-specific information and documentation, e.g. in social science information or in agricultural information. Information science conferences took place annually in Oberhof in Thuringia since 1962 (Kolloquium über Information und Dokumentation) organised by Ilmenaus’s INER.

Theoretical foundations of information science

In the GDR, there existed four different approaches for theoretical foundations for the documentation of semantic information, namely (1) the theory of research communication (main representative in the GDR: Bonitz), (2) the informatics of science (representative: Engelbert), (3) the theory of documentary information (representative: Koblitz) and (4) the theory of general informatics combining information science and computer science (representatives: Groß and Fuchs-Kittowski). From today’s perspective, some of the information scientists from the GDR can be considered pioneers of information science.

Theory of research communication

In the first theoretical approach, informatics is the theory of scientific communication, which is useful to solve the practical problems of scientific information. In the GDR, Bonitz was the main proponent of this approach (Bonitz, 1978, 1979, 2006, 2010). Bonitz used the German term Wissenschaft, which includes not only natural sciences but also social sciences and humanities, so our translation as “science” means this broad concept of Wissenschaft. The object of informatics is not the content of concrete scientific activities, as those are, of course, the objects of the respective scientific discipline. Instead, informatics analyse the structure, general properties and maybe laws of information dissemination and processing in the sciences, from personal oral communications via congresses to all forms of scientific publications. Informatics, in this approach, was seen as a subarea of cybernetics (Bonitz, 2006, p. 387).

Scientific information is social information and semantic information. In contrast to other non-scientific information, this kind of information will be accumulated insofar as all research is based upon previous scientific results, it can age and lose its practical value and it scatters along the processes of differentiation and integration of science (Bonitz, 1979).

The system of research communication was and is developing over centuries (Bonitz, 1979). The elementary form of research communication is given by the informal channel of oral conversations; it was and is always used in the sciences. Concerning formal channels of scientific communication, written information circulates and is accessible to the research public. The first formal channels are papyri, or sometimes also stones, followed by hand-written books in very small editions. With book printing, large editions could be produced for the first time. The number of books increased over time, so individual researchers threatened to lose track of their overall knowledge. Journals with overview articles emerged, followed by journals with research studies. Similar to books, the number of journals massively grew, and scientists’ overview on their knowledge field was endangered. This was remedied by abstracting or reference journals, which reported shortly on current publications. The last step in the development of the system of research information were digital information repositories including large multi-disciplinary (for instance, the Web of Science) (Bonitz, 1983) and discipline-specific information services (the International Nuclear Information System, INIS) (Zentralinstitut für Kernforschung, 1970), to which information specialists from the GDR contributed about 2.2% of the overall input.

Bonitz (1986) formulated two laws of the movement of research information, namely the principle of holography and the principle of speed. The totality of all information, stored in present-day information memories and large databases, is virtually always accessible from every location on earth – forming a huge global hologram. Information consists of the ability to reach its audience in a time as short as possible. This principle of speed is not only valid in the individual information processing but also in the entire history of scientific communication. With the invention and application of a new channel (from papyri via books and journals to the Internet), the speed of information transmission became faster and faster (Figure 3).

When it came to the description and analysis of scientific-technical information and its use, researchers from the GDR, including Bonitz (see, e.g. Bonitz and Schmidt, 1980), applied quantitative empirical methods since the 1960s, which later were labelled as “informetrics” (Informetrie) (Blackert and Siegel, 1979). For Bonitz (1982), informetrics measure aspects of scientific communication, while scientometrics study quantitative aspects of science in general and bibliometrics include measurements in librarianship.

Bonitz (1979) states that every individual researcher has the duty to be informed about the information services of their discipline and to ensure the broad distribution of their research results including publication strategies and correct citations.

Informatics of science

The “father” of informatics of science was Engelbert. He was a faculty member of the section philosophy of science and organisation of science (Sektion Wissenschaftstheorie und Wissenschaftsorganisation) at Humboldt University in Berlin (Fuchs-Kittowski et al., 2010).

The object of informatics is scientific information. Studying scientific information means studying aspects of science as part of a more general science of science. Studying scientific information means studying aspects of information as part of a general information science. For Engelbert (1978b), both aspects are related in a special scientific branch called “informatics of science”, which has two mother sciences, namely the science of science and information science. Therefore, informatics of science is defined as the “science of the informational processes in the sciences” (Engelbert, 1973b, p. 53). Next to general information science, there are specific information sciences, such as the informatics of science and several other informatics on other kinds of social information (Engelbert, 1973a). Simply spoken, informatics of science is a specialised sub-discipline of information science only considering information which circulates in or is useful for research systems (Stock, 1980).

For Engelbert, two classes of scientific information exist: information as objects of work and information as work equipment. Information as objects of work represents the results of research activities and, at the same time, the starting point of information transmission in order to satisfy users’ information needs. Information as work equipment considers all information types, which are tools or requirements of every research activity including data on scientists and their institutions, research studies in progress, intellectual property rights, standards and norms, scientific equipment or potential customers of research results (Engelbert, 1978b, p. 42).

Researchers, and also all workers (Werktätige) on occasion, are in need of several kinds of information including information from experiments, research administration, mass media, training and education, personal contacts, specialised literature and libraries or archives (Engelbert, 1976). The basis for providing pertinent (i.e. subjectively desired) and relevant (i.e. objective necessary) information to every scientist is the exact determination of the respective information needs. “The objective information need (Informationsbedarf) is the specification of the subjective information need (Informationsbedürfnis) under certain social conditions and at a certain point in time and is expressed in the demand for certain information (on certain questions, problems, topics, objects) in a certain form” (Engelbert, 1976, p. 14).

It is the task of information retrieval systems to ensure an optimal supply of information for all researchers and other users in need of information (Engelbert, 1978a) including the subtasks of documentation, i.e. document selection and indexing, storage, retrieval, replication and presentation. The aim is always to provide researchers with the total amount of information that satisfies their information needs, regardless of their origin (e.g. also from foreign capitalist countries). However, due to the principle of commitment to socialist values, papers with content directed against the GDR, with apologetics of state-monopolistic capitalism, or with doctrines hostile to scientific and technological progress are questionable (Dietrich and Zekalle, 1970). But as Lenin (1971, p. 349) claimed that information with true content is necessary for socialist societies, regardless of their origin, Engelbert presupposes the entire world information fund as the basis of retrieval. But the flow of information is hindered by various information barriers (Engelbert, 1976) on the way to the recipient, so that only a small trickle of information reaches the researcher (Figure 4). It is a fundamental task of informatics of science to identify and bypass as many information barriers as possible.

It should be mentioned that Bonitz disagreed with the informatics of science as part of information science and part of science of science. “An information scientist (Informatiker) who examines the ‘movement’ of scientific information in the field of science today and in the field of technology tomorrow, is he an expert of informatics of science today and an expert of informatics of technology tomorrow, or is he primarily an information scientist who searches for laws in the system of research communication?” (Bonitz, personal communication, letter dated Sept 2, 1982). Therefore, for Bonitz, informatics of science is a valuable research field but by no means an autonomous scientific discipline.

Information and documentation science

Koblitz was certainly the most influential information scientist in the GDR. For him, there are several levels of the study of information, beginning from philosophy and cybernetics via communication science (information organised by individuals and society members) and general information science (all social information) to information and documentation science (as the science of documentary information) (Koblitz, 1977b, 1979) (Figure 5). Information and documentation science, sometimes also called “documentary informatics” (Dokumentationsinformatik) by Koblitz (1979, p. 44), is the main aspect of our new science. Its subjects are all activities of documentation and all circulating documentary information. Information and documentation science is both a social science and an applied science, “insofar as it is about providing knowledge to improve a specific practical activity” (Koblitz, 1979, p. 41).

The main topics of information and documentation science are analytical and synthetic information methods and their products. For Koblitz (1982), information analysis includes methods of information summarisation and topical descriptions, i.e. indexing. Information summarisation is descriptive (deskriptives Referat), leading to a simple list of the analysed paper’s topics, or abstracting (abstrahierendes Referat), leading to sentences which inform on new insights, methods and means of the research, the results and their possible applications (Koblitz, 1964a). As there are many aspects to a document, information practitioners must limit themselves to aspects being worthy of documentation. A combination of descriptive and abstracting summarisation is found in the analytical, structured information compressing (analytisches Referat) in the form “topic: propositions on the topic”.

Indexing of the topics happens through a controlled vocabulary (Koblitz, 1964b). A shared classification system, called a “rubricator”, existed throughout the COMECON countries. It was a system classifying all sciences, social sciences and technologies including their sub-topics over several levels. Rubricators (with non-natural language notations) were never used alone in an information system for information indexing; their optimal complements were discipline-specific thesauri (with natural language descriptors).

Applying the results of the information analysis, Koblitz (1976, 1977a) introduced synthetic information products on three levels. A level-1 synthesis is an overview dossier based on the abstracts (and partly the full texts) of all papers on a topic (Übersichtsreferat), comparable to a review article. A level-2 synthesis gives – in addition to level 1 – an estimation of the future development in the topical area (Fortschritts-und Trendbericht) and, finally, a level-3 synthesis (thematische Studie) also includes an evaluation of the expected applications of the actual and forecast results. A level-3 synthesis based upon all worldwide available documents is called “world state comparison” (Weltstandsvergleich) (Sabisch, 1982).

Informatics as information science and computer science

Groß und Fuchs-Kittowski (1978, 1979) identified four different paths to informatics and, accordingly, four fundamental aspects of this discipline. In the sense of Kuhn (1962), the development of research on information is a kind of scientific revolution; however, this new research area is not established as normal science but is in its pre-paradigmatic phase insofar as there are many different paradigms. As there are four development paths to a unified general information science, there are four candidates for paradigms (Groß and Fuchs-Kittowski, 1978). Path 1 is similar to the approaches by Bonitz, Engelbert and Koblitz; from Bonitz and Engelbert, this path borrowed the starting point of science of science, and from Koblitz, it adopted the theories of development, organisation and representation of knowledge. We have to mention that Groß und Fuchs-Kittowski did not speak of scientific knowledge as Bonitz and Engelbert did, but of all kinds of knowledge. The second path has its roots in technology and includes the theory of information processing and the application of information technology, i.e. it is computer science. Starting with the natural sciences in general and the information theory of Shannon in particular, path 3 addressed a general theory of information. Here, all theoretical approaches to information, i.e. mathematics, semiotics, communication science and epistemology meet. Finally, path 4 has its background in the social sciences and forms the theory of social information, which studies information technology and its application by men. “The information systems supported by automated devices must therefore correspond to social standards and values” (Groß and Fuchs-Kittowski, 1979, p. 41). All four paths come together (or should come together) in general informatics (Figure 6).

What happened after German reunification?

Years before the German reunification, information scientists from the GDR published in international journals. Bonitz (1985) wrote an article on “selected impact” (a combination of the journal impact factor as well as the number of hits and the number of journal profiles of members of a research institution). In 1990, written before 1988, he published articles about different methods of journal ranking, e.g. applying journal co-using information from researchers’ profiles (Bonitz, 1990). Later, and probably the most influential research programme of Bonitz, was the conception of a Matthew effect on the country level (Bonitz et al., 1997). Approaches of science of science in the GDR were continued after German unification mainly by the Berlin-based Society for Science of Science (Gesellschaft für Wissenschaftsforschung) and their publication organ “Yearbook Science of Science” (Jahrbuch Wissenschaftsforschung) since 1994/95, to which many GDR information scientists contributed as authors and editors including, for instance, Fuchs-Kittowski, Laitko or Parthey.

However, Bonitz, Fuchs-Kittowski and many other information scientists and practitioners had lost their jobs in the years after reunification. Why? In research and in many other occupational areas, there was no unification of FRG and GDR institutions, but rather a kind of colonisation. “The Federal Republic has appropriated and incorporated another state”, Daxner (1991, p. 444) stated. In the former FRG, there was only low knowledge of the research system in the GDR, but the West German Science Council (Wissenschaftsrat) evaluated all research institutions outside the universities, including the important Academy of Sciences of the GDR and its institutions, according to criteria based on FRG standards. Almost all research institutions were closed or privatised. The institutions of higher education, including the universities, became regulated following political decisions at the Länder level. Some universities were closed; institutes were restructured or also closed, and most faculty members early retired. Criteria were “political revision” (i.e. the suspected or actual involvement of persons in the socialist ideology), “structural adaption” (i.e. the compatibility with the research system of the FRG) and “economical adaption” (i.e. the reduction of suspected or actual overstaffing) (Daxner, 1991, p. 453). The majority of job vacancies were awarded to scientists from the FRG. “The fact that third-rate Western researchers are given a ‘chance’ is an accepted consequence” (Daxner, 1991, p. 453).

Therefore, with the institutions and their staff, information science efforts also disappeared in the GDR. In the following years, also information science institutions at universities and the central infrastructure institution GID in the FRG were closed or had to work with reduced staff. Nowadays, at the only surviving GDR institution in Berlin, information scientists work on topics such as information behaviour, information retrieval, information management, information processing and analytics, information science in general and science studies. All current research topics have no relationship with the former activities of GDR researchers.

In information practice, the number of jobs was massively reduced. In 1989, in the GDR, there were were about 361 information specialists per 1 million inhabitants (for comparison: 92 per 1 million in the FRG); after reunification, in 1993, this figures changed to 39 information specialists per 1 million inhabitants in the GDR, while in the FRG, the value slightly rose to 95 (Stock, 1995, p. 18). All but a handful of specialised databases were closed down. This reduction resulted from the closure (Abwicklung) of the former companies and institutes and from a general mistrust against information specialists (Informationskader) as potential “spies” (Manecke and Markscheffel, 1994). Additionally, ZIID was closed in 1990. However, in contrast to information specialists, many librarians were able to keep their jobs. Library staff was 5,908 in 1990, and it was reduced to 4,167 in 1992. But this is still a high number of librarians in the former GDR Länder; in 1992, we find 278 librarians per 1 million inhabitants, while in western Germany, there were only 156 librarians per 1 million inhabitants (Wimmer, 1993, p. 322).

Information science education in Ilmenau came to an end due to the restructuring of the university in the early 1990s (Buthmann, 2022). The study programmes in Berlin were discontinued after reunification; the university degrees in information and documentation science became unacknowledged in the FRG. But it was not really necessary to recognise the information science studies of the GDR, as most of the information staff in former GDR institutions and companies had lost their jobs anyway (Freytag, 2013). Especially information science staff members at universities were retired and their positions – to the extent that they were preserved at all – replaced by people mostly from western Germany. In an article on information science in Berlin including its history (Kindling et al., 2013; see for a more complete description: Greifeneder et al., 2019), the authors did not even mention the complete history in the times of GDR. This fault was certainly not a bad intention of the authors, but this history was simply forgotten.

Conclusion

This article is a rational reconstruction (Lakatos, 1970) of some main approaches to information science in the GDR, but by no means a comprehensive description and analysis of its history. Even in addition to an old book on the state of information science and practice in the GDR (Stock, 1986), we cannot get the whole picture; therefore, more research is needed.

Which aspects of information science in the GDR are worth taking a closer look also today? The theory of scientific communication is definitely similar to recent approaches in scientometrics, for instance, the activities of the Canada-based “Scholarly Communication Lab” of Alperin and Haustein. This lab studies all aspects of scientific (here more appropriately named “scholarly”) communication (see, e.g. Haustein, 2015). So the approaches of research communication and scientific information (as, e.g. significantly developed by Bonitz and Engelbert) survived in the context of contemporary scientometrics.

Koblitz’s works covering analytical and synthetic information technologies, i.e. the practices of information summarisation and indexing, are quite similar to documentary activities all over the world in these times. However, rather special is Koblitz’s approach to information and documentation science as the science of semantic information and of information activities. What is also worth highlighting is his effort to use synthetic means of information such as review articles and progress reports, which go beyond what was considered information science in Western countries (see, e.g. Stock and Stock, 2013).

The approach of combining information science, computer science, social ICT and a comprehensive theory of information is still interesting and important. Separating the technology of ICT (elaborated by computer science) from the information content and the users’ information behaviour (elaborated by information science) and the application of ICT in societies as well as companies (elaborated by social informatics and system sciences) as objects of different scientific disciplines does not seem to make much sense. General informatics, as envisioned by Groß and Fuchs-Kittowski, would be an excellent approach to overcoming those disciplinary boundaries.

All early supporters of information science had a personal history outside of information science, as simply no information science existed; for instance, Bonitz (1931–2012) was a physicist, Engelbert (born 1922) was a jurist, Koblitz (1913–1989) was a librarian and Fuchs-Kittowski (born 1934) studied philosophy. It would be an interesting study to pursue the personal and intellectual careers of pioneers in information science and the GDR.

The GDR was a socialist state. Are there special characteristics of the socialist approach to information science? What was the state of information science in other socialist countries such as, for instance, in the Soviet Union, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria or Czechoslovakia? Insofar are those socialist approaches different from other conceptions, for instance, the USA, UK or FRG? Additionally, we see research gaps in the analysis of the œuvre of main information scientists and of important theoretical approaches in the GDR. For Bonitz, there is a short evaluation of his life work (Bonitz and Scharnhorst, 2013); for Fuchs-Kittowski, some Festschriften became published (see, e.g. Stary, 2016); however, we miss more complete and more comprehensive studies and – as some researchers from GDR times are still alive – oral history interviews.

The article gives hints on the survival of some GDR approaches and the importance of early theories of informatics in contemporary information science, but the lines and concrete paths of development from the GDR to present-day information research should be analysed in much more detail.

Figures

Figure 1

The cycle of science, technology and production

Figure 2

Organisation of the information system for science and technology

Figure 3

The development of the system of research communication and the speed principle following Bonitz. R(i): sending researcher, R(j) receiving researcher

Figure 4

Information barriers following Engelbert

Figure 5

Types of information and associated scientific disciplines following Koblitz

Figure 6

Components of the theory of general informatics following Groß and Fuchs-Kittowski

Note: All German-language quotations have been translated by the author.