The German Democratic Republic (GDR), better known in NATO countries as East Germany, had a relatively short existence. Its origins lie in the decision of the victorious allies to divide Germany into four occupation zones at the end of World War II. It quickly became clear that the three Western powers-the United States, Britain, and France-and the Soviet Union could not agree on a common policy, and so the former merged their zones into West Germany while the latter turned its zone into East Germany. The GDR came into existence on 7 October 1949, and it ceased to exist on 3 October 1990, when the two Germanies were reunited on West German terms.
Many historians of psychology, myself included, were frequent visitors to the GDR because of the wealth of archival material that it possessed. It had inherited the historic center of Berlin, including the university where figures like Helmholtz, Stumpf, Ebbinghaus, KΓΆhler, and Lewin had worked. It also included Leipzig, where Fechner and Wundt had worked. For a brief period in 1979 and 1980, the attention of the world's psychologists was focused on the GDR as they celebrated the centennial of the establishment of Wundt's laboratory in 1879. The XXII International Congress of Psychology was held in Leipzig in 1980 to mark the occasion.
Although there were several well-known historians of psychology in the GDR (e.g., Georg Eckardt, Wolfram Meischner, and Lothar Sprung), there was no historical research on psychology in the GDR. The subject was "taboo." This situation changed dramatically following the demise of the GDR, and a large quantity of literature on the subject has appeared since 1990. This book follows that trend and represents the first attempt to provide a comprehensive account of the history of psychology in the GDR.
A central aim of the book is to show how the political context produced the kind of psychology that existed in the GDR. This context was far from stable, and there were some significant changes of political direction in the relatively short period that the country existed. Of course, the thesis that psychology can be related to its political context is far from original. One might argue that in such a rigidly controlled society, it would be very surprising if that were not the case.
The author has done a thorough and scholarly job. In spite of this, the book is not likely to arouse much interest outside Germany because of our twisted view of what is "important" in the history of psychology. This view is essentially that events in the history of psychology are only of importance if they had an influence in the United States (Brock, 2006). This was never likely to happen because of the ideological divide that separated the United States and the GDR during the Cold War.
The author, perhaps aware of the limited market for the book, has done little to broaden its appeal. Not one single reference at the end of the book is to work in a language other than German. This is an attempt by a former GDR psychologist to understand the psychology of the GDR in the context of intra-German debates. The book will be a useful point of departure for anyone who wishes to understand the psychology of the GDR in its world context, but this is a task that remains to be completed.