A STATE SECRET - DISSERTATIONS IN THE GERMAN-DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLIC

Since the early 1970s the communist regime in the German Democratic Re public classified thousands of doctoral dissertations as confidential, thus blocking the dissemination of research in the various discipline s of science. More than 6,800 titles of dissertations have not been li sted in the national bibliographies. This article seeks to give a firs t overview of the different fields of restricted research and the topi cs which have been treated as state secrets. The study also shows the involvement of universities and colleges in the classification and seg regation of theses into special depots and nonpublic reading rooms.