ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

STS in the GDR: Application, Creativity and the Reunification

• In Event: Contested Science (and Technology Studies): Histories of STS and Its Forerunners, Interlocutors, Competitors, Targets, and Patrons

English Abstract

The paper follows the terms ‘application’ and ‘creativity’ from the original context of science studies as a state-supporting discipline in the GDR into the early 1990s, when the ideological context of support and demand was lost and the institutions in East Germany ceased to exist in their previous form. From the outset, Science Studies in the GDR, as in other socialist states, was geared towards producing applied knowledge that would continuously develop the socialist, science-based society and its (industrial) productivity. As a result, the critical culture of socialist STS as expressed in their publications revolved more around questions of effectiveness, rather than studying and questioning science as the organising principle of the modern world. Although the unification of the two German languages in October 1990 meant a quick end for almost all institutions and many (academic) careers, certain forms of application of research results – for example, in the sense of science organisation management – remained viable in the new Federal Republic. Studies on individual creativity, on the other hand, came to an end, even though forms of cooperative creativity, as well as creativity training, which have recently become popular, were at the centre of research.

Author

• Friedrich Cain, University of Vienna