Taking Part, Apart: Inclusion of Researchers from the German Democratic Republic in Their International Scientific Communities

Abstract

In this chapter, we present a discussion of ways in which researchers in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) became recognised members of their international scientific communities by negotiating the interplay of adverse conditions of research in the GDR and field-specific practices of knowledge production. The conditions for research as provided by the GDR and as shaped by the GDR’s international relations enabled and constrained the inclusion of researchers in the knowledge production of their scientific communities. We ask how researchers in two fields—semiconductor physics and molecular biology—managed to become recognised members to their communities’ knowledge production under adverse conditions. Our interviews suggest three partial answers: the right topic at the right time, a partial match between a field’s epistemic practices and the research conditions in the GDR, and the existence of “inclusion mentors” who actively promoted the inclusion of their younger colleagues.

We would like to thank Lydia Liesegang and Markus Hoffmann for their helpful critique of an earlier draft of this chapter.

1 Introduction

This chapter discusses opportunities for researchers from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in two disciplines to become recognised members of their international scientific communities. In doing so, this chapter addresses a paradox that has emerged from the literature. All accounts of research conditions in the GDR agree that there were substantial constraints for research in the GDR. Buildings, infrastructure, and equipment were outdated and in bad repair. Materials necessary for research were difficult to obtain and often impossible to obtain in time. International communication was hindered by problems with access to literature and severe travel restrictions, which made attending conferences and stays for research abroad impossible for most researchers. In addition, research came under increasing pressure to contribute to economic growth by generating innovations for the GDR’s industry (e.g., Mayntz 1994b; Gläser and Meske 1996).

These well-documented adversities suggest that internationally recognised research should have been impossible. However, this is not what the numerous evaluators of the GDR’s research have found. In addition to work on irrelevant and obsolete topics (which were often directly tied to the technological level of the GDR’s economy), internationally relevant research of high quality has been found across all scientific disciplines (Mayntz 1994b; Wolf 1995; Kocka and Mayntz 1998).

The question of how researchers in the GDR could make relevant and reliable contributions to the knowledge production of their international scientific communities under such conditions has not yet been fully answered. The literature on the GDR’s science system and its transformation in the course of German unification has focused at the aggregate level on the conditions under which researchers in the GDR worked and on the transformation of the East German science system (Meske 1993; Mayntz 1994a, b; Wolf 1995; Gläser and Meske 1996; Kocka and Mayntz 1998; Mayntz 1998; Mayntz et al. 1998). With few exceptions, its emphasis has been on the reconstruction of conditions under which the GDR’s researchers worked and the change in these conditions that accompanied German unification. How researchers managed to conduct internationally competitive research in the GDR has found less attention.

Our perspective on the GDR’s research differs from previous analyses in its consideration of researchers in their role as members of international scientific communities. In most fields of the natural and social sciences and humanities, research is a collective transnational enterprise that advances a shared body of knowledge. The extent to which members of these communities can contribute to the advancement of their community’s knowledge depends on their local working conditions, which are shaped by the country they work in and its international relations. Thus, the conditions for research as provided by the GDR and as shaped by the GDR’s international relations enabled and constrained the inclusion of researchers in the knowledge production of their scientific communities. We ask how researchers in two fields—semiconductor physics and molecular biology—managed to contribute to their communities’ knowledge production under adverse conditions.

This discussion is based on a larger project studying the impact of research conditions in the GDR of the 1980s on careers before and after German unification. This larger context introduces a bias in the analysis presented here due to its focus on researchers who had the opportunity to continue their academic career after German unification. This was a minority; only about one-third of the GDR’s R&D personnel could continue their career in East Germany after German unification (Meske 1993). While the project is intended to arrive at more general conclusions about research conditions in the GDR’s universities and research institutes of the Academy of Sciences, most findings discussed in this chapter are applicable only to those researchers who had a career before and after unification.

The perspective on levels of inclusion under adverse conditions nevertheless positions the GDR’s research in a wider theoretical framework and thus renders it comparable to situations that existed or exist in other countries. We present this theoretical perspective (Sect. 2) before describing the empirical investigation (Sect. 3) and the GDR’s science system (Sect. 4). We then describe in detail the conditions under which researchers worked in the GDR and provide an overview of levels of inclusion in semiconductor physics and molecular biology (Sect. 5). Based on interviews with researchers from these fields, we show how field-specific conditions enabled high levels of inclusion (Sect. 6). Some preliminary conclusions about the field-specific character of constraints on inclusion and about the applicability of this perspective to research in other countries are drawn (Sect. 7).

2 Theoretical Background

One of the core insights of the sociology of science is that scientific knowledge is collectively produced by scientific communities. According to a basic model that can be traced back to Fleck (1979 [1935]), Kuhn (1962), and Polanyi (1962), members of a scientific community jointly advance a body of knowledge by observing it, deriving research problems from it and solving these problems. They offer the solutions to these problems to their fellow community members as contributions to the knowledge that can be used in further problem-solving. Some of these offered contributions become integrated into the community’s knowledge by being used and thus adapted to subsequent problem-solving processes (Whitley 2000 [1984], 11–13; Gläser 2019, 421–3).

This highly abstract model identifies the basic mechanism that coordinates the collective production of scientific knowledge and the social phenomenon that constitutes membership in a scientific community. Communal knowledge production is ordered by community members’ reference to a shared body of knowledge, and their identity as community members is based on the perception that they share with other members a commonality in advancing that knowledge. In order to be a researcher, one needs to be a member of a scientific community, that is, part of a larger producing collective. This collective and the body of knowledge it advances are the primary referents of researchers (Gläser 2006).

This model of the coordination mechanism, and much of the sociological research on scientific communities until the late 1960s, treats all members of a scientific community as equal. Empirical research has since proven this assumption to be false. The identification of differences between community members began with research on the stratification of scientific communities and the role of the scientific elite (Merton 1968; Zuckerman 1970; Cole and Cole 1973; Mulkay 1976). Not much later, the limited participation of women in science and its causes became a central topic of science studies (Zuckerman and Cole 1975; Cole 1987; Zuckermann et al. 1991). Some researchers have also pointed out the discrimination against minorities (Long and Fox 1995). A discussion about research in the Global South being marginalised and subordinated to priorities set in the Global North emerged not only within science studies (e.g., Kreimer 2022a, b) but also in many scientific communities in reflecting on their biases (Binka 2005; Connell 2006; Keim 2011; Acharya and Buzan 2017).

These findings and discussions show that perceiving oneself as a community member says little about one’s opportunities to execute this membership role through participation in the community’s knowledge production. This is why it is necessary to concretise the concept of community membership by distinguishing levels of a member’s inclusion. The inclusion of a researcher in their scientific community describes the extent and the ways in which they can execute their role as a community member. Thus, inclusion in a scientific community is a variable and may vary in the following four dimensions, which represent the expectations that define the membership role:

• (1) community members are expected to produce relevant contributions, that is, contributions that meet the quality standards for becoming an addition to the community’s knowledge and that are of use to other community members;

• (2) community members are expected to communicate their offers of contributions to the community;

• (3) community members are expected to support the community’s communication by organising scientific meetings and by participating in them; and

• (4) community members are expected to participate in the community’s decision-making, for example, as reviewers of others’ plans (project proposals), through offers of contributions (manuscripts) or bids to continue their career (job applications), and by participating in other collective decision-making (e.g., that of scientific associations).

The expectation to produce relevant contributions and to communicate them shapes the opportunities to meet the other two expectations because they determine the visibility of a researcher to their community. The extent to which these two expectations are met can be used to distinguish three levels of membership. Silent members observe the community’s knowledge production without participating in it. They derive research problems from the community’s knowledge but do not offer their solutions to the community. Ignored members offer their findings to the community without the community perceiving them. Common reasons for contributions being overlooked include publication in scarcely read journals and a reputational bias: if the authors are not known to readers, their publications are unlikely to be read. Recognised members are those whose solutions are referred to by other community members or who are included in community-wide collaborative networks of problem-solving. Only recognised members contribute to the community’s knowledge production.

Becoming a recognised member involves an additional affirmation of a researcher’s identity. Membership in a scientific community is foremost a matter of perception: somebody is a member if they perceive themselves as working with the community’s knowledge and attempting to contribute to that knowledge (Gläser 2006). This identity is fragile for silent members but is stabilised for ignored members by their attempts to contribute to their community’s knowledge production. Recognised members experience an additional external affirmation of their membership because their work is communicated about or because they contribute to collaborative work. In both cases, other community members perceive them as members and communicate that perception. This public affirmation is important to a researcher’s identity. It is also the minimum reputation a community member can have. Higher levels of reputation are built when the community develops a collective (and thus public) perception of the number, quality, and relevance of a member’s contributions.¹

The conditions that affect a researcher’s inclusion are controlled by a variety of actors inside and outside the scientific community. Opportunities to produce relevant contributions depend on the availability of time for research as well as access to suitable equipment, materials, research objects, support staff, and collaborators. This access not only depends on finances but may also be restricted by trade barriers or state regulation. For example, German educational research was hindered for a long time by the decision by German federal states in the 1960s not to grant researchers access to classrooms anymore, a decision that was rescinded only in the early 1990s (Gläser et al. 2014, 283–4). Access to collaborators may be hindered by a lack of reputation (others might not want to collaborate), a lack of funding (e.g., for travel), or visa restrictions. These factors also co-shape opportunities to communicate and to participate in the community’s decision-making. A low reputation may diminish chances to publish in leading journals, to become a journal editor, to act as a reviewer, to participate in organising conferences, or to take up positions in professional organisations. Attending conferences and meetings may be impossible due to insufficient funding or visa restrictions. An additional important factor affecting the execution of all membership roles is one’s ability to communicate in English, without which a researcher’s opportunities are severely limited.

A researcher’s inclusion in their scientific community may also be hindered by decisions of other community members. Decisions by editors, panel members, reviewers, readers, and potential collaborators have been shown to be biased against women, researchers from the Global South, researchers from particular countries, or minorities inside and outside their own country (Lee et al. 2013). In addition to these biases, the attention among most researchers in the Global North to only a few journals and conferences renders many researchers, particularly in the Global South, invisible. Although this narrow focus on a limited number of communication channels is a collective response to information overload rather than intentional discrimination against other community members, it effectively excludes most of them.

3 Data and Methods

3.1 Approach

We study the impact of the conditions under which researchers worked in the GDR on their inclusion in international scientific communities in the last decade of the GDR, during the transformation period in the early 1990s, and afterwards. We conducted studies of “nested cases” (Patton 2002 [1990], 240), with cases selected at the field, organisational and researcher levels.

At the field level, we selected two fields from the sciences that are likely to have been affected in different ways by the conditions prevalent in the GDR. Semiconductor physics was given a high priority by the GDR’s science policy due to its role as a scientific foundation of the semiconductor industry. Molecular biology is likely to have been particularly sensitive to restrictions on international communication and collaboration because it was a rapidly growing field in the 1980s.

From each field, we selected five research organisations (two institutes of the Academy of Sciences and three universities) for the study of patterns of inclusion and one institute of the Academy of Sciences and one university department for the reconstruction of inclusion biographies. Participants for the latter investigation were identified through bibliometric analyses (which allowed us to find researchers who published both before and after German unification), through archival records of the institutions, and by further recommendation from interviewees.

3.2 Data Collection and Analysis

Our analysis utilises three main data sources. Bibliometric analyses based on publications indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) were used to reconstruct publication histories of researchers and to obtain information about topics researchers worked on and their change over time, institutional affiliations of researchers, and the dynamics of their international collaborations. For the analysis presented in Sect. 5.2, we examined patterns in inclusion biographies of 150 randomly selected researchers in semiconductor physics and molecular biology at five institutions: 10 researchers from three universities and two institutes of GDR’s Academy of Sciences in each field, all of whom continued their career after unification; and five researchers from each institution who did not continue their careers.

The sample was drawn from all researchers from these institutions who had at least one publication indexed in the WoS and had completed their PhD in the early 1970s or later. We included different career stages (researchers who started their career in the 1970s as well as researchers who started their career in the 1980s). We collected each researcher’s publications from the beginning of their career until 1990 and counted the number of articles citing these publications in the same period. A count of citing articles provides a more accurate picture of recognition than pure citation counts. If a researcher receives multiple citations in one article, they are still visible only to the authors of that one article.

The inclusion of only those researchers who published at least one paper indexed in the WoS did not lead to bias by excluding those whose publications were not indexed there. We tested this by additionally searching for publications of researchers from the five institutions using Google Scholar, annual reports of the institutions, and archival sources. It turned out that if scientists in the two investigated fields published at all, they tended to do so in indexed journals.

While researchers who published at all also tended to publish in journals indexed in the WoS, our approach excludes from consideration all researchers who did not publish. Most of these completely silent researchers likely conducted research for industry or for the military. Since the only way to find them is through archival records, many of which were not accessible at the time of data collection, it is not possible to tell how many of these “absolutely silent” members of scientific communities worked at universities or Academy institutes of the GDR.

The main source of information for the reconstruction of conditions where researchers worked are archival records of the respective organisations. These records were accessible—albeit with some difficulty—for the institutes of the GDR’s Academy of Sciences. In universities, many records from the time before 1990 were missing due to turbulence in the transition period or not yet accessible due to staff shortages in archives.

Information about the conditions individual researchers experienced and about their inclusion biographies was elicited primarily through biographical interviews. Interviews were supported by the reconstruction of interviewees’ research trails, a graphical representation of which was used in the interview to stimulate narratives (Gläser and Laudel 2015). Figure 8.1 shows an example of such a research trail. Interviews addressed the development of an interviewee’s research topics throughout their active career, the role of collaborators, and the material conditions for research such as access to equipment and literature, publication opportunities, and participation in activities of their scientific communities such as review tasks. The interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis (Gläser and Laudel 2013, 2019).

Fig. 8.1

Research trail of an East German researcher (The circles are publications, the size of the circles indicates the number of citations, the lines show thematic connections between publications and colours indicate different topics)

Since the empirical investigation is still ongoing, we use the information obtained from bibliometric analyses, analyses of archival records and interviews to provide a preliminary account of the conditions under which GDR researchers managed to become recognised members of their international scientific communities and the practices they used to achieve this level of inclusion. We reconstruct influences on the selection of research problems by discussing the dynamics of researchers’ autonomy, interests, and research conditions. We conducted 14 biographical interviews and complemented them with secondary analyses of 13 interviews that were conducted in the 1990s in two other projects (Gläser 2000; Laudel and Valerius 2001).

4 The GDR’s Science System

The GDR’s science system was structurally similar to that of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), although the shares of components differed (Table 8.1). In both countries, industrial R&D was the largest sector and state-funded research institutes made up a significant proportion of publicly funded research. The state-funded non-university sector was larger in the GDR and consisted primarily of research institutes of the GDR’s Academy of Sciences. The higher education sector was the smallest of the three.

Table 8.1 Research systems in East Germany and West Germany prior to unification

The GDR’s higher education system consisted of very few universities and many specialised institutions. Of the 54 higher education institutions, only 9 were universities, while the rest were specialised in technology and engineering (15), medical sciences (3), pedagogics (9), arts and music (12), and agriculture, economics, legal studies, and sports (6) (Buck-Bechler 1994, 18). The main component of the GDR’s state-funded non-university sector was the Academy of Sciences, which in 1990 comprised 60 institutes with about 24,000 employees (Mayntz 1994b, 41–42).

At the time of German unification, the relative sizes of the two public research sectors in the GDR gave rise to the myth that little research was conducted in the GDR’s higher education sector. This was not the case. An analysis of WoS publications from 1984 shows that the higher education sector had the highest share in publications with a GDR address (Fig. 8.2).

Fig. 8.2

Shares of GDR publications indexed in the WoS in 1984 (Data from Weingart et al. (1991, 26))

The governance structure of the science system in the GDR was characterised by hierarchical management. The chain of command flowed from higher-level managers down to lower-level managers, with department heads supervising researchers. The ministry of higher education oversaw university rectors, who in turn directed department heads, who directed academics. Similarly, the Academy of Sciences was subordinated to the ministry of science and technology and had an equally strong, but more complex, internal hierarchy. Academic managers in both sectors had to negotiate with the communist party, which had its own parallel hierarchy of party secretaries and wielded significant influence over decision-making processes. This system left little room for academic self-governance.

The major political expectation confronting research in the GDR was that it should contribute to societal development, which for most research translated to an expectation that it contributes to industrial innovation. Particularly in the 1980s, there was immense pressure both at universities and at state institutes to do contract research for industry. The Academy of Sciences was expected to fund half of its research through such contracts, which it never achieved (Gläser and Meske 1996, 126–35). The maximum share of funding from contracts with external partners was 44.7% in 1989 (ibid., 130). In 1988, 44% of the natural sciences and engineering in the higher education sector were funded from contracts with external partners (Buck-Bechler 1994, 25).

Despite these pressures, many researchers in the GDR maintained some degree of autonomy. Several factors contributed to that autonomy. First, some researchers were interested in conducting applied research and contributing to industrial innovations, that is, their interests coincided with political demands. Although these researchers may have been limited by a lack of equipment and materials, they were not pressured to change their research topics. Second, certain fields of research, such as pure mathematics or theoretical physics, do not lend themselves easily to supporting industrial innovations, which afforded researchers in these fields more autonomy. Third, demands for application-oriented research needed to be translated into research problems, which required scientific expertise. In some cases, only the researchers possessed the necessary expertise, and tasks had to be negotiated with them. In other cases, superiors also had such expertise and sought to accommodate their researchers. Fourth, most researchers had permanent contracts that were very difficult to cancel, and thus negotiated their activities from positions of relative security.

5 Inclusion of East German Researchers Despite Adverse Conditions

5.1 Research Conditions in the GDR

Research conditions in the GDR were not internationally competitive, and in some cases not even competitive when compared to those in other socialist countries. Domestic resources were scarce due to generally insufficient supply and because the science system took a lower priority than the economy and often also the consumer sector. Foreign currency, which was extremely scarce, was essential for buying international journals, paying membership fees of international scientific associations, attending conferences, funding stays abroad, and buying equipment and materials for research. Acquisition of both domestic and international resources was severely hampered by the central planning system, which required researchers to submit their resource requirements two years before they started their research. The planning system also introduced a significant element of chance in the supply process because it was by no means guaranteed that anything ordered two years ago would be delivered when it was needed. This was particularly problematic for research in which demands for reagents emerged in real time:

• Interviewer: Why didn’t you pursue the [topic] anymore?

• Well, there were many reasons. We could not make progress technologically because we could not acquire the necessary equipment. It did not exist in the GDR and Western equipment and reagents could be in principle obtained but this was by no means easy, particularly in the short term. The best planning of a reagent to be imported in one- or two years’ time, if at all, is useless when I need it now for my next experiment.

As a result of the insufficient, slow, and unreliable supply of resources, research was conducted under difficult material conditions. In the 1980s, only one-third of the buildings of higher education institutions were in good repair according to the GDR’s standards, while 12% were seriously damaged. The equipment did not meet the requirements of teaching and research, with 40% of the equipment in use having already been written of (Buck-Bechler 1994, 27). An investigation at the Academy of Sciences in 1986 found that its most important research was conducted with equipment that had been introduced internationally 9.1 years earlier. On average, equipment was bought five years after it had become available internationally and was four years old when the investigation took place (Meier 1990, 146).

On top of these restrictions came the US-led advanced technology embargo, which affected much of the research in the GDR. The GDR could not keep pace with the rapid development of computer technology, particularly with the move from mainframe to personal computers, nor could it buy the technology because it was under embargo. Researchers worked with desktop computers they bought privately or with the few computers that somehow made it into the country despite the embargo. However, research topics were abandoned, and other research was slowed down due to the lack of embargoed equipment.

This topic did not end internationally but the method with which it was approached changed. You could do straightforward calculations for which you needed very few parameters, but which were numerically demanding. And we did not have a computer for this. They were on the rise internationally and I could not keep up. This would have been like competing on an old grey horse against a tractor. The others all had tractors, I had only the old grey, so you are not taken seriously.

Domestic political restrictions and scarcity of funds severely limited international communication and collaboration. Spontaneous informal communication with colleagues from Western countries was not permitted; each contact had to be approved upon request. It was very difficult to attend conferences in the West or to undertake stays at laboratories in other countries because these opportunities were scarce due to financial limitations, required long-term planning, and were subject to an extended approval procedure which included checks of political reliability. The latter meant that not all researchers were permitted to travel to Western countries. For regular travel to Western countries, researchers had to obtain the Reisekader status (the state, party, and secret service clearance for travelling to Western countries). Individual trips could be applied for without this status but were subject to extensive scrutiny. In any case, applications for travel could be rejected without reasons given and without an opportunity for researchers to appeal.

In 1978 I could have given a presentation at the semiconductor conference [in Edinburgh]. Even my boss said he doesn’t want to do it; I should do it. And everything was perfect, paperwork and all. And then came the message from above: “You cannot go.” And that was that.

Access to journals from Western countries was less restricted but took time and did not include all journals. Researchers refined the practice of asking for reprints of articles.

The original articles we could access through the library in most cases. For the less well-known journals we could access Current Contents, these small booklets published by Eugene Garfield that included the addresses for requesting reprints. Once a week, mostly Friday afternoon, you went to the library, went through Current Contents and returned with a stack of 20 requests for reprints. You sent these off and actually got 10 preprints, a return rate of about 50%.

Previous studies, our own interviews, and archival records paint a complicated picture of the publication practices of GDR researchers. For science policy, research in support of industry had clear priority and international publications came second (Gläser and Meske 1996, 359–360). The publication of results from contract research for industry was restricted (Gläser and Meske 1996, 252, 268, 209–10). The priorities of many researchers were affected by the decoupling of careers from publication activities. Most academics in the GDR had permanent contracts, and professional mobility was low.

Publishing was also influenced by supervisors who could direct researchers to certain journals. Publishing in international journals was also made difficult by an extended bureaucratic procedure, with researchers having to submit the manuscript along with an application for the right to publish it in an international journal. The process could take several weeks, and responses ranged from approval without comment to demands to rewrite parts of the manuscript to outright rejection of the application.

Well, you had to get approval to publish there. This always depended on how dedicated and influential your superior was. When he was engaged and influential, then it went through. But when he was a good but careful superior then it was more difficult. Then, he would say, “Publish this in the Moscowian journal first.” (Biologist)

Finally, there was no foreign currency available to pay page charges for publications. In the 1980s, many journals (e.g., the journals published by the American Institute of Physics) introduced such fees. While this was intended to be a request for a voluntary contribution (Trigg 1981), researchers in the GDR (and obviously some researchers in Western European countries as well) felt discouraged from publication in these journals if they could not raise the money for the page charges. Other researchers from the GDR simply sent in their manuscripts and asked for the charges to be waived, which often was successful.

• I don’t know how it was with Western journals. In many cases there were publication charges. This did not work at all. Physical Review, for example, 30 dollars per page, maybe some illustrious people from the GDR could publish there, but this did not work. (Physicist 1)

• And we also published articles in journals without paying. We always wrote, “we are sorry, we cannot pay for that, but please write to us if you’ll take it anyway.” (Physicist 2)

These various factors combined to create substantially diverse microclimates for international publication. It was forbidden for some researchers, discouraged for others, possible but cumbersome for another group, and for some perfectly normal. In any case, researchers had to be highly motivated and persistent and had to have supportive managers to continuously publish in international journals.

5.2 Levels of Inclusion

Table 8.2 provides an overview of patterns in the publication histories of semiconductor physicists and molecular biologists. We categorised researchers as silent members of their communities if they had three or fewer publications, as ignored members if they had more than three publications which together were cited (“seen”) by fewer than ten articles, and as recognised members if their publications were cited by ten or more articles (regardless of the number of their publications).²

Table 8.2 Inclusion of semiconductor physicists and molecular biologists from three universities and two Academy institutes in the GDR

Table 8.2 shows that most researchers in our sample were recognised members of their international scientific communities. The table shows that among those whose career ended, researchers who were recognised members of their communities were still a majority. There were no interesting differences in the inclusion of researchers from universities and Academy institutes in either field. The only interesting difference between the disciplines is the relatively large proportion of silent community members in semiconductor physics, which is most likely due to contract research for industry, both at universities and at Academy institutes.

Many of the researchers who continued their career could improve their inclusion after unification. Quite often we find noticeable gaps in publication histories during the early 1990s. These were due to voluntary or enforced reorientations of research as well as disruptions of organisational careers.

6 Achieving Inclusion in Semiconductor Physics and Molecular Biology

Despite the overall difficult conditions for researchers in the GDR (5.1), many of them were included as recognised members of their scientific communities (5.2). This section presents some preliminary answers to the question of how this inclusion could be achieved. Our interviews suggest three partial answers: the right topic at the right time, a partial match between a field’s epistemic practices and the research conditions in the GDR, and the existence of “inclusion mentors” who actively promoted the inclusion of their younger colleagues.

6.1 Inclusion in Semiconductor Physics with Original Methods

Two of our interviewees from semiconductor physics achieved recognised membership because they developed new experimental methods for the preparation of experimental objects or measurements and thus could contribute original data. These methods were only relevant for niche topics addressed by small international communities but were appreciated by them because they led to interesting results. Methodological developments were supported in GDR semiconductor research because the methods were generic and could therefore be used both in work for the GDR’s semiconductor industry and for approaching more basic research questions.

Developing new methods was possible even under the difficult material conditions. The impossibility of quickly acquiring advanced equipment was sometimes less important because experimental equipment in many fields of physics was (and still is) built by the researchers themselves. In some situations, this culture coincided with what researchers in the GDR had to do anyway in order to cope with missing equipment. The self-reliance forced upon the GDR’s science had also led to the Academy of Sciences creating the Zentrum für Wissenschaftlichen Gerätebau (“Centre for Scientific Equipment Construction”), which in 1984 contributed 37% of all scientific instruments for the Academy of Sciences (with exports from the West contributing only 1%; Gläser and Meske 1996, 189). Sometimes, the development of methods in semiconductor physics was in line with the general trend at the Academy of Sciences of using more staff to compensate for the limited opportunities to buy equipment. Finally, the permanent positions held by most researchers facilitated long-term methods development.

The opportunity to become a recognised member of a community by developing methods is illustrated by the research biography of semiconductor physicist A (Fig. 8.3). After obtaining his PhD at a university, A moved to an Academy institute and was tasked by his head of department with building a new type of device for the analysis of semiconductor materials. This method had recently been developed in the scientific community, and the head of department was keen on using it. He assigned physicist A the task of building the device, which was a typical way to compensate for the GDR’s shortage of foreign currency. The project was terminated one year later when a device could be imported. A was then tasked with using the device for routine measurements of a large number of samples from clients in the GDR and abroad. These measurements did not lead to publishable results.

Fig. 8.3

Research trail of physicist A from his first publication indexed in the WoS to 2000

After several years, A changed departments after experiencing conflicts with his supervisors and began a new project centred on developing new techniques for preparing semiconductor samples. His new head of department lacked expertise in semiconductor physics and was occupied with managerial duties, granting A a high degree of independence. A tried out several candidate methods before focusing on one (the second cluster in Fig. 8.3). This method did not work, which is why it was abandoned by his scientific community and by himself. A then transitioned to a managerial position for one year and could not conduct research because he had to spend all his time on administrative tasks.

A then moved to another department in which work on a new class of materials had begun due to an initiative of the divisional head. The materials had become a “hot topic” in the scientific community. A was interested in working with them and began to develop an original preparation method. Although the method ultimately did not work with these materials, it turned out to be applicable to others (the third cluster in Fig. 8.3).

[Method X] did not work. And I spent a lot of time thinking how this could be done better. […] And I thought of a new procedure for producing these [layers]. What emerged was [method Y], which occupied me, and ultimately haunted me, until retirement.

6.2 Inclusion in Semiconductor Physics with Original Theory

The inclusion of theoretical semiconductor physicists was more easily achieved with research that was pure paper-and-pencil theory that did not depend on access to advanced computing technology. Theoretical physicists who did depend on access to computers reported using privately bought desktop computers to become independent from their mainframe computer, which was cumbersome to access, and to abandon topics when the international scientific community moved in a direction that required computing power they had no access to. At the same time, it was easier for theoreticians than for experimentalists to change research topics because computer technology was their only material constraint.

Constraints on international communication can be particularly inhibiting to theoretical physicists, who depend on discussing their work with colleagues (Merz 1997). Being able to meet colleagues who work on similar problems (and thus can appreciate one’s contributions) is particularly important in theoretical physics and mathematics because, due to the high specialisation in these theoretical fields, only a few colleagues can actually understand what a researcher is working on (Merz 1997; Heintz 2000: 194–195). Missing opportunities to communicate contributed to one interviewee’s decision to abandon his topic.

• Then I abandoned this topic. If I stay at home, I can produce the best theory, if I can’t talk to the people who apply it or who do similar things …

• Interviewer: To theoreticians or experimentalists?

• Both. I can’t exchange ideas with them. You don’t stand a chance because you stew in your own juices. Sometimes one errs. Or one does things, and it turns out that meanwhile others did it and did it better.

Compared to these two restrictions, political expectations concerning the application-orientation of research played a marginal role. Some theoreticians were expected to collaborate with experimental physicists and to support the interpretation of their data, and in this way might even become tied to the applied experimental research. However, these collaborations never took much time. Thus, some theoretical physicists were free to decide on what to do with all their time, while others had that freedom for most of their time.

Theoretical physicist B began his career with work on a topic that had recently emerged in his scientific community (Fig. 8.4). He had the necessary access to literature but was hindered by his computer facilities because the mainframe computer of the Academy was inconvenient to use. He could partly circumvent this problem by using his privately obtained programmable pocket calculator for some of the calculations.

Fig. 8.4

Research trail of physicist B

B collaborated on this topic with experimentalists in his division. His divisional head had contacts with leading Western researchers and presented the work of his division at international conferences, which B was not allowed to attend despite his important contribution to a central topic of his community (the publications at the end of the 1970s in Fig. 8.4). However, his divisional head managed to organise a series of international workshops with B as a member of the programme committee. B also became a member of the programme committee of an international conference and was able to visit colleagues in a Western European country. At the end of the 1980s, B began to work on a new topic that had emerged in his community.

• They moved to thin layers … and solid-state physics changed a bit in these low dimensions and the physics of three-dimensional bodies becomes a physics of few particles …

• Interviewer: [This] you started already at the end of the 1980s?

• Yes. And then we were pleased to be able to contribute a bit because we were able to create concepts early on …

6.3 Inclusion in Molecular Biology with Original Objects

Compared to experimental and theoretical physics, molecular biology was more strongly dependent on the material conditions of research because its methods and the reagents these methods required were developing at a rapid pace. The demand for such reagents was difficult to predict because it sometimes emerged during the research process. Thus, the field’s research practices clashed with the scarcity of foreign currency and with the planning system. Consequently, the GDR’s molecular biologists should have been unable to match the speed at which the field’s “hot topics” developed, but some of them were able to cope:

• We called this “trouser pocket imports.” When [M] was allowed to travel to the West, he returned with presents. Or we went to the Leipzig Fair, there was the representative of Boehringer [a company selling reagents]. He always questioned us and invited us for coffee. This made him well informed. He had a fridge at the Fair and asked, “Is there something special I can treat you with?” I answered, “[Reagent X] would be super.” We did not find this humiliating. This was part of the game.

• …

• And when a trouser pocket import comes—this is valuable. You think a hundred times how you can make the most of it.

The epistemic practices of molecular biology in the 1980s provided opportunities for researchers from the GDR to become included. Molecular-biological methods largely use generic equipment, which arrived at GDR research laboratories with significant delays but could be used for many different research processes once it was there. Molecular-biological methods were also still in an early stage of development, in which they became utilised in an ever-larger number of fields of the biomedical sciences. The many biological objects that could be investigated with molecular-biological methods and the many questions that could be addressed with each object provided ample opportunities to make contributions, even if these were not at the research front.

Molecular-biological methods also provided opportunities to create new research objects, for example, by isolating and describing genes or by producing new proteins with altered genes. This was (and at least in some fields is still today) a process of trial-and-error in which mutant cells were created or proteins produced in large numbers and then screened for biologically interesting properties. Thus, the biomedical sciences faced the opportunity to create innumerable new research objects of potential interest, and finding an interesting one was partly a matter of luck, which often translated into time spent on numerous attempts to create interesting objects. In this situation, the large number of researchers who had permanent contracts (and thus did not need to compete for individual career progression) partly compensated for the difficult material research conditions.

After receiving his PhD at a university, biochemist C moved to an Academy institute, where he joined a department that worked on a topic that was a priority of the scientific community (Fig. 8.5). However, there was no strong competition with Western groups because the head of department had chosen a unique object as model system, which nevertheless enabled the production of relevant scientific contributions.

Fig. 8.5

Research trail of molecular biologist C

C’s head of department had close relationships with Western colleagues with whom he organised local meetings and engaged in informal scientific exchange. C not only benefitted from these meetings, he also could attend several international conferences of his community. He was even able to participate in one conference in a Western country without having the Reisekader status.

C did not encounter serious shortages of equipment or reagents and could use the services of specialised departments for structural analysis like electron microscopy. Reagents brought back informally from trips to Western countries were used economically (see above). In the case of C’s research, “trouser pocket imports” were facilitated by his department head’s contacts with Western colleagues.

In the late 1980s, the head of department initiated a change of the research questions asked with the model system established in the department, which again met an emerging interest of the scientific community. In the ensuing search for relevant biological objects, C found a new relevant protein that “sustained” his research programme (Fig. 8.5, first publication in 1991).

The research biography of molecular biologist D was quite similar (Fig. 8.6). D joined the Academy institute after completing his PhD at a university and first worked on a project for an industry partner. Although the project leader warned him that he would not be able to earn any scientific merits with this project (its purpose was to catch up with the international state of the art), he was happy with this because he wanted to use the project to broaden his knowledge of biochemical and molecular-biological methods.

Fig. 8.6

Research trail of molecular biologist D

Three years later, D had the opportunity to use the methods he had learned in more fundamental research.

This was cloning of DNA, which was very much en vogue at the time and which [my institute] wanted to engage in because it was the research front. This began in Western countries in the early 1980s. And [my institute] recognised this in the mid-1980s and said that we also need to establish recombinant DNA technologies and cloning.

D collaborated with many colleagues of other departments, taking advantage of their specialised knowledge and equipment. Establishing the new method was seriously hampered by the lack of biochemicals, a problem that was eventually solved by a trouser pocket import with the help of a colleague who travelled regularly to Western labs. The new molecular biological research led to the discovery of new proteins. While the discovery occurred in a research context that was considered exotic and outdated by the community, an additional function of one of the proteins could be exploited in a different research context and triggered D’s successful long-term research programme (the large cluster beginning with publications in 1989 in Fig. 8.6).

Until German unification, D had little personal contact with colleagues in Western countries. However, he benefitted from his colleagues’ regular stays in Western laboratories because they provided knowledge about the research front and supported decisions to establish new methods.

7 Preliminary Conclusions

This chapter has discussed the ways in which researchers in the GDR became recognised members of their international scientific communities by negotiating the interplay of adverse research conditions in the GDR and field-specific practices of knowledge production. Although our investigation is still ongoing, some conclusions about the inclusion of GDR researchers in their international scientific communities can be drawn. First, the conditions hindering inclusion can be distinguished on two dimensions, namely the source and the target of constraints (Table 8.3). Among the constraints that originated with the GDR, some were intended to constrain researchers. Travel restrictions were intended to limit international contacts and relationships of researchers, probably with the aim to curb Western ideological influence and to limit defections of researchers who travelled to Western countries. These constraints must be distinguished from those that were simply due to scarcity. Archival records showed that the overall scarcity of resources in the GDR was a main theme running through the planning of stays abroad, imports of literature, travel contingents, imports of equipment and reagents, and the distribution of domestically produced resources. The distinction between economically and politically motivated restrictions is not always easy to draw, and it didn’t make a difference for the researchers whose inclusion was constrained. However, it is important for an assessment of the impact of the GDR’s general political and economic situation on its science.

Table 8.3 Sources and targets of constraints on the inclusion of East German scientists in their international scientific communities

Not all constraints on the inclusion of East German scientists originated with the GDR. The technology embargo imposed by the United States targeted the technological development of socialist countries and thus also the GDR’s science system. The various publication and conference fees, on the other hand, were established on the implicit premise that everyone could afford them, and that they could be waived for those who couldn’t. However, they affected the inclusion of researchers who thought they had to pay these fees but could not.

Second, the impact of adverse conditions on inclusion was field-specific because the degree to which constraints affected research processes and the extent to which researchers were able to work around them depended on a field’s epistemic practices. Examples of such field-specific conditions include the general practice of physicists constructing their experimental systems themselves, the low susceptibility to material constraints and political pressure of theoretical physics, and the opportunity to locally create research objects that were of interest to the whole community in molecular biology. The variation of conditions between organisations and regions in the GDR and the variation of field-specific epistemic practices made local conditions for the inclusion of GDR researchers in their international communities highly specific to the time and place at which they worked.

Third, international communication had to be actively sought and often depended on superiors and colleagues who already participated in international communication and collaboration networks. These colleagues suggested research topics that were relevant to international scientific communities and introduced their younger colleagues to the international community, made contacts possible, and supported international publication. This was not different from practices of mentoring young researchers elsewhere in the world. However, the number of researchers who could act as inclusion mentors diminished over time in the GDR because each subsequent generation of researchers had worse possibilities to build international contacts.

Our account of successful cases of inclusion does not demonstrate that the material and political constraints under which researchers in the GDR worked were unimportant. These conditions forced many researchers to select research problems they considered less interesting and approaches they considered sub-optimal. They also prevented most researchers from communicating with members of their international communities according to the norms of these communities and according to the necessities of their research processes. However, the cases discussed in this chapter show that some researchers managed to successfully include themselves in their scientific communities because they were able to circumvent these conditions or to compensate for them. Taken together, these findings show that the observation of country-wide or international constraints is not sufficient to justify conclusions about the inclusion of individual researchers working on specific topics in particular fields.

Finally, the analysis of conditions for inclusion and of their impact is applicable beyond the specific case of the GDR. If we look at inclusion as a specific aspect of the knowledge production process in an international scientific community, we need to consider the research problems researchers construct for themselves in their specific situations, as well as their opportunities to address these problems and to communicate findings. While the combination of constraints discussed in this chapter is specific to the GDR, constraints hindering inclusion exist in all countries at least for some researchers. The GDR appears to be an extreme case of constraints to inclusion, which makes it an interesting object of study meriting greater attention in the sociology of science.