Long-term psychobiological consequences of noncriminal political repression in the former GDR

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Veronika Engert; Professor Dr. Bernhard Strauß
• Subject Area: Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology ; Biological Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 562983936

Experiencing political repression in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) was shown to have long-lasting maladaptive health consequences. The GDR was an authoritarian state in East Germany, closely linked to the Soviet Union (1945 – 1990). Next to criminal repression measures such as imprisonment, which is an accepted instance of trauma, repression in the GDR included more covert, noncriminal measures. These included, for example, wiretapping, spreading of rumors, or provoking failures in professional and social domains. Aim of these practices was to systematically undermine an individual’s psychosocial integrity by inducing anxiety, panic, social isolation and confusion. Much like criminal repression, noncriminal repression has severe consequences for mental and physical health, even many years after the initial experience. We argue that noncriminal repression shares many of the features that define a typical chronic psychosocial stressor. Experiencing noncriminal repression likely dysregulated the physiological stress system, thus causing the adverse mental and somatic health consequences that many victims experience to the present day. In the current proposal, we introduce a study in which we recruited N = 50 victims of noncriminal repression in the former GDR and N = 50 demographically matched control individuals who lived in the GDR but were never subjected to repression. Aim of the study is to examine the biological and psychological impact of noncriminal repression techniques, and identify potential risk and resilience factors for the development of (psycho)pathology in the victims. We deem this data essential, not only for public acknowledgement of former victims of GDR repression, but also for individuals suffering from similar political methods elsewhere today. The study was initially funded through a time-limited grant from the budget of the Eastern Commissioner of the Federal Government, and it is part of a research alliance of twelve projects conducted at four East-German Universities, all dealing with the longterm health-related consequences of the dictatory GDR regime. The study produced a rich, one-of-a-kind data set including a wide array of subjective-psychological and physiological measures of health and wellbeing. This data set awaits preparation of manuscripts, the means for which we seek for in the current proposal.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants