Volume 1 of the series "Jena writings on GDR law" contains essays that were presented in lecture form in October 2019 on the occasion of the opening of the research center under the patronage and with the support of the Thuringian Ministry for Migration, Justice and Consumer Protection. The essays collected here ask about research desiderata that exist from a legal-historical perspective, which requires an overview of what has already been achieved - which has not yet been undertaken - about basic concepts of socialist "law", about the ideological framework/corset in which "law" took place or was designed in the GDR, according to the structures in which legal knowledge was acquired in the GDR, because this particularly shapes the design, purpose and application of legal rules by experts, and according to the close nexus between "law" and work , who laid the groundwork for the entire right reality of the GDR. The volume concludes with a brief overview of the work of the GDR law research center at the law faculty of the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena.