The article is devoted to a description of the social-political and scientific-historical conditions before and during the founding of the “Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik” and their consequences for the journal. The influence of politics, contemporary history and the history of science on scientific behaviour becomes clear. What promoted the need for such a journal? What demands did it make of itself? What forms of presentation did it find and what topics did it devote itself to? It becomes apparent that ZGL is still a very suitable place to be up to date with current linguistics, i. e. to inform oneself about topics, to deal with them in a constrictive manner and to get to know research areas and representatives of the subject. An overview of the diversity of the subject and the tendencies of its development is made possible. This is the merit of the journal. However, it does not fulfil its self-obligation to the same extent in all areas (e. g. text linguistics, stylistics, discourse linguistics). It was surprising to see that representatives of East German linguistics certainly had a place in the journal. One gets the impression of a certain self-evidence of common discourse.