Against the background of the national socialist past and Lysenko’s doctrine, human genetics research in the GDR was practiced on a limited scale until the late 1960s. The doctrine of Lysenko which had been transferred from the Soviet Union proclaimed the inheritance of acquired characteristics as reality and denounced genetics as pseudoscience. Under the scope of the so-called Biologieprognose (biology prognosis) in 1966, GDR scientists maintained the need for investigation into human genetics. In the process, they stressed the progressive international development in that field. Five years later (1971) the project human genetics started. Its previous goal was the establishment of a genetic counselling family service. In the midst of the 1980s, genetic counselling helpdesks were available in each district (Bezirk) of the GDR Therefore genetic counselling served as a means of transmitting and applying modern molecular genetic knowledge. The main question I would like to raise is: How could a method like genetic counselling, which was marginal and considered to be the applied practice of a historically-loaded branch of science, be constituted in a state which in order to distinguish itself from the Federal Republic of Germany had to distance itself vehemently from any biologistic attitudes. Under which terms was this change of mind justified? Inter alia, drawing upon the publication human genetics in a socialist society by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the Medical Academy in Magdeburg (GDR), which had the duty to investigate the relevance of human genetic measures under socialism, I would like to outline the conception of human genetics in a socialist society and the recommendations derived from it, such as advice on how to perform genetic counselling responsibly or how to deal with genetically-related contraception or abortion.