The term was used in the GDR state-supporting context of Marxist-Leninist philosophy and science to characterise a certain feature of social consciousness and the class-bound nature of an ideology or worldview. From this perspective, however, one's own epistemological position is simultaneously demarcated and characterised in relation to bourgeois philosophy and bourgeois objectivism or the idea of non-partisan objectivity. Only Marxism-Leninism does not deny the location-bound nature of the worldview represented and expresses it explicitly, i.e. it professes to take sides with the working class and thus, according to this understanding, with historical progress. In socialism (according to its own account, the GDR was in this phase), partisanship, namely partisanship for the working class, i. e. for the ruling SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschland), coincides with scientific truth – and in that sense also with objectivity. Time and again, when reference was made to scientific rigor in discourse on education, for example when the scientific nature of teaching was discussed, partisanship in this sense was also immediately considered. In this way, it was possible to demand endorsements of the SED's programme and resolutions again and again as a plea for scientific rigour. The Marxist-Leninist conception of a partisan science and its practice described above was sharply criticised after the fall of the German wall since, in Western understanding, science categorically excluded partisanship, even if various scientific theoretical approaches take into account the specific nature and historicity of scientific knowledge.