On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the independent Chair of Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry at Rostock University, this study takes a closer look at the circumstances and history of its establishment and development in the GDR. It shows that its development took place within the framework of the general strive for independence of a young discipline in Europe, and the German-speaking countries in particular, after World War II. It also addresses the specific local emergence conditions and the general sociopolitical factors, highlighting the personal, yet very individual, impact of the two protagonists of child and adolescent psychiatry, namely Franz Günther von Stockert (1899-1967) and Gerhard Göllnitz (1920-2003), on the path Rostock child psychiatry followed. Through the establishment of an independent Department of Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry at Rostock University, the discipline succeeded in emancipating itself more and more throughout the GDR as a subject in its own right, as a result of which the foundations were laid for an integrated system of research and teaching as well as an integrated neuropsychiatric health care programme in the GDR.