Unless not under a specific licence which actively requires you to destroy data after usage, for most social science data there is no recommendation on how long data should be archived. Best practice is to archive the data for an extended period.

If not selected otherwise during the submission process, your open data is semi-permanently archived at the DARIAH-DE repository and the Humanities Data Centre – two of Germany’s leading institutions for depositing and archiving scientific data. In case you have sensitive data collections and chose restricted access, or if you have very large data collections exceeding 1 Terabyte, the data is archived at a special secure and fireproof facility at the IT Department of the Research Cente for East European Studies at the University of Bremen.