Officially, from 1949 (first day of the Communist republic) to 1990 (last day of the Communist republic)....no censorship existed (it was widely repeated). Most bureaucrats of the country were proud of their free and open society (wink-wink).
Prior to 1949 (from 1945 on), the government that existed....had a listing of books which were fully banned (not to be sold, seen or read)....called 'Liste der auszusondernden Literatur' (basically meaning 'banned literature'. If you fell on the list....it meant you had dangerous ideas. Even if this were fictional in nature....it could be viewed as dangerous.
Sometimes, it was simply wording that got shifted. An example....Huck Finn by Mark Twain was allowed to be read....but it needed to be in German, and the translation had to be done in a particular way....so an English version of Huck Finn was practically impossible to find, but plenty of German translated copies were around. It should be noted that when translated over....it was meant to ONLY be a child's book and reflect nothing of value for an adult.
To this 'rewriting' effort....at some point, there were fifteen different translations existing on Huck Finn, and all were slightly different in meaning and description.
As they sat and actually wrote the 1949 Constitution for DDR....it was actually inserted into the text....censorship was forbidden (article 9).
There was simply no part of society left untouched by the censorship. If you did some kind of art to suggest you were anti-government....it got banned. If you wrote out some song and suggested anything subversive about the government, it got banned.
If you said anything about the crappy education system, or poorly-run university sytem....it got banned or censored.
If you talked about pollution (like your local stream was crapped-out)....that got banned.
If you suggested racism? That got banned.
If you suggested sexism? That got banned.
If you suggested extreme violence existed (over in the bad part of East Berlin)? That got censored.
Wanted to talk about gay topics? Banned. Weird sex stuff? Banned.
Wanna talk about alcoholism, drugs, mental illness, paranoid schizophrenia? Banned.
Got corruption issues? Forbidden and censored.
At least once a week, the national news people would release a updated 'don't talk about' listing....which would suggest the bad topics which could not be reported in news. To suggest that fake news was the standard? Most all East Germans accepted that as their landscape.
To make all of this work....print-media, radio-media, and TV-media were all part of a state apparatus. If DDR existed today....they'd have the internet existing under the state-umbrella. Facebook-like, Google-like and Twitter-like devices would exist and be geared to censorship.
How older East Germans view the media and news apparatus today? Even in a relatively free landscape....they are skeptical and often question precisely what they are told. Even if the Chancellor herself says something....it's not entirely regarded as factual.
The last people on Earth who have any appreciation of censorship? Well....yeah, I'd suggest that older East Germans are at the top of the list.
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