What is a “free press”: East Germany’s experience

Prior to the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, millions of East Germans went to the streets to protest state repression, monopolisation and censorship. They demanded freedom of opinion and a free, diverse and democratic media. One year later, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) joined the Federal Republic, reuniting Germany. Much has been written about the process of transition: it went from a state-controlled propaganda apparatus to that of a free democratic media system.

Mandy Tröger shines a light on a largely neglected aspect of this transition. Through her extensive archival research, she offers a much-needed historical analysis of the political and economic forces that shaped this transition.

Mandy Tröger was born and raised in East Berlin. Having received her PhD from the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 2018, she is currently a Walter-Benjamin Fellow of the German Research Foundation (DFG) at the University of Tübingen.