In June 1959, when the speculations about Jakob were printed, its author moved from East Germany to West Berlin. He was aware that this book, due to its content and aesthetics contradicting the official ideology of East Germany, could not be published in the East. It traces the death of the railway dispatcher Jakob Abs. "But Jakob always crossed the tracks." Is it murder, suicide, or an accident? Jakob Abs was, and this is the reason for the speculations about him, subjected to multiple pressures in the fall of 1956: his mother had gone to the West; and the State Security was trying to persuade him to convince Gesine Cresspahl, who had moved to West Germany in 1953 "after the uprising of the workers and farmers against the government of the workers and farmers," to work for the State Security Service.