The mass emigration of West Germans to the GDR is a German-German taboo topic. Bernd Stöver explores the motives and fates of these emigrants, uncovering astonishing and exciting stories—often from previously sealed intelligence files—that could only have been written by the German division. Until the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, more than half a million West Germans emigrated to the GDR, including well-known figures such as Stefan Heym, Wolf Biermann, Robert Havemann, Ralph Giordano, Lothar Bisky, and Ronald Schernikau. Until the fall of the Wall in 1989, several thousand more emigrants continued to move each year. Bernd Stöver describes for the first time what motivated these citizens of the Federal Republic, what they dreamed of, what they fled from, and how they fared in the workers' and farmers' state. He pays particular attention to prominent emigrants.