assumed - and probably known - that he had briefed West German intelligence about her. Uta Felgner's chances of operating in West Germany unbeknown to the security services there would have been zero. None of this diminished her resolve to move to the west. During the late 1940s and early 1950s millions had already done this, compounding the labour shortage created by the slaughter of war and causing the government to impose increasingly effective measures to stem the flow. Since 1979 (or earlier) escape from East Germany to West Germany (without official permission) had been illegal, difficult and dangerous. Nevertheless, Felgner planned to escape. The plan unravelled when Hans Schulze, the West German businessman who was, at this time, her lover, had his car searched by frontier officers when he was on his way home from the Leipzig Trade Fair. His BMW cabriolet was found to contain a large quantity of valuables and a large amount of money. There was also a letter, written by Felgner, setting out various explosive pieces of information about members of the East German political establishment. The letter was evidently intended to serve as "insurance" in the event of "problems" with the East German authorities. Uta Felgner was condemned to spend three and a half years in jail. Hans Schulze faced the same East Berlin military court as Felgner and like her received a substantial jail term. In the event, by the end of 1987 both lovers had been released after only fifteen months. By the standards of the time and place, and in the context of the offence for which they had been locked up, they had been leniently treated. This gave rise to press speculation that Uta Felgner's "explosive information" on senior establishment figures might have played a part in securing their early releases. Speculation focused on the senior judge Hilde Benjamin, controversial because of the number of people she had sent to the guillotine at a series of show trials in the early 1950s. There are suggestions that Felgner, by using her "specifically womanly methods" of obtaining information from men, had acquired information on Hilde Benjamin's personal life of a potentially explosive nature. It should not be expected that the nature of Felgner's "explosive information" would be spelled out in Stasi records. It is nevertheless interesting that shortly before her release Felgner signed a written undertaking that following her release from prison