On 16 November 1976, the leadership of the East German ruling party stripped the singer Wolf Biermann of his citizenship while he was on a concert tour in West Germany. The next day, a group of leading writers and artists met at the home of the poet Stephan Hermlin. Among them were Christa Wolf, Heiner Müller, Stefan Heym and the sculptor Fritz Cremer. They wrote an open letter: Wir protestieren gegen die Ausbürgerung, we protest against the expulsion. They asked the state to reconsider the measure. According to a witness, the word bitten, to ask, replaced the original fordern, to demand, at Cremer’s suggestion. More than one hundred other artists joined them. Some were expelled from the party, others received party penalties, and more than one hundred artists and writers eventually left the GDR.