Uwe Johnson was unable to find a publisher in the GDR for his first novel, Ingrid Babendererde. His professor Hans Mayer helped him make contact with the publisher Peter Suhrkamp in Frankfurt am Main. Johnson sent Suhrkamp the manuscript for his novel in 1957. Suhrkamp however also declined to publish the book. He encouraged Johnson however to continue to write and to send him his next project. 

Thus the young author made contact with Suhrkamp again in early 1959 and sent him his novel Mutmassungen über Jakob (Speculations about Jacob). In the contract with the publisher it was agreed that the novel would appear under a pseudonym to avoid trouble for Johnson. The first proofs gave “Joachim Catt” as the author. But then Johnson changed his mind – with far-reaching consequences: “My friends convinced me that a pseudonym would not work, that it would not be sustainable in the long run. After all, if it was up to me, I would have been quite happy to remain in the GDR. At that time it seemed to me a country where something was going to change. But my friends thought that if the state security service is at least as efficient as I presented them in the book ‘Mutmassungen’, then it would have me after a few months. And so on the day when a West German printer was deciding what name to print on the front page, on this day (10 July 1959), I got off the train in West Berlin.”

The name Joachim Catt appeared again in Johnson's work with a minor modification: In Skizze eines Verunglückten (Sketch of a victim) (1982), the main character is called Dr. Joachim de Catt. He is a Mecklenburg poet who uses the pseudonym Joe.