By analysing the careers of architects in the GDR between 1945 and the mid 1950’s, the article seeks to specify the contradictory effects of exile during the Third Reich in terms of a redefinition of professional and political identities.The study of biographical trajectories is linked to the structuring of networks of cooptation and the bureaucratic definition and classification of exile in the GDR. By insisting on the multiple uses of biographical resources, the article shows how the experience of exile was transformed into a resource or a stigma depending on the trajectories, in a context of competition between two generations of politically engaged architects.