Abstract: Motivated by a classic result for free groups, one says that a group has the Magnus property if the following holds: whenever two elements generate the same normal subgroup of , they are conjugate or inverse-conjugate in . It is a natural problem to find out which relatively free groups display the Magnus property. We prove that a free polynilpotent group of any given class row has the Magnus property if and only if it is nilpotent of class at most . For this purpose we explore the Magnus property more generally in soluble groups, and we produce new techniques, both for establishing and for disproving the property. We also prove that a free centre-by-(polynilpotent of given class row) group has the Magnus property if and only if it is nilpotent of class at most . On the way, we display -generated nilpotent groups (with non-trivial torsion) of any prescribed nilpotency class with the Magnus property. Similar examples of finitely generated, torsion-free nilpotent groups are hard to come by, but we construct a -generated, torsion-free, class- nilpotent group of Hirsch length with the Magnus property. Furthermore, using a weak variant of the Magnus property and an ultraproduct construction, we establish the existence of metabelian, torsion-free, nilpotent groups of any prescribed nilpotency class with the Magnus property.
