Recent progress in the study of the photon emission from highly-charged heavy ions is reviewed. These investigations show that high-Z ions provide a unique tool for improving the understanding of the electron-electron and electron-photon interaction in the presence of strong fields. Apart from the bound-state transitions, which are accurately described in the framework of Quantum Electrodynamics, much information has been obtained also from the radiative capture of (quasi-) free electrons by

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... h-Z ions. Many features in the observed spectra hereby confirm the inherently relativistic behavior of even the simplest compound quantum systems in Nature.