For most people today, the word drifters sounds harmless, one thinks of children, of being outside.
Under National Socialism, loitering was a reason for being sent to work education camps.
It was often applied to young women and associated with moral neglect and sexual promiscuity.
Andrea Diener
Editor in the Feuilleton.
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Fridtjof Küchemann
Editor in the Feuilleton.
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The writer Bettina Wilpert called her second novel "Wonders", her narrator, Manja, 17 years old, ended up in the summer of 1983 - not in a work education camp, but in a closed venereological institute in Leipzig.
She was found by Vopos in the dorm room of a contract worker from Mozambique.
She is not believed that the two had not had sex, she is sent to Tripperburg.
This is what these venereological institutions were called in the GDR.
Today it is assumed that less than 20 percent of those admitted should have been there for medical reasons.
And that it was a horrific form of discipline for young women in the GDR.
We spoke to Bettina Wilpert about her novel, about its other narrative strands, which lead into the 1940s and almost into the present, about its background.
After that, a new literature riddle will round out this episode of the books podcast, solving the previous month's riddle and announcing the contestant who won the book, which we've raffled among the correct entries this time.
Bettina Wilpert's "Roundabouts" was published by Verrichter Verlag, has 266 pages and costs 25 euros.
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