Patients call their lung sanatorium "Mottenburg," where everyone suffers from the same illness, all having the "moths." One of them is eight-year-old August, who lost his mother while fleeing from East Prussia and would be lost himself if it weren't for Lilo. Lilo is seventeen, she is beautiful, she dares to confront the head nurse, and when Lilo says his name, it sounds different than usual. More than sixty years later, the memories of this time are still vivid; August can leaf through them like a picture book. In "August," Christa Wolf's last widely acclaimed narrative, as well as in the stories "Blickwechsel" and "Zu einem Datum," we read about difficult times marked by war and illness, but also about people who have experienced something that could be called happiness.