A separate cabin, the mirrors of which the sellers sometimes even covered with a cloth. For example, if customers decide to leave the remaining hair shaved. A customer tells us that she has experienced this procedure like a liberation stroke. She had herself taken to the razor and not even announced her husband. And: "I've cursed in the worst words with my cancer." The handle to the razor was their signal to the disease - on in the fight.

The separated room is occupied several times this afternoon. When Karla Friedrich was sitting in the cabin at the time, she felt like "on a frantic train". The terrifying diagnosis barely behind itself, a few doctor's appointments and the chemotherapy still before itself. Many doctors recommend, in spite of the stress, before the possible hair loss a wig.

The quick decision facilitated the changeover. The wigs business should only be another stop for Karla Friedrich - just tick off. And then she sat for an hour and a half in the dressing table. Playing with the hairstyles made her laugh, made her laugh. She looked into the mirror and thought, "You look like, that's your hair. Say goodbye now.

Paula Kage also knows how it is when the hair is suddenly gone. The now 17-year-old student could not say goodbye. Suddenly there were round spots where the smooth blond hair was growing. Paula was ten years old and did not know what to do. Experts are also puzzling about Paul's disease Alopecia Areata. We assume a misdirected response in the immune system, but the exact cause is not explored. More than one million Germans suffer from it.

In the wigs shop, Paula is a little star. The vassals swarmed their beautiful blue eyes and their frankness. She bends over and smiles as she talks about the most difficult aspect of her illness: how the hair - especially the eyelashes - grow slowly and then fall out again overnight. "This is the worst," says Paula. From the eyes, one, two tears.

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For the student hair is "a part of the personality". With Paula's collection, her personality has developed in the middle of puberty. She spent an exchange year in the US, her hostess was accidentally also an alopecia patient. Perhaps it was the year in the host family that made her so open: "All my friends know about my illness," she says.

At home she did not wear a wig anyway. And what about the guys? "I do not tell them at first halo hair extensions, but if I like someone, I'll tell him." Paula also knows the moment when the dancing in the disco shifts the wig very short and the scalp can be seen. Meanwhile she can laugh about it, it happens only very rarely.

For tightness, tightly knotted nets under the artificial hairlines. Many modern wigs have a silicone coating that sucks to the scalp. Especially in winter the hair deforms, the tips divide. Paula then visits the shop in Steglitz with her three differently long brown wigs.

Karla Friedrich also likes to experiment with her seven wigs, which she chooses according to the occasion and only takes her home. One is shoulder-length, red and curly. It is a bit macabre: first the cancer gave her the chance to wear sometimes even a real mane. She could have put it on 22 December 2006 after a nightmare came to an end.

At the beginning of December the doctors diagnosed a new ulcer in another place after the successful breast cancer treatment. Together with her husband, who had offered to dispose of his dense gray hair after the first diagnosis, Karla Friedrich decided: "We have managed to get everything together, we want to get married very soon."

Then hairpiece, after 16 years, they made an appointment with the registry office. The tumor proved to be benign, there was only one problem to solve: Which wig fits a wedding party? Friedrich thought for a long time, the red mane left her in the closet. She found that her fair-haired hairstyle fit best. On the blonde wig she put on a green floral wreath that day.