User:Olivia2283/Prostitution in the Weimar Republic

Prostitution in the Weimar Republic
Prostitution was a major aspect of the Weimar Republic, a time period in Germany that is commonly associated with partying, redefining sexual norms, and decadence. 1920s Germany was a hub for sex tourism and the Weimar Republic, with particular attention to Berlin, became known as a hotbed for vice.

Although the Weimar Republic had a reputation for sin and debauchery, regulations and policy still existed that affected the work of both male and female prostitutes.

Post World War I
Following the first world war, prostitution in Germany skyrocketed. During post-war years, a woman’s body was seen as an asset and prostitution became fairly normalized throughout the country and especially in the major cities of Berlin and Hamburg. A combination of a newly widowed women, soldiers beginning to see prostitution as acceptable, an influx of people moving to major cities (specifically Berlin), and both war veterans and women struggling financially led to an extreme increase in the visibility and number of people involved in prostitution in Germany. Post WWI, Berlin’s population grew by a factor of 13.

Soldiers were the ones responsible for normalizing paying for sex and prostitution in the Weimar Republic. During the first world war, many soldiers would seek out brothels or prostitutes wherever they were stationed; this was such a common trend among troops that the German military and government decided to set up and regulate their own brothels for soldiers to use in an attempt to stop venereal diseases from spreading to their enlisted men. Venereal disease had reached an all time high for Germany during the war because of how many soldiers were utilizing prostitutes. The government feared that soldiers would return home to their families and infect them with venereal disease and gave soldiers coupons to use specifically in the regulated and legal brothels that they had established to discourage the spread of those diseases. These government regulated brothels were frequently supervised by military physicians.

Since so many soldiers had begun to pay for sex and become involved with prostitution during the war, once the war ended, they no longer saw it as taboo and instead continued to engage with it even after the war was over.

After the war, many women were widows who no longer had the financial stability their husbands had previously provided. These women, typically in their 20s and 30s, often migrated to Berlin in search of jobs as secretaries, teachers, or other pink-collar professions. Since there was such an increase in the number of people moving to the city and looking for work, women, widows or not, were unable to find jobs and would end up selling sex to make a living as an alternative. It is unknown just how many women were involved in the sex industry following WWI.

War veterans also turned to prostitution once the war ended. Soldiers would often only sell sex to make extra money. The clubs and bars they frequented were typically in the poorest parts of the city, designed for working-class men to visit, and positioned close to soldier barracks and lodges. Outside of these clubs, soldiers would commonly be found waiting on the street for a client to go home with. If the military or government were made aware of these clubs, they were immediately shut down.

Regulation
Up until 1927, the Weimar Republic had a system of state-regulated policies for controlling prostitution that was simply called Regulation. While most cities had their own forms of Regulation laws, unless a province or city had implemented them, prostitution of any kind was illegal.

Germany had first enacted Regulation to protect public health and morality. Regulation in major cities was tolerant of prostitution. Under Regulation, prostitutes were obliged to submit to standard health checks and medical exams for STIs, banned from public spaces, and required to live in certain houses and areas of the city. They also had to obtain special permission to travel. A special branch of the police force called Sittenpolizei, the morals police, were the ones in charge of enforcing these policies and controlling prostitution in the major cities. Under Regulation, an estimated 10% of female prostitutes in Berlin were registered.

Law to Combat Venereal Disease
In 1927, the Reichstag passed the Law to Combat Venereal Disease that legalized female prostitution unless it was in a small town with a population of less than 15,000 people or near schools and churches. Prostitution was thus widely accepted and common in major cities. This new law also abolished Regulation policy and replaced police regulation of prostitution with welfare services and health department regulation. Prostitutes were now free to work without police oversight or intervention.

The need for a law discouraging the spread of venereal disease was first brought up to the Reichstag after WWI when they noticed how widely venereal diseases were spreading to their soldiers. A new venereal disease law had many supporters during the 1920s. The German Society for Combating Venereal Disease, an organization of doctors, supported the Law to Combat Venereal Disease because they believed Regulation policy did not protect public health well enough. Every political party who held seats in the Reichstag, including Social Democrats, German National People’s Party, Catholic Centre Party, the Bavarian People’s Party, and the German Democratic Party, also supported the new Law to Combat Venereal Disease. Even a few members of the slowly growing Nazi party supported it.

Many feminists were strong proponents of the new venereal disease law. They argued that the Law to Combat Venereal Disease would help push women away from prostitution. Feminist groups during the Weimar Republic adopted the idea that women who willingly choose to become prostitutes were biologically degenerate and had a mental disorder compelling them to join the sex work industry.

The Law to Combat Venereal Disease established welfare offices that worked with the health department and were often run by public or private religious charities. These welfare institutions were mainly for treating female prostitutes who had venereal disease or were suspected of having it. The new law allowed the health department to mandate medical exams for anyone believed to have contracted venereal disease. The 5,500 workers who had previously been the ones regulating prostitution in Berlin were now the ones manning the welfare clinics.

Many prostitutes resisted and opposed the Law to Combat Venereal Disease. Female prostitutes were against the law because it shut police-regulated brothels. While this did mean that they were now free to live where they wanted, many prostitutes protested this aspect of the law because these brothels were where they lived, worker, and raised their children. The prostitutes who had been previously residing in the now closed brothels had no where else to live. 153 female prostitutes in Hamburg petitioned to have their brothels remain open and regulated instead of closing them for good under the new law. Prostitutes also resisted the idea of the Law to Combat Venereal Disease because it led to welfare offices trying to find them new forms of work and push them out of the sex industry. In Hamburg, one welfare office was helped around 470 sex workers find new professions in just one year. Social welfare programs, doctors, and health departments were now more likely to interfere with the sex industry than the were before the Law to Combat Venereal Disease was passed.

The Law to Combat Venereal Disease worked to reform many areas of the sex industry. The law mainly targeted women who sold sex and not other sex workers. It established equal responsibility and policy for transmitting venereal disease for both female prostitutes and their male clients. Birth control and condoms became more accessible for prostitutes as well.

Street prostitution increased after the Law to Combat Venereal Disease was passed due to police-regulated brothels closing. The law had aimed to reduce prostitution in public spaces, but it had the opposite effect. Under Regulation policy, street prostitution had been contained to designated areas and neighborhoods. After Regulated was abolished, there was no distinct red light district and prostitutes who worked on the streets were free to work all across the city. In the city of Essen, police continued to arrest street prostitutes although this violated the newly passed Law to Combat Venereal Disease; they were eventually ordered to stop by the Prussian Interior Ministry.

Other reforms and regulation:
In the Weimar Republic, censorship was much more relaxed and risque than under previous governments. Pornography and explicit content was widely published and available for purchase, although it was technically illegal. Frequently, one could purchase pornographic images under-the-counter from kiosks that lined the streets in Berlin. Police often ignored this method of distributing pornography.

Pimps were fairly common in the Weimar Republic and often willing to cater to any request a client had.

Types of sex workers
There were many different types of sex workers and nicknames for sex workers in Weimar-era Germany. Many prostitutes and sex workers worked in cabaret and dance halls as hostesses, waitresses, or dancers. Dancing girls would often take their clients to back rooms and provide their services in the bars or clubs they worked at. The type of prostitute differed in each club or dance hall depending on the establishments’ reputation and social status. Upper class hookers were more often found in hotels or high-end clubs. Table-ladies was the name given to high-class prostitutes with Aryan beauty features who worked in upper class establishments and would be included in the price of purchasing a table for the night.

Half-silk were women who maintained a typical office job during the day, but worked as a prostitute at night and on the weekends. The term half-beaver was also given to these types of prostitute.

Leather-Boot-Girls were women who wore specific uniforms and colors on their boots to indicate what type of sexual service they offered. Most often it was BDSM related.

Sugar-lickers were gay men who worked exclusively at night.

Appearance heavily dictated the type of prostitute and which name they were given. Nuttes were typically boy-ish looking teenage girls who would sell sex after school, Muniz were pregnant women, and Gravelstones were prostitutes that did not fit the beauty standard and often were disfigured from the war or had some type of disability. Prostitutes would also often dress up as widows to look more respectable and avoid being arrested.

Child pornography and prostitution was extremely present during the Weimar years. It was the most expensive form of prostitution and mostly used only by the very wealthy. Telephone-girls were a very common type of child prostitution found in Germany. They were typically girls between the ages of 12 and 17 who would advertise their services in newspapers or other print publications.

Pornography was another very popular form of sex work in the Weimar Republic. Pornography was illegal, but the demand for it was very high. The most popular forms of pornography were those that featured men and women who resembled celebrities. The directors of pornographic films were often respectable workers who worked on typical sets during the day, but then shot adult films at night.

Male prostitution and homosexuality
Male prostitution in Berlin was common. The Weimar Republic was fairly tolerant of sexual diversity and male prostitution was a key aspect of city culture. Many men, especially war veterans, moved to Berlin to find work and turned to prostitution when they could not find other means of making a living. This led to Berlin becoming a prime tourist destination for male prostitution.

Crossdressing and transvestism were key parts of Berlin’s male sex industry. Crossdressing was legal in Berlin during the Weimar-era, although it was mainly limited to clubs and bars. Transvestite passes were handed out to male crossdressers to show police that they were not deviant. Most bars and clubs designed for male prostitution were in the poorest parts of the city. The men who worked at these establishments either as hostesses or waiters would often go home with customers who paid them for sex at the end of the night. Gay balls were extremely common at these bars and clubs. There would often be a ball going on multiple times a week at different clubs in Berlin.

Male homosexuality was illegal during the Weimar Republic, although there was a strong effort to legalize it in the late 1920s. In 1929, the Reichstag began debate about Paragraph 175 of their penal code that stated that male homosexuality is legal. The vote to repeal Paragraph 175 passed the Reichstag, but never became actual law due to economic and democratic collapse in the 1930s. Paragraph 175 of the penal code was replaced with Paragraph 297 that legalized male homosexuality unless it took place with someone under 21 years of age, one paid for it, or if it was not consensual. Male prostitution was thus criminalized under the new Paragraph 297. Many male prostitutes opposed this amendment to the penal code because male prostitution had been widely ignored and rarely enforced under Paragraph 175. Under Paragraph 297, male prostitution was punishable up to five years in prison.

The effects of economic collapse on prostitution
When Germany’s economy collapsed in the 1920s due to the Wall Street Crash and war reparations, there was an increase in prostitution. Women and men alike could not find work and thus turned to the sex industry in hopes of making extra money. Some prostitutes would exchange sex for food or a safe place to sleep once the economy crashed. Mothers and daughters would work together as sex workers to try and make enough money to survive. Tourists from America were able to purchase sex for extremely cheap due to inflation in Germany.