Histories of Prostitution in Central, East Central and South Eastern Europe 9783506790477, 9783657790470, 3506790471

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Histories of Prostitution in Central, East Central and South Eastern Europe

FOKUS NEUE STUDIEN ZUR GESCHICHTE POLENS UND OSTEUROPAS NEW STUDIES IN POLISH AND EASTERN EUROPEAN HISTORY Publikationsserie des Zentrums für Historische Forschung Berlin der Polnischen Akademie der Wissenschaften/Series of the Centre for Historical Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Berlin

Herausgegeben von/Series Editors Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg, Dietlind Hüchtker, Maciej Górny, Igor Kąkolewski, Yvonne Kleinmann, Markus Krzoska Wissenschaftlicher Beirat/Advisory Board Hans Henning Hahn Dieter Bingen Eva Hahn Joanna Jabłkowska Kerstin Jobst Beata Halicka Jerzy Kochanowski Magdalena Marszałek Michael G. Müller Jan M. Piskorski Miloš Řezník Isabel Röskau-Rydel Izabella Surynt

VOLUME 11

Sonja Dolinsek, Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska (Eds.)

Histories of Prostitution in Central, East Central and South Eastern Europe

This publication was funded by a grant from the German Historical Institute Warsaw.

Editors: Sonja Dolinsek is a historian working on the politics of prostitution and anti-trafficking in the 20th century and is currently working as a research associate in Contemporary History at Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg. Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska is a sociologist and cultural scholar working at the Deutsches Historisches Institut Warschau and Uniwersytet Łódzki and co-author of “Bilder der Normalisierung” (2017). Cover image: La vie politique, Paul Balluriau, around 1907, public domain.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.d-nb.de All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. © 2023 by Brill Schöningh, Wollmarktstraße 115, 33098 Paderborn, Germany, an imprint of the Brill-Group (Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands; Brill USA Inc., Boston MA, USA; Brill Asia Pte Ltd, Singapore; Brill Deutschland GmbH, Paderborn, Germany; Brill Österreich GmbH, Vienna, Austria) Koninklijke Brill NV umfasst die imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Brill Wageningen Academic, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau und V&R unipress. www.brill.com Cover design: Evelyn Ziegler, Munich Production: Brill Deutschland GmbH, Paderborn ISSN 2698-5020 ISBN 978-3-506-79047-7 (hardback) ISBN 978-3-657-79047-0 (e-book)

Table of Contents Series Acknowledgement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Introduction: Approaches to the Histories of Prostitution in Central, East Central, and South Eastern Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Sonja Dolinsek and Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska

1.

“9 o’clock this morning, I took a girl to bed.” Writing on Military Prostitution in the Early 19th Century, Based on the Diary of Johann Friedrich Carl Paris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Kim Breitmoser

2.

Pushing Boundaries: Localisation of Nineteenth Century Prostitution in Florence  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Alexandra Skedzuhn-Safir

3.

Prostitution and the Security Culture of the German Empire (1871–1914) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Tobias Bruns

4.

Ravishers or Tradesmen? Understanding East European Jewish Traffickers at Home and Abroad, 1880s–1920s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Keely Stauter-Halsted

5.

Prostitution in Croatia 1918–1941: From a Tolerated Occurrence to a Criminal Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Stipica Grgić

6.

Homosexual Male Prostitution in Early Twentieth Century Hungary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Judit Takács

7.

The Sander Family: Prostitution, Pimping, and Justice in the Late Weimar Republic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Stefan Wünsch

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Table of Contents

8.

Outside the “Volksgemeinschaft”? On Prostitutes and Pimps Under National Socialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Mirjam Schnorr

9.

“Do you know each other?” Anti-VD Campaigns in Early Post-1945 Germany  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska

10. Social Pathology or Freelance Occupation? The Debates on Prostitution and Sex Work in State-Socialist Poland . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 Anna Dobrowolska 11.

Hunters, Hotels and Hungarian Girls: Moral Panic at the Intersection of Prostitution and Tourism Under Hungarian Consumer Socialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 Priska Komáromi

12. Behind the Crime of ‘Parasitism’: The Hidden History of Prostitution in Socialist Czechoslovakia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 Christiane Brenner Notes on Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275

Publication Series of the Centre for Historical Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Berlin FOKUS. New Studies on the History of Poland and Eastern Europe This book series aims to gather scientific monographs and anthologies dedicated to the newest research on the history of Poland and Eastern Europe. The works published in the series link different disciplines from cultural and social history. Even though the emphasis of the series is on Poland and Eastern Europe, there shall be works published that cover the past of this part of our continent within the scope of a wider research perspective and thereby inspire research on similar topics in other regions of Europe. The book series FOKUS: New Studies on the History of Poland and Eastern Europe will, inter alia, also publish excellent academic qualification works, such as dissertations that have been handed in for the Scholar Prize of the Polish Ambassador to Berlin.

Introduction: Approaches to the Histories of Prostitution in Central, East Central, and South Eastern Europe Sonja Dolinsek and Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska As we were writing this introduction in 2021, a historic event was taking its course. Since early 2020, the global pandemic caused by the spread of a virus called Covid-19 has limited many social activities that involve some sort of physical closeness with persons outside one’s own household. This includes sex work. Where it is legal, as in Germany, it has been explicitly restricted or prohibited with the goal of containing the pandemic. In April 2020, the news agency Reuters reported that the closure of German brothels led to “thousands of foreign sex workers”, who reportedly came predominantly from “Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, and Ukraine,” being stranded in Germany.1 Other news outlets reported a rush to leave the country in the face of crumbling business opportunities and the consequent financial problems many migrant sex workers faced.2 In the third decade of the twenty-first century, sex work appears as a social practice that connects European regions. By the time this edited collection was getting closer to being published, yet another historic event took place: Russia began waging a war against Ukraine, causing millions of people, mostly women and children, to flee the country, while men were conscripted into the military. Soon, concerns about the risk of trafficking emerged and anti-trafficking NGOs, such as La Strada International and The Freedom Fund, published recommendations for the prevention of human trafficking of refugees fleeing from Ukraine.3 Sex worker organisations also responded to the crisis moment. The peer-networking project for trans sex workers, Trans*sexworks, offered peer-counselling for Ukrainian sex workers 1 Joseph Nasr, “Sex workers stranded in Germany as coronavirus shuts brothels,” Reuters, 3  April  2020, accessed 17  May  2022, https://web.archive.org/web/20211006015632/https:// www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-germany-brothels-idUSKBN21L0ZY. 2 Oliver Pieper, “Coronavirus: Sex workers in Germany get back to their jobs after ban is lifted,” Deutsche Welle, 11  September  2020, accessed 17  May  2022, https://web.archive. org/web/20210126031512/https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-sex-workers-in-germanyget-back-to-their-jobs-after-ban-is-lifted/a-54896365. 3 Suzanne Hoff and Eefje de Volder, “Preventing human trafficking of refugees from Ukraine. A rapid assessment of risks and gaps in the anti-trafficking response,” (May 2022), accessed 17  May  2022, https://web.archive.org/web/20220510130104/https://freedomfund.org/wpcontent/uploads/UkraineAntiTraffickingReport_2022_05_10.pdf.

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fleeing the country and seeking to support themselves in Germany.4 Since the fall of the so-called ‘Iron Curtain’ and the end of the Cold War, prostitution has attracted renewed public attention as a topic of more-or-less sensational media reports and has appeared on the agenda of many policy debates in Europe and globally. ‘Eastern Europe’ has featured prominently in these debates as one of the main regions of origin of sex workers who, with the opening of the borders, moved across the globe in search of better social and economic opportunities, along with many other migrants and migrant workers. The rising numbers of migrant sex workers who emigrated out of the former Socialist Bloc to Western Europe, but also to the United States, from the 1990s onwards was connected to both a real and perceived rise in exploitative practices in commercial sex, which are most commonly described as “human trafficking.”5 It is in this context that the discursive connection between Eastern Europe, prostitution and human trafficking arose – again. Any mention of ‘prostitution’ and ‘Eastern Europe’ in the same sentence elicits images of poverty-driven migration, organised crime, and human trafficking of young women, as these two quotes – formulated over 100 years apart – illustrate: I think that I have said enough now to convince anyone that a terrible number of Jewesses are prostitutes in the countries have named. How did they get there? Not at their own expense that is certain. I hardly think that a girl who has lived

4 Trans*sexworks, “Drop-in Reminder: Peer Counselling for Sex Workers Fleeing Ukraine”, 30 March 2022, accessed 17 May 2022, https://web.archive.org/web/2/http://transsexworks. com/drop-in-reminder-peer-counselling-for-sex-workers-fleeing-ukraine/. 5 For an overview of contemporary research on prostitution and human trafficking from ‘Eastern Europe’ see for example the thematic issue “Mythos Europa – Prostitution, Migration, Frauenhandel”, Osteuropa 56, 6 (2006); Rutvica Andrijasevic, “Beautiful dead bodies: Gender, migration and representation in anti-trafficking campaigns,” Feminist Review 86 (2007): 24–44; Rutvica Andrijasevic, Migration, Agency and Citizenship in Sex Trafficking (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Kamala Kempadoo, Jyoti Sanghera, and Bandana Pattanaik, Trafficking and Prostitution Reconsidered: New Perspectives on Migration, Sex Work, and Human Rights (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2015); Jürgen Nautz and Birgit Sauer (eds.), Frauenhandel. Diskurse und Praktiken (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2008); Ryszard W. Piotrowicz, Conny Rijken, and Bärbel Heide Uhl, Routledge Handbook of Human Trafficking (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2018); Maria Boikova Struble, The Politics of Bodies at Risk: The Human in the Body (London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2019); Jennifer Suchland, Economies of Violence. Transnational Feminism, Postsocialism, and the Politics of Sex Trafficking (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015); Sheldon X. Zhang, “Beyond the ‘Natasha’ story – a review and critique of current research on sex trafficking,” Global Crime 10, 3 (2009): 178–195.

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her life in a Russian, Romanian or Galician village would know how to reach these places alone. This fact is in itself a proof of the traffic.6 These mostly very young women from the poverty-stricken areas of Moldova or Romania, from the war and crisis zones in eastern Ukraine, from the Roma ghettos and settlements in Bulgaria, Hungary or Slovakia, cannot set out voluntarily and of their own accord to pursue prostitution in Germany.7

The first quote comes from a Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women’s meeting in 1910; the second was published in 2019 based on an interview with retired German police officer Manfred Paulus, who sees an intrinsic connection between prostitution, human trafficking, organised crime, and Eastern Europe. They are among the many sources that testify to the continuities and the tenaciousness of certain narratives of female mobility, human trafficking, and work in a geographical and social space with continuously shifting borders and boundaries. Today and in the past, anti-trafficking efforts addressing these regions have often (mistakenly) assumed their backwardness, thus contributing little to solving the problems relating to socio-economic disparity, labour exploitation and gender discrimination.8 Even in academic and historians’ circles, non-specialists often assume that analysing prostitution generally, but especially in Eastern and East-Central Europe, means analysing human trafficking and female exploitation. 6 Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women, “Jewish international conference on the suppression of the traffic in girls and women held on 5, 6, and 7 April 1910 in London,” Official Report (London: Wertheimer Lea & Co, 1910), 36–37. For more information on the JAPGW, see Ellery Gillian Weil, “Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women,” Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women (Jewish Women’s Archive, 23  June  2021), accessed 5  February  2022, https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/jewish-association-for-theprotection-of-girls-and-women. For a recent study, see Mir Yarfitz, Impure Migration. Jews and Sex Work in Golden Age Argentina (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2019). 7 Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung, “Menschenhandel und Ausbeutung von Frauen und Kindern im deutschen Prostitutionsmilieu [Human trafficking and the exploitation of women and children in the German prostitution milieu],” (17 June 2019), accessed 17 May 2022, https:// web.archive.org/web/20210628111326/https://www.hss.de/news/detail/menschenhandelund-ausbeutung-von-frauen-und-kindern-im-deutschen-prostitutionsmilieu-news4709/. The Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung is a foundation connected to the Bavarian party CSU (ChristlichSoziale Union) and thus takes a faith-based and rather conservative view on questions of gender and sexuality, including prostitution. 8 Ludmila Bogdan, “Human Trafficking, Information Campaigns and Public Awareness in Moldova: Why Do Anti-Trafficking Organizations Operate under Inaccurate Assumptions?,” International Migration (2021). On the methodological implications of narratives of backwardness for the history of gender in Eastern Europe see Dietlind Hüchtker, “Zweierlei Rückständigkeit? Geschlechtergeschichte und Geschichte Osteuropas,” Osteuropa 58, 3 (2008): 141–144.

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While human trafficking is a phenomenon affecting many labour sectors, public debates about human trafficking often adopt a narrow view and focus only on prostitution and prostitution policy, thus restricting the perspectives on both human trafficking and prostitution. Contemporary debates mostly focus on the question of which policy models states should adopt, but also about the general meaning and desirability of paid sex in modern societies. Both the goals and the normative judgements of paid sex elicit strong disagreements. Activists across the political spectrum, including feminists, faith-based organisations, and researchers, often fight fierce battles over whether paid sex can ever be voluntary, a choice that (wo)men can make, or whether it can only be the paradigmatic expression of gender inequality. Others debate more practical questions about whether and how consensual paid sexual interactions among adults should be legal; about whether prostitution should be decriminalised, regulated (and if yes, how), or prohibited in order to abolish it in a utopian future not yet in sight. Empirical and theoretical arguments about the relationship between prostitution and human trafficking are disputed, with some arguing for the prohibition of paid sex as a strategy against trafficking. Others see prohibitionist approaches as part of the problem of exploitation in the global political economy and see the solution in human and labour rights as well as social policy approaches. The different meanings of words, such as ‘forced prostitution’ or ‘trafficking’, but also ‘choice’, ‘agency’, ‘coercion’, and ‘prostitute’, ‘sex worker’, ‘trafficked’, ‘enslaved,’ or ‘prostituted’ woman (rarely men) are themselves debated and reflect the broad range of political standpoints.9 While some see prostitution as the main or only locus for human trafficking, others approach sex workers’ mobility as a form of labour migration akin to the migration of men into multiple industries, such as agriculture, construction, and the food industries.10 Among them, Petra Follmar-Otto has stressed 9

10

The research literature on these questions has become so vast that it is not possible to list it here. However, some suggestions for further reading include: Synnøve Økland Jahnsen and Hendrik Wagenaar, Assessing Prostitution Policies in Europe (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2019); Joyce Outshoorn, The Politics of Prostitution: Women’s Movements, Democratic States, and the Globalisation of Sex Commerce (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Hendrik Wagenaar, Sietske Altink, and Helga Amesberger, Designing Prostitution Policy: Intention and Reality in Regulating the Sex Trade. (Bristol, UK: Policy Press, 2017). One of the editors, Sonja Dolinsek, has been collecting research on sex work across various disciplines and with a global perspective at https://sexworkresearch.wordpress.com/. Beate Andrees, “Forced labour and trafficking in Europe: how people are trapped in, live through and come out,” Working Paper (Geneva: International Labour Office, 2008), accessed 7 February 2022, https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/publications/

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how the mechanisms of exploitation are similar across these sectors and are therefore not specific to sex work.11 Most scholars of anti-trafficking stress the discrepancy between public discourses and representations of trafficking and a much more complex social reality.12 In fact, the focus on prostitution stands in stark contrast to a growing awareness that human trafficking as a form of criminal exploitation of someone’s labour is a phenomenon affecting many labour sectors and is being driven by a combination of socio-economic factors and state policies creating rightlessness and vulnerability through, for example, restrictive migration policies, as well broader patterns of discriminations based on race, class, and gender.13 Historians have long been critically engaged with anti-trafficking efforts and, most recently, Philippa Hetherington and Julia Laite have explicitly questioned the usefulness of “human trafficking” as a category of analysis because the term is highly normative and malleable with “little useful explanatory value.”14 Most importantly, Laite and Hetherington call upon historians of trafficking to “engage fully with the Classique critique of seeking voices (Gayatri Spivak), of essentialising agency (Walter Johnson), and reifying the evidence of experience (Joan Scott).”15 This edited collection is not primarily about human trafficking or migration. However, for many students and researchers, contemporary debates on prostitution and trafficking of the 2010s and 2020s often represent the starting point for their interest in the history of prostitution. These debates are therefore relevant insofar as they reflect what sociologists have termed “everyday knowledge” about prostitution rather than deeper analytical insights into

WCMS_090548/lang--en/index.htm; Joel Quirk, Caroline Robinson, and Cameron Thibos, “Editorial: From Exceptional Cases to Everyday Abuses: Labour Exploitation in the Global Economy,” Anti-Trafficking Review 15 (September 2020): 1–19. 11 Petra Follmar-Otto, “Menschen landen in Sklaverei ähnlichen Situationen,” interview by Sarah Zerback, Deutschlandfunk, 19 August 2019, Transcript. accessed 17 May 2022, https:// web.archive.org/web/20200926211103/https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/kampf-gegenmenschenhandel-menschen-landen-in-sklaverei.694.de.html?dram:article_id=456943. 12 Christiana Gregoriou, Representations of Transnational Human Trafficking: Present-Day News Media, True Crime, and Fiction (Cham: Palgrave Pivot, 2018); Annie Bunting and Joel Quirk (eds.), Contemporary Slavery: Popular Rhetoric and Political Practice (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2017). 13 See for instance Sutapa Basu et al., “Selling People,” Contexts 13, 1 (February 2014): 16–25. 14 Philippa Hetherington and Julia Laite, “Editorial Note: Special Issue: Migration, Sex, and Intimate Labour,” Journal of Women’s History 33, No. 4 (2021): 7–39. For an overview of the historiography on trafficking and anti-trafficking also see Hetherington/Laite, “Editorial Note”. 15 Ibid., 21.

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the complex social reality of paid sex.16 They often shape the first impulse to researching paid sex in the past, limit what questions one asks, and what one can and cannot see. The categories (human trafficking, prostitution, sex worker etc.), dichotomies (choice/coercion, trafficking/sex work etc.) and fault lines of these debates appear as self-evident rather than the product of complex processes of social construction with their own history.17 Situated in this discursive context, historians of prostitution are caught between the competing demands: firstly, for knowledge grounded in the present debate about human trafficking; secondly, for a broad, though not general, lack of deeper interest for a topic often deemed comparatively irrelevant; thirdly, for an archival trail of records that often does not answer the questions posed from our present. At non-specialist conferences, historians of prostitution are often confronted with questions inspired by contemporary debates and media reports on trafficking and prostitution, by “spectacular representations of women as passive and naïve victims lured or tricked into sex work,” but also by the activism of the sex workers’ rights movements.18 The nonspecialist public often asks either for the victim or the politicised activist, for coercion and exploitation, or agency. Sometimes, prostitution is reduced to its sexualised dimension and dismissed as a “subject worthy of study,” as Alain Corbin once put it.19 Whether historians of prostitution want it or not, there is no escaping the present debate or pretending we are in any way researching outside of it. However, “the serious historical study of prostitution has gained significant ground in the past thirty years,”20 and, as Nancy Wingfield and Keely Stauter-Halsted have pointed out, sexual questions, including those relating to prostitution, are positioned at the intersection of many fields of historical

16 Michael E. Gardiner, “Everyday Knowledge,” Theory, Culture & Society 23, 2–3 (May 2006): 205–207. 17 On the notion of “social construction” see Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Anchor Books, 1989 [1966]). 18 Wendy S. Hesford, Spectacular Rhetorics: Human Rights Visions, Recognitions, Feminisms (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011): 125. Also see the Special Issue “Trafficking (in) Representations: Understanding the recurring appeal of victimhood and slavery in neoliberal times,” Anti-Trafficking Review 7 (2016). 19 Alain Corbin, Women for Hire: Prostitution and Sexuality in France After 1850, trans. Alan Sheridan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), vii. 20 Julia Laite, Common Prostitutes and Ordinary Citizens: Commercial Sex in London, 1885– 1960 (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011), 3.

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inquiry.21 While prostitution may be described as the quintessential form of bare sex, the historical analysis of prostitution goes beyond the narrower practice of paid sex. It offers insights not just into the history of gender and sexuality, but also histories of the state, the police, its administrative apparatus, social and crime policy, labour, medical history, and the history of a broad range of civil society actors in their national, local, and transnational dimensions. Furthermore, the historical analysis of prostitution is also an analysis of the “politics of prostitution,” which includes laws and legal practices, various movements and organizations who aimed to influence the reality of paid sex, and a broad range of cultural repertoires that shaped the representations of paid sex in each and every society.22 Insofar as paid sex is a social phenomenon like many others, it is a lens through which to study societies of the past. Crime, Sex, or Labour? Historising Prostitution Throughout European history, prostitution as a practice was condemned and marked those who practiced it or were connected to it as outsiders. From the Middle Ages onwards it was considered sexual and moral offence; it was often explicitly treated as a crime.23 In this view, the ‘prostitute’ was a perpetrator, a danger to society and its social and moral order. Prostitution was a crime gendered female because it disrupted the gendered social order, according to which legitimate women’s sexual activity was to take place within the boundaries of heterosexual marriage. Male prostitution did not conceptually exist for a long time and, if paid sex among men took place, it was subsumed under 21

Keely Stauter-Halsted and Nancy M. Wingfield, “Introduction: The Construction of Sexual Deviance in Late Imperial Eastern Europe,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 20, 2 (2011): 215–224. 22 This notion of the “politics of prostitution” is inspired by Barbara Hobson. See Barbara Hobson, Uneasy Virtue: The Politics of Prostitution and the American Reform Tradition (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), 4. See also Sonja Dolinsek and Siobhán Hearne, “Introduction. Prostitution in Twentieth-Century Europe,” European Review of History 2 (2022). 23 For an overview of historical research on prostitution in the Middle Ages and the early modern period in Europe, see Christopher Mielke and Andrea-Bianka Znorovszky, Same Bodies, Different Women: ‘Other’ Women in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period (Budapest: Trivent Publishing, 2019); Jamie Page, “Masculinity and Prostitution in Late Medieval German Literature,” Speculum 94, 3 (12  June  2019): 739–773; Jamie Page, Prostitution and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021); Lotte van de Pol, The Burgher and the Whore: Prostitution in Early Modern Amsterdam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Lyndal Roper, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

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categories used to refer to homosexuality, such as sodomy, as Judit Takács shows in this volume regarding Hungary at the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth centuries.24 Histories of prostitution are not just histories of paid sex, but also histories of women’s sexuality. While today the term ‘prostitution’ usually refers to paid and remunerated sexual encounters and thus is based on a distinction between monetary and non-monetary sexual interactions, historically any non- and extra-marital sexual activity by a woman could be seen as ‘prostitution.’ As Ruth M. Karras pointed out, during the Middle Ages any sexually active, i.e. “lustftul,” heterosexual woman could be seen as a “prostitute.”25 Non-marital paid sex was one form of female ‘promiscuity,’ i.e. of sex considered to be illegitimate and immoral, for which only women were condemned and often punished for. It is for this reason that historians and critical criminologists saw in the laws and social and cultural attitudes addressing prostitution an instrument of social control, of sexual and moral regulation, and as a means to establish a patriarchal gendered order in which female sexuality was confined to marriage and the privacy of the home.26 The politics of sexuality inherent in the close association of promiscuity with illegitimate female sex behaviour and, in particular, prostitution must always be kept in mind and represents a common theme to most histories of prostitution.27 It goes without saying that the historically specific modes of the legal regulation of prostitution, including through penal law and local ordinances, vary across time and space and depend on the specific historical circumstances, especially political, economic, cultural, and institutional structures that go far beyond the strict domain of paid sex. For example, the act of paid sex may not always have been penalised directly by criminal law but most acts surrounding prostitution were, such as renting rooms to sex workers or acting as an 24 The historiography of male sex work has been gaining ground in the past decades. However, it remains patchy and fragmented. For a study on male sex work and the policing of sex work in Germany see Martin Lücke, Männlichkeit in Unordnung: Homosexualität und männliche Prostitution in Kaiserreich und Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2008). 25 Ruth Mazo Karras, “Prostitution and the Question of Sexual Identity in Medieval Europe,” Journal of Women’s History 11, 2 (1 June 1999): 159–177, 162; Ruth Mazo Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing unto Others (New York: Routledge, 2017) 141. 26 See for instance, Carol Smart, Women, Crime and Criminology: A Feminist Critique (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 1977); Alan Hunt, Governing Morals: A Social History of Moral Regulation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 27 It is for this reason that we use both the terms prostitution and sex work in this introduction. When we use the terms “sex work”, we specifically intend to refer to paid sex as a way of earning a living, i.e. as a form of labour.

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intermediary between clients and sex workers. At other times, prostitution was both strictly regulated, but criminalised if practiced outside the narrow boundaries of so-called “state-regulated prostitution.” Sometimes women (suspected of) selling sex were penalised through other laws, especially local ordinances aimed at establishing public order in cities.28 The criminalisation of prostitution and of mobility often intersected in laws and ordinances targeting “vagrancy.”29 Religion often influenced the approach that the state and authorities took to paid sex and, especially in the case of Protestantism, historically justified the full penalisation of prostitution.30 Prostitution and the various degrees of its criminalisation thus represent one of the paradigmatic cases of the intersection of history of women, gender, sexuality, the history of crime and policing, and also the history of labour. The chapters by Stefan Wünsch, Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska, and Christiane Brenner all explore this intersection in Weimar Germany, postwar Berlin, and Czechoslovakia respectively. Following Magaly Rodríguez García, one fruitful approach to the history of prostitution integrates the history of crime and the history of labour, i.e. the multiple ways that actors involved in paid sex were marginalised and disciplined as criminals and deviants. At the same time, paid sex was often a form of labour that served to secure their livelihoods in the short or long term.31 While prostitution was barely ever considered legitimate work, the fact that it was often one of the few ways by which women could provide for themselves 28

See for instance: Corbin, Women for Hire; Michaela Freund-Widder, Frauen unter Kontrolle: Prostitution und ihre staatliche Bekämpfung in Hamburg vom Ende der Kaiserreichs bis zu den Anfängen der Bundesrepublik (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2003); Mary Gibson, Prostitution and the State in Italy, 1860–1915 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986); Siobhán Hearne, Policing Prostitution: Regulating the Lower Classes in Late Imperial Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021); Dietlind Hüchtker, “Prostitution und städtische Öffentlichkeit. Die Debatte über die Präsenz von Bordellen in Berlin 1792– 1846,” in Ordnung, Politik und Geselligkeit der Geschlechter im 18. Jahrhundert, eds. Ulrike Weckel et al. (Göttingen: Wallstein, 1998), 345–364; Malte König, Der Staat als Zuhälter. Die Abschaffung der reglementierten Prostitution in Deutschland, Frankreich und Italien im 20. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016); Keely Stauter-Halsted, The Devil’s Chain: Prostitution and Social Control in Partitioned Poland (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015); Judith Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society. Women, Class and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Nancy Wingfield, The World of Prostitution in Late Imperial Austria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 29 Beate Althammer, “Roaming Men, Sedentary Women? The Gendering of Vagrancy Offenses in Nineteenth-Century Europe,” Journal of Social History 51, 4 (2018): 736–759. 30 Roper, Holy Household. 31 Magaly Rodríguez García, “Ideas and Practices of Prostitution around the World” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Crime and Criminal Justice, eds. Paul Knepper und Anja Johansen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 132–154.

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outside of patriarchal family structures warrants an analytical lens centring on labour. Among other things, a labour perspective helps illuminate the gendered structural constraints on the options for work, the discursive construction of what is legitimate and non-legitimate work, and the social reality of sexual labour in the context of the “economies of makeshift.”32 A labour perspective may offer insights into everyday life and the workaday, as well as the working conditions of people who sold sex. Labour histories of paid sex are, however, still rare.33 Law plays a central role in the regulation of prostitution not just as “positive law” and background context, but also as a social practice and “mode in which modern societies imagine their own existence.”34 Law creates possibilities for action at the same as it restricts what historical actors could do and imagine. People who sold sex, their clients, as well as the police, law makers, and the many social movement activists who advocated for legal change made recourse – in one way or another – to the law. Law is thus best approached as a means for propagating and consolidating social moral values.35 Law is powerful in that it “rules or governs everyday life, because its expectations and ways of organising affairs are habitual and uncontested.”36 Furthermore, “the background conditions that constitute options available to individuals and determine the degree of economic pressure operating in any situation are pervasively shaped by law.”37 Law, however, does not tell us what the social reality of prostitution was, since its intended effects and compliance with the law are nothing more than a “secular utopia.”38 Insofar as some scholars and the public debate declare a ‘failure’ of prostitution laws to ensure, for example, the disappearance of 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Olwen Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France, 1750–1789 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974). For a recent study see Anna Hájková. “Why we need a history of prostitution in the Holocaust,” European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 29, 2 (2022): 194–222. Julia Eichenberg et  al., “Eine Maschine, Die Träumt: Das Recht in der Zeitgeschichte und die Zeitgeschichte des Rechts,” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 16 (2019). Martin Lücke, “Hierarchien der Unzucht. Regime männlicher und weiblicher Prostitution in Kaiserreich und Weimarer Republik,” L’Homme. Europäische Zeitschrift für Feministische Geschichtswissenschaft 21, 1 (2010): 49–64, 51. Susan S. Silbey, “Studying legal consciousness: Building institutional theory from micro data,” Droit et société 100, 3 (2018): 733–788, 705. Robert  J.  Steinfeld, Coercion, Contract, and Free Labour in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001), 22. Eichenberg et al., “Eine Machine, Die Träumt: Das Recht in der Zeitgeschichte und die Zeitgeschichte des Rechts,” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, 16, 2 (2019), accessed 24 May 2022, https://zeithistorische-forschungen.de/2-2019/5719.

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prostitution or sex work free from exploitation, this claim is based on a flawed line of thought, namely the idea of the so-called ‘gap-problem,’ “understood as the disparity between law’s intentions and its actual impact on social conditions.” In research on prostitution, the gap problem has often come in narratives of the failures of certain laws and legal projects to reduce prostitution or human trafficking, thus inciting new movements for legal reform. However, as Reza Banakar argues, the ‘gap’ is “part of the reality of modern law – part of its definition.” The existence of such a ‘gap’ is a constitutive characteristic of the law.39 The manifestation of the discrepancy between law and social reality and practice is, however, historically specific and requires empirical analysis. Furthermore, law is caught up between its repressive character oriented towards social control and its emancipatory potential towards rights, equality, and liberation.40 Specifically, laws against prostitution have historically aimed at disciplining women and stabilising the gendered social order rather than securing their sexual self-determination (the latter concept representing an anachronism for most of the historical past). Historical research shows that the tension between repression and emancipation in laws regulating prostitution has hardly ever been solved to the advantage of the ‘prostitute.’ Most prostitution regimes have found more-or-less direct ways to marginalise those who sold sex, whether by regulating, prohibiting, or ignoring prostitution. However, law and legal strategies have also been used to reclaim rights and in the past century many actors have demanded legal reform with the aim of reducing repression.41 All of the papers in this collection address the law and the way in which it created different conditions for selling sex and paying for sexual services, but also the ways in which various actors appealed to the law to address issues of public health and public order, as well as coercion and exploitation. Last but not least, it is because of the centrality of the law that the history of prostitution cannot be written without the police, the institution that implemented prostitution laws and the instance that produced the bulk of archival documents available to the historian. In a sense, then, the history of 39

Reza Banakar, Normativity in Legal Sociology: Methodological Reflections on Law and Regulation in Late Modernity (Cham: Springer, 2015), 54. 40 Elisabeth Holzleithner, “Emanzipation Durch Recht?,” Kritische Justiz 41, 3 (2008): 250–256. 41 Sonja Dolinsek, “Menschenrechte und die ‘Prostituierte’ im 20. Jahrhundert,” in Menschenrechte und Geschlecht im 20. Jahrhundert, eds. Carola Sachse and Roman Birke (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2018), 185–206; Mirjam Schnorr, “Die “Hurenbewegung”. Zum (medialen) Kampf von Frauen in der Prostitution um Rechte und Anerkennung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland seit 1975,” in Menschenrecht als Nachricht. Medien, Öffentlichkeit und Moral seit dem 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Birgit Hofmann (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2020), 307–345.

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prostitution is also a history of the police and policing practices and, especially, their gendered aspect. Regional Specificities of the Politics of Prostitution in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, prostitution existed, persisted, and reflected changing legal, political, cultural, and socio-economic circumstances. The mobility and labour migration – not just of sex workers – in and around a geographic area that we may loosely refer to as ‘Central,’ ‘East-Central’ and ‘South-East Europe,’ as well as intense public debates on exploitation, are well-known social phenomena in both the past and present.42 For a broader part of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the flow of people, ideas, and representations created a social space transcending imperial and state borders; only to be halted by the erection of the boundaries of the Iron Curtain, which heavily, though not completely, restricted movement and interaction between East and West. A glance at the maps of Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries shows how fragile and unstable the territories in Central, East-Central and South-Eastern Europe were – at least politically. Throughout modern history, state borders emerged, disappeared, and shifted many times. In the late eighteenth century, Poland was partitioned between Prussia, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. Soon after, the Napoleonic Wars brought significant changes on the political maps. The unifications of Italy and Germany respectively in the second half of the nineteenth century resulted in the creation of two big and powerful states. Following the First World War at least seven new states emerged, all of them between Germany and the Soviet Union. The Second World War and the subsequent Cold War resulted in further changes, shifts, and upheavals of state borders, which shifted yet again in the early 1990s. In the atlases of history, the countries eastwards of the Rhine look like a colourful and continually transforming patchwork and, indeed, Karl Schlögel argues thus that Mitteleuropa consists mainly of borderlands.43

42 See Andrijasevic, Migration, Agency, and Citizenship in Sex Trafficking; Tara Zahra, The Great Departure: Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2016). 43 Karl Schlögel, “Grenzland Europa,” in Karl Schlögel, Die Mitte liegt Ostwärts (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2008) (2. Ed), 186–194.

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While the issue of the changing state borders has been discussed many times in the context of collective identities and national tensions, it had, of course, consequences for the daily lives of Central, East-Central, and South-Eastern Europeans. For them, it was quite common that one was born in one state, grew up in another, and died in yet another without ever changing the place of living. Not only did many of these people live in multilingual and multicultural environments, but they were also regularly forced to adapt to the new legal frameworks. Prostitution was no exception in this regard, especially when it came to the mechanisms of punishment and control. The contributions to this volume refer therefore to the history of prostitution in nineteenth and early twentieth century Germany, Italy, Croatia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. How did the prostitutes and their clients, as well as the police and health administrations, implement the constantly changing regulations regarding the bans, limitations, and legalisations of prostitution and brothels? Did the multicultural environment influence prostitution? Were the representatives of ethnic minorities, for example Jewish prostitutes in Poland, doubly discriminated? How were prostitutes treated in totalitarian states, under Nazism and Communism, which aimed at controlling the most private spheres of people’s lives? The history of prostitution in Central, East-Central, and South-Eastern Europe thus contributes to understanding not just the politics of prostitution and paid sex as a social practice, but also opens up new perspectives for studying the social, cultural, and economic consequences of political changes. The politics of prostitution is not just about the law, but about how “different constituencies have altered and recast the social meanings and constructions of prostitution.”44 The politics of prostitution describes the ways in which prostitution entered the political arena under various historical circumstances, the public debates it generated, the movements it motivated, “reform strategies and policy instruments”, and the diverse legal instruments that were generated at the local, national, and also transnational levels. Insofar as prostitution is about “conflicts centred around gender, race, and class inequalities,” it offers an entry point to the analysis of multi-layered mechanisms of exclusion and marginalisation that, in the most recent decades, have been described as “intersectional.”45 44 Hobson, Uneasy Virtue, vii. 45 Heike Mauer, Intersektionalität und Gouvernementalität. Die Regierung von Prostitution in Luxemburg (Opladen: Barbara Budrich, 2018); S. Majic and C.R. Showden, “Redesigning the study of sex work: A case for intersectionality and reflexivity” in The Routledge International Handbook of Sex Industry Research, eds. S. Dewey, I. Crowhurst, C. Izugbara (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2018), 42–54.

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During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – the period covered by the papers of this collection – the legal and political approaches and its cultural representations shifted from what is known as a ‘regulationist’ to an ‘abolitionist’ approach to prostitution. Broadly speaking, the nineteenth century was marked by the introduction of so-called ‘state-regulated prostitution’ inspired by the ‘French model’ across Europe and, later, various European empires. State-regulated prostitution was a historically specific approach to prostitution, which, far from considering prostitution as a legitimate profession, treated it as a necessary evil. While the French model did indeed ‘regulate’ prostitution, it did not consider prostitution as work, let alone legitimate work; nor was prostitution legal in the sense of being decriminalised. Instead, it created a system of police and healthcare provisions aimed at tightly controlling and surveilling the prostitute and her body.46 Much of the historiography understands ‘state-regulated prostitution’ as a specific regulatory approach to prostitution that, depending on the context, combined penal and administrative law and local policing ordinances, as was the case in Imperial Germany. The goals of state-regulated prostitution addressed the fields of public health, sexuality, and public order and can be summarised in the following way. The first goal concerned public health, specifically the prevention and control of venereal diseases. Over the course of the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century, “prostitutes” were considered the sole source of venereal diseases. Even though historical evidence suggests that these measures did not actually work, state-regulation required regular gynaecological exams of all prostitutes (or suspected prostitutes); these examinations could be, and often were, coerced. Kim Breitmoser contributes to existing research by studying a very rare source that sheds new light on the intersection between war, sexuality, and public health: the diary of a sex work client in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The second goal concerned sexuality, or what has historically been described as the sexual ‘double standard’. The regulation of prostitution was based on the idea that men needed a space for sexual release, but without tainting women – i.e. women who were not prostitutes. In a context where extra- and non-marital sex for women led to the loss of honour and thus had serious consequences for their social and economic prospects, regulated prostitution served the purpose of ‘protecting’ ‘honest’ women from men’s lust. Regulated prostitution singled out and, arguably, kept women in prostitution in order to protect the ‘purity’ of non-prostitute women. State-regulated prostitution, with its mechanisms of 46

For a recent historiographical overview, see Dolinsek and Hearne, “Introduction”.

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registration and spatial segregation, thus legitimised male non-marital sex, but it also institutionalised the separation of women into ‘mothers’ or ‘whores’.47 The third goal was one of public order. A limited acceptance and toleration of prostitution allowed for the authorities – in this case, so-called morals police or vice squad48 – to concentrate prostitution spatially in brothels, to surveil it, and to prevent prostitutes from entering so-called respectable spaces. Indeed prostitutes, once registered and living in a brothel, were stripped of many of their rights of movement. Their lives were confined to the brothel not so much as a result of being ‘trafficked,’ but as a direct result of the political will to restrict the freedom of women selling sex. State-regulated prostitution has thus also been a form of spatial politics of gender, which is often still visible in urban architectural features that, in Germany for instance, separate whole streets devoted to sex work from the rest of the city.49 In her chapter, Alexandra Skedzuhn-Safir explores the topography of prostitution in Florence between 1860 and 1880 and the ways in which public order concerns structured commercial sex in Italy. Tobias Bruns takes a different perspective by examining public debates on prostitution in Imperial Germany through the lens of new analytical category: security culture. Even though the historiography on the politics of prostitution and various regulatory models has focused on state-regulated prostitution in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the movements to abolish it, thus reflecting what Julia Roos identified as a fascination with regulation, a shift in analytical perspective and regional focus still promises new insights.50 Because of the surveillance system that regulationism put in place, regulatory regimes have created many still-existing sources on prostitution for historians to study. It is thus no coincidence that periods of state-regulation have so far received the bulk of historians’ attention, and archives produced under regulationism are valuable resource for exploring not just prostitution, but histories of gender, sexualities, and crime. However, the many regions of Central, East-Central, and South-Eastern Europe still remain outside the purview of research on the histories of prostitution. The chapters in this edited collection build on and expand existing historical research on the history of prostitution by approaching prostitution from 47 48 49 50

Julia Roos, Weimar through the Lens of Gender: Prostitution Reform, Woman’s Emancipation, and German Democracy, 1919–33 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 14–57; Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society. The German term would be “Sittenpolizei” and the French “police des moeurs”. Magaly Rodríguez García, Lex Heerma van Voss, and Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, eds., Selling Sex in World Cities: A Global History of Prostitution, 1600s-2000s (Leiden: Brill, 2017). Roos, Weimar through the Lens of Gender, 14.

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multiple perspectives and by using a variety of sources. The authors work with, among other things, legal acts, police and court records, municipal acts including buildings’ plans of the brothels, medical journals, police newsletters, the daily press, posters, transcripts of radio and television programs, documentary and fiction films, and, last but not least, diaries. The visual sources appear especially interesting not only because they are rarely used in the history of prostitution but also because they enable the study of (in)visibility of prostitution in the public sphere. However, this variety of sources is very characteristic of the European history of prostitution; historians who work on similar topics on other continents have less material to work with, as Timothy Gilfoyle has rightly stated.51 We argue that the many political changes in the histories of Central, East-Central, and South-Eastern Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries generated even more documents, as each change brought new legal acts, regulations, or instructions. Consequently, most of the sources discussed in this volume were produced by representatives of the state and local administrations. Unfortunately, “these sources provide the testimony of prostitutes infrequently,”52 as Gilfoyle notes. Despite the publication of his article almost three decades ago, not much has changed in this regard and recent research testifies to the methodological challenges of writing histories of sex work that centre sex workers and their perspectives. While social historians have developed a broad range of methodological strategies to get as close as possible to the historical actors enmeshed in commercial sex, sex workers themselves have produced very few direct testimonies about themselves and their lives.53 Clients of sex workers have left even fewer traces in the archives, although diaries or other ego-documents re-surface every once in a while, thus allowing scholars like Kim Breitmoser to study their rare perspective. Central to state-regulated prostitution was the categorisation and registration of women as ‘prostitutes.’ In her analysis of the history of knowledge of the category of the prostitute, Durba Mitra stresses how the “classification, registration, and examination of women seen as prostitutes” severely restricted the ways in which women entered the colonial archive. Not every ‘prostitute’ in the archive can be historised a sex worker because the “archival category” of the prostitute was applied to a broad spectrum of social practices and “female sexual behavior seen as deviant.” This means, Mitra concludes, that “the social history of the diverse social practices and communities in the nineteenth century 51 52 53

Timothy Gilfoyle, “Prostitutes in the Archives: Problems and Possibilities in Documenting the History of Sexuality,” The American Archivist 57, 3 (1994): 519. Ibid.: 523. See, for example: Wingfield, The World of Prostitution.

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is limited and distorted by an archive that presents women solely through their proximity to prostitution.”54 While Mitra’s conclusions are based on an analysis of the Indian colonial archives of regulated prostitutes, the vagueness of the category of ‘prostitute’ in European regulationist systems encourages at least some reflection on the prostitution archive along similar lines. Furthermore, histories of prostitution are often histories of biopolitics because the control of prostitution has often been often enforced by means of regulations regarding health and hygiene. Prostitution has been thus restricted and surveilled on the pretexts of combating the epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases, of regulating the reproductive rights or, especially in Nazi Germany, of maintaining ‘racial purity.’ In the interwar period, the politics of prostitution were often deeply embedded on discourses on eugenics.55 In her chapter, Mirjam Schnorr analyses the ways in which prostitutes and pimps were criminalised under National Socialism and framed as outsiders to the “Volksgemeinschaft”. At the same time, Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska shows how repressive health measures and controls that targeted young women persisted after the end of World War II. From the 1880s onwards, ‘state-regulated prostitution’ increasingly came under attack. A transnational network of advocates called for the abolition of state-regulated prostitution. This ‘abolitionist’ movement was founded in Great Britain by Josephine Butler in opposition to the British Contagious Diseases Acts adopted in the 1860s.56 If in the nineteenth century state regulation crossed borders and was adopted across the globe, by the middle of the twentieth century discourses, narratives, and representations of prostitution had shifted towards regulation-abolition.57 Regulation-abolitionists opposed regulationism on moral grounds as an unjust institutionalisation of a sexual 54

Durba Mitra, Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020), 78–79. 55 Maria Bucur, “Fallen Women and Necessary Evils: Eugenic Representations of Prostitution in Interwar Romania” in Blood and Homeland: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900–1940, eds. Marius Turda and Paul  J.  Weindling (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2007), 335–350; Gábor Szegedi, “Stand by Your Man: Honor and ‘Race Defilement’ in Hungary, 1941–44,” The Hungarian Historical Review 4, 3 (2015): 577–605. 56 Victoria Harris, “In the Absence of Empire: Feminism, Abolitionism and Social Work in Hamburg (c. 1900–1933),” Women’s History Review 17, 2 (2008): 279–298; Bettina Kretzschmar, “Gleiche Moral und gleiches Recht für Mann und Frau”: Der deutsche Zweig der Internationalen abolitionistischen Bewegung, 1899–1933 (Sulzbach/Taunus: Ulrike Helmer Verlag, 2014); Julia Laite, “The Association for Moral and Social Hygiene: Abolitionism and Prostitution Law in Britain (1915–1959),” Women’s History Review 17, 2 (2008): 207–223. 57 Dolinsek and Hearne, “Introduction”.

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double standard, where men were granted (extra-)marital sexual freedoms, while women were punished for them, or considered (and often registered) as prostitutes. Far from advocating a freedom of sexuality outside and beyond the boundaries of marriage, regulation-abolitionists mostly subscribed to the ideal of sexual monogamy and to what they described as the ‘single moral standard.’ They opposed regulationism on legal grounds since administrative law and local police ordinances offered few to no means of legal redress. Police oversight of prostitutes, controls, and arrests were often associated with police discretion and arbitrariness and could thus be opposed as a form of civil and human rights infringement. It is for this reason that regulation-abolitionists advocated for the abolition of police oversight and registration of prostitutes, and often of any kind of registration of women selling sex. A third critique addressed the public health aspect of regulationism. Rather than assuming that prostitutes were the only vectors of venereal diseases, regulation-abolitionism advocated for a gender-neutral approach to venereal diseases that addressed the general population.58 Regulation-abolitionists often supported social policy measures to prevent prostitution and support women who sold sex. However, the degree to which coercive measures for ‘re-education’ or ‘re-socialisation’ of prostitutes were supported varied across the national and local chapters of the abolitionist movement. Often, the abolition of regulation lead to a tightening of criminal law measures against prostitutes, as Stipica Grgić illustrates in her chapter on prostitution in Croatia from 1918 to 1941 – the period after state-regulated prostitution was abolished. The movement to abolish state-regulated prostitution created a wellconnected transnational network of activists who fought long political battles in their respective countries, but also in transnational and international spaces. Britain repealed its Contagious Diseases Acts in 1885 and many other countries ‘abolished’ regulation during the first half of the twentieth century. While the campaign to abolish state-regulated prostitution was linked from the outset with debates about human trafficking, the narrative that the abolition of regulation would also bring an end to trafficking acquired international traction in the 1920 and 1930s. By the 1930s, regulation-abolitionism had become the accepted approach to prostitution and trafficking in the League of Nations anti-trafficking and social policy committees. In 1949, the regulationabolitionist principle was firmly institutionalised in international law with the 58

Lutz Sauerteig, “Frauenemanzipation und Sittlichkeit. Die Rezeption des englischen Abolitionismus in Deutschland” in Aneignung und Abwehr: interkultureller Transfer zwischen Deutschland und Großbritannien im 19. Jahrhundert, eds. Rudolf Muhs, Johannes Paulmann and Willibald Steinmetz (Bodenheim: Philo, 1998), 159–197.

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adoption of the 1949 Convention “for the suppression of the traffic in persons and the exploitation of the prostitution of others.”59 Abolitionists believed that the traffic in women for the purposes of prostitution would only cease if regulated or tolerated prostitution was abolished. The history of ‘human trafficking’ is complicated to the point that most recently historians have questioned the usefulness of human trafficking as a category of analysis. While there is no doubt about the fact the women who sold sex were victimised by individuals who exploited their labour and often used violence to do so, the social and legal status of sex workers as secondclass citizens was not just tolerated, but demanded by society and the state. Furthermore, strategies that addressed ‘human trafficking’ have historically been tied to waves of nationalism and racism as well as antisemitism.60 In her chapter, Keely Stauter-Halsted offers a novel perspective on East European Jewish ‘traffickers’ and the ways in which anti-Jewish pogroms and various restrictions placed on Jews created conditions that led to the creation of broad networks facilitating migration out of Eastern Europe, specifically along the borderlands of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian frontier. By the end of the 1950s, most countries had repealed their laws regulating prostitution. Socialist countries quickly ratified the 1949 Convention to support their public claims that prostitution had disappeared under socialism. France, regulationism’s country of origin, adopted an ‘abolitionist’ approach in 1960, as did many countries in Europe and across the globe. The category of the ‘prostitute’ disappeared from the law books and the direct exchange of sex for money remained outside of the purview of the law, that is, unregulated. The social and legal status of ‘the prostitute’ remained intentionally undefined and unclear as s*he was, in fact, not supposed to exist. Meanwhile, all the activities surrounding prostitution – from personal contacts to professional to exploitative intermediation – were criminalised, arguably expanding the reach of criminal law into both the private and working lives of sex workers.61 59

60

61

Sonja Dolinsek, “Tensions of abolitionism during the negotiation of the 1949 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others,” European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 29, 2 (2022); Sonja Dolinsek and Philippa Hetherington, “Cold War and International Law: Socialist Internationalism and Decolonizing Moralities in the UN Anti-Trafficking Regime, 1947– 1954,” Journal of the History of International Law 21, 2 (2019): 212–238. Paul Knepper, “British Jews and the Racialization of Crime in the Age of Empire,” British Journal of Criminology 47, 1 (2007): 61–79; Susanne Omran, Frauenbewegung und “Judenfrage” Diskurse um Rasse und Geschlecht nach 1900 (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2000). Corbin, Women for Hire.

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Histories focusing on regulationism and movements to abolish regulation often conclude their studies with the repeal of regulation and the adoption of a new abolitionist legislation, thus leaving unexplored (und often unquestioned) how the politics of prostitution and prostitution looked after abolition. Researchers have only very recently begun to mine the archives for histories of prostitution in the second half of the twentieth century, including the archives on prostitution under socialism.62 These come with their own challenges: While regulationist regimes that focused on the surveillance of prostitutes produced a wide range of archival sources, after the abolition of regulation, the documentation of commercial sex shifted as well, thus affecting the strategies through which historians can access the past. For socialist countries, the continued existence of prostitution represented a dilemma. Leaders of socialist countries often proclaimed that prostitution had been successfully abolished with the introduction of socialism, especially when they addressed an international audience.63 However, as recent research on socialist contexts has begun to show, exchanges of sex for money or other goods continued to exist under socialism.64 At the same time, the approach taken to paid sex and the status of prostitution differed across those states. Read together, the papers presented here by Christine Brenner on Czechoslovakia, Priska Komaromi on Hungary, and Anna Dobrowolska on Poland show how socialist countries continued to treat prostitutes and ‘promiscuous’ women as deviants, often labelling them as ‘parasites.’ At the same time, a comparative reading of these papers illustrates the differences in the public discourses on and political approaches to prostitution. The idea for this volume derived from two workshops in 2017 and 2018 in Berlin and Prague respectively. The 2017 workshop was organised by Sonja Dolinsek and Steffi Brüning and the second workshop was co-organised with Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska. Scholars from all over Europe gathered at these workshops to discuss their research on the histories of prostitution. It quickly became clear that they approached the topic from various perspectives, 62

See, for instance, Steffi Brüning, Prostitution in der DDR: Eine Untersuchung am Beispiel von Rostock, Berlin und Leipzig, 1968 bis 1989 (Berlin: be.bra, 2020); Rachel Hynson, “‘Count, Capture, and Reeducate’: The Campaign to Rehabilitate Cuba’s Female Sex Workers, 1959– 1966,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 24, 1 (2015): 125–153; Special Issue “Prostitution in twentieth century Europe,” European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 29 2 (forthcoming). 63 Dolinsek and Hetherington, “Cold War and International Law”. 64 Siobhán Hearne, “Selling sex under socialism: Prostitution in the post-war USSR,” European Review of History/Revue européenne d’histoire 29, 2 (2022): 290–310; Ivan Simic, “Prostitution in socialist Yugoslavia: From Stalinism to the Yugoslav way,” European Review of History/Revue européenne d’histoire 29, 2 (2022): 249–267.

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including legal, social, visual, or urban histories. Contributions related to Central, East-Central, and South-Eastern Europe turned out to be especially productive and eventually resulted in this book, which also includes chapters by authors who were not directly involved in the workshops. At the same time, some other contributions to the workshops appear almost simultaneously in a special issue of the European Review of History, edited by Sonja Dolinsek and Siobhán Hearne, so that these two publications together may shed new light on the history of prostitution in Europe. We are particularly grateful to Steffi Brüning who accompanied us in the early stages of this project and Alexandra Holmes who took care of the editing. The grant from the German Historical Institute Warsaw funded this publication. Last but not least, we owe a debt of great thanks to the authors of this volume who were enormously patient in the course of the last years.

“9 o’clock this morning, I took a girl to bed.” Writing on Military Prostitution in the Early 19th Century, Based on the Diary of Johann Friedrich Carl Paris Kim Breitmoser The era of Napoleonic military campaigns and wars marked a turning point in the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. Extensive social upheavals between the Ancien Régime and the Congress of Vienna affected not only political rule, the church, and the economy, but also brought about farreaching changes in the military and in broader society.1 Except for the areas immediately surrounding battlegrounds, there were few places where the military came into contact with members of the civilian population up until the end of the eighteenth century. This changed considerably in the wake of the revolution and Napoleonic wars due to the sheer expansion of the armed forces.2 This increase in the number of troops meant that military provisions were no longer sufficient, so the general population was forced to provide shelter and sustenance for soldiers passing through. As a result, members of the military developed new relationships with the inhabitants of the regions they passed through, both commercial and private in nature. It was not rare for sexual relationships to form, spanning from short romantic flings and marriages to the classic exchange of sex for payment or food. Prostitution was as omnipresent as the attempts to regulate and reduce the sex trade around the army campsites. During the Napoleonic campaigns and resulting wars of independence, military staff devised increasingly concrete regulations specifically to limit the spread of sexually transmitted infections. It was not enough to keep the soldiers away from prostitutes; they had to be explicitly protected from the rapid spread of venereal infections such as syphilis and gonorrhea. However,

1 See Brigitte Marzohl-Wallnig, Zeitenwende 1806. Das heilige Römische Reich und die Geburt des modernen Europas (Vienna: Böhlau, 2005); Alan Forrest and Peter Wilson, The Bee and the Eagle. Napoleonic France and the End of the Holy Roman Empire (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). 2 Alan Forrest, Karen Hagemann and Jane Rendall (eds.), “Nations in Arms – People at War,” in Soldiers, Citizens and Civilians. Experiences and Perceptions of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars 1790–1820. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2009), 5–6.

© Brill Schöningh, 2023 | doi:10.30965/9783657790470_002

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the military’s official stance and implementation of these measures was often far from aligned with the soldiers’ lived experiences. This contribution delves into several different perspectives on military prostitution at the beginning of the nineteenth century and asks how sexuality was dealt with in the Napoleonic military era. Seeking answers to these questions, I will examine private sources that deal with prostitution and the spread of sexually transmitted disease. Specifically, I am interested in the discrepancy between official accounts and the actual experience of contemporary witnesses. I will look at normative legal documents – a collection of military laws – as well as ego documents – one soldier’s diary – and put them in conversation with one another.3 As a result, this analysis will scrutinize the normative level of regulation using the context provided by the rare experiential account. The case study focuses on the unusually detailed journal of Prussian officer Johann Friedrich Carl Paris, which has not yet been researched.4 Paris joined the army in 1805 and worked his way up from young soldier to premiere lieutenant. Between 1805 and 1827, he kept a journal about his daily life in the military. As of 1811, he penned entries almost daily. He devoted little attention to his experiences on the battlefield, instead focusing on his private life, in particular, his sexual relations, including those with prostitutes. The journal is a rare ego document that captures the customer’s experience of prostitution. His experience of sexual relations was one of utter physicality. He wrote primarily of his different appointments with women who he paid for sex and of his ever-increasing debts. Over the years, he also devotes scant attention to the noblewomen he had brief affairs with and describes his letters to his future wife. He noted with exacting detail where he found prostitutes, how much he paid for their encounters, their defining physical characteristics, and occasionally, what kind of services they offered. The most notable feature of his writing is the clearly expressed distance asserted between sexuality, emotion, and physicality. Put bluntly, sex for Paris took the form of a list to be checked off. It had little to do with his perception of his own body, although this continually came up as he described the various venereal diseases he incurred.

3 Here I would like to thank Tom Tölle, who was of considerable help to me with organizing my ideas. 4 Volkhard Paris (ed.), Das Tagebuch des J.  Carl  Friedrich Paris. 1805–1827. Ein preußisches Soldatenleben. (Norderstedt: BoD, 2011).

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Ego documents, such as Paris’s journal, include sources “in which a person provides information about himself, regardless of whether this is done voluntarily – for example in a personal letter, a diary, a dream transcript or an autobiographical attempt – or due to other circumstances.”5 These selftestimonies provide information about soldiers’ everyday routines and allow us to draw conclusions about the physical and mental effects of war on the individual or the entire troop.6 Researchers are required to be cautious, since no self-testimony provides unfiltered access to a past reality; instead, they offer a subjective perspective and interpretation of it. In this case study, I will read the journal alongside the 48th French regiment’s book of regulations, which belonged to the division of General Friant. The book of regulations was published and edited in 2011 by a descendant of Paris, after it had been handed down coincidentally. A major industrialist living in Moscow named Brocard found the book, likely at an auction or in an antiquarian bookshop. The bundle had probably been forgotten when the French troops hurriedly withdrew from Moscow in 1812. Brocard bought and kept the book, and at first it remained in family ownership and was only examined decades later by the military doctor Lacronique. Lacronique, a talented dancer and bon vivant, edited the text of the regulations for publishing in 1904. No copies of the original text were preserved. The translation by the colonel physician Dr. W. Haberling7 from 1914 is regarded as the authoritative version upon which this essay is based. State of Research Although historical research in the last century has shown that, since at least the Middle Ages, the military has been inextricably linked to the profession of prostitution, the nineteenth century has received relatively little attention in

5 Michael Epkenhans, Stig Förster and Karen Hagemann, Militärische Erinnerungskultur. Soldaten im Spiegel von Biographien, Memoiren und Selbstzeugnissen (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2006), 14. 6 Epkenhans, Förster and Hagemann, Militärische Erinnerungskultur, 14. 7 Wilhelm Haberling, Das Dirnenwesen in den Heeren und seine Bekämpfung. Eine geschicht­ liche Studie (Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1914).

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this field of research, despite the broad range of sources available.8 9 As a field, military history underwent tremendous changes in the wake of the Second World War. In the German context, study of the military has been saddled with negative connotations because of the atrocities associated with the military in the country’s very recent past. In 1995, scholars established working groups on military history (the Arbeitskreises Militärgeschichte e.V. and the Arbeitskreis Militär und Gesellschaft in der Frühen Neuzeit) and thus sent the discipline in a new direction, focusing on cultural history and using the methods of “history from below.”10 By taking social and cultural history into account, the focus has turned to understanding the role of the military within the broader social 8

See Erica-Marie Bénabou, La prostitution et la police des moeurs au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Perrin, 1987); Alain Corbin, Wunde Sinne. Über die Begierde, den Schrecken und die Ordnung der Zeit im 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1993); Stefan Winkle, Geißeln der Menschheit. Kulturgeschichte der Seuchen. (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 2005) 516–617; Francesco Gabrieli, Die Kreuzzüge aus arabischer Sicht (Zürich: Artemis, 1973); Also frequently cited: Émile Arnaud, Les femmes aux armées (Paris, 1910) and J.P. Harms, Die Prostitution in den Hafenstädten (Hamburg: Conrad Behre, 1885). 9 In addition to Paris, Das Tagebuch des J. Carl Friedrich Paris. 1805–1827. Ein preußisches Soldatenleben, the following documents are similarly referenced: Otto Gotthard Ernst von Raven, Klaus-Ulrich Kleubke (eds.), “Tagebuch des Feldzugs in Russland im Jahr 1812,” in Quellen und Studien aus den Landesarchiven Mecklenburg-Vorpommerns. Band 2, eds. Andreas Röpcke, Martin Schöbel (Rostock: Edition Temmen, 1998); Heinrich von Roos, Mit Napoleon in Russland (Stuttgart: Lutz, 1912); Philippe Paul de Ségur, Napoleon und die Große Armee in Russland. (Bremen: Schünemann, 1965); Boris Uexküll, Armeen und Amouren. Ein Tagebuch aus napoleonischer Zeit (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1966). In addition to private documents, scholars have managed to preserve large portion of the contemporary regulations and orders on the topic of military prostitution. For example, Wilhelm Haberling, Das Dirnenwesen in den Heeren und seine Bekämpfung. Eine geschichtliche Studie (Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1914) quotes laws, and further there are works such as Honoré Hugues Berriat, Législation militaire. Loi sur la conservation et sur le placement des places de guerre (Paris: Louis Capriolo Imprimeur Libraire, 1812) in addition to numerous collections in northern German state archives from the period of French rule. An example here would be the collection of French governing documents in Bremen on the topic of “Salubrité”, the public health care campaign, in Staatsarchiv Bremen 6,2-F.2.a.IV.8. These files specifically deal with “filles publiques” in the period between 1811–1813. They address the issues of venereal disease, hospitalized women, the deportation of foreign prostitutes, and the police regulations the sex trade and brothels. In Lübeck there are further collections which document the rules for night visits in brothels, particularly by members of the military, and a list of brothel owners spanning the years from 1814–1824. See Stadtarchiv Lübeck Signatur 0747; 0748; 0749. 10 Publications such as Wolfram Wette, Der Krieg des kleinen Mannes. Militärgeschichte von unten (Munich: Piper, 1995) or the essay Anne Lipp, Militärgeschichte als Kulturgeschichte in Was ist Militärgeschichte? eds. Thomas Kühne and Benjamin Ziemann (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2000) are exemplary of this new scholarship.

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context and examining the experiences and perceptions of soldiers and civilians in order to offer a more complete picture. To look at military history without considering prostitution ignores a vital component of many soldiers’ experiences.11 Literature on prostitution can be split up into two groups: The first group is comprised of research from the last century, characterized by its strong moralizing tone. The most wellknown example is from doctor and hygienist Alexandre Parent-Duchâtelet,12 13 who collected detailed statistical data on prostitution in Paris;14 Ivan Bloch,15 J. Jeannel, and Alfred Urban16 conducted research of a similar nature at this time as well. Although the researchers’ clear distress over prostitutes’ autonomous decisions to work in their professions often led to inaccuracies in their data, the basis of their research still serves as an important source for researchers today because they refer to numbers and sources largely unavailable in any other form. However, there is also a wide range of historical studies on prostitution and venereal diseases and some current social-scientific gender-historical research work. These publications deal most explicitly with public health issues and the politics surrounding them.17 As with military history, historians did not 11

Clare Makepeace, “Male Heterosexuality and Prostitution During the Great War,” Cultural and Social History 9, 1 (May 2015): 66. 12 Alexandre Parent-Duchâtelet, Die Sittenverderbnis und Prostitution des weiblichen Geschlechts in Paris unter Napoleon  I (Berlin: Dr. Potthoff & Co. Verlag für Sexualwissenschaft u. -Literatur, 1914). 13 Further information on Parent-Duchatelets research methods in Andrew Aisenberg, “Syphilis and Prostitution: A regulatory couplet in 19th century France” in Sex, Sin and Suffering eds. Roger Davidson and Lesley Hall (London: Routledge, 2011) 17–18. 14 Alain Corbin, Wunde Sinne. Über die Begierde, den Schrecken und die Ordnung der Zeit im 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1991) 98–99. 15 Volkmar Sigusch and Günter Grau (eds.), Personenlexikon der Sexualforschung (Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus, 2009), 52–61. 16 Alfred Urban, Staat und Prostitution in Hamburg vom Beginn der Reglementierung bis zur Aufhebung der Kasernierung (1807–1922) (Hamburg: Behre, 1927). 17 Among historical studies relevant to the topic of this paper are Alain Corbin, Wunde Sinne: über die Begierde, den Schrecken und die Ordnung der Zeit im 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1993); Alain Corbin, Women for Hire. Prostitution and sexuality in France after 1850 (Cambridge,  M.A.  and  London: Harvard University Press, 1990); Mary Spongberg, Feminizing Venereal Disease: the Body of the Prostitute in Nineteenth-century Medical Discourse (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997); Lutz Sauerteig, Krankheit, Sexualität, Gesellschaft, Geschlechtskrankheiten und Gesundheitspolitik in Deutschland im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1999); Claude Quétel, The History of Syphilis (Baltimore, M.D.: John Hopkins University Press, 1992); Dietlind Hüchtker, “Elende Mütter” und “liederliche Weibspersonen” Geschlechterverhältnisse und Armenpolitik in Berlin (1770–1850) Munster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 1996); Judith Walkowitz, Prostitution

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deal with the topic of sexually transmitted diseases from the social historical perspective until the beginning of the 1990s. Historians of medicine were the only ones to examine venereal disease, and did so without addressing the social context in which they were embedded. I would also like to mention the social science literature relevant to this topic, such as the monograph Öffnung der Sperrbezirke18 by Silvia Kontos, which historicizes theoretical approaches meant to explain the necessity and inevitability of prostitution in bourgeois societies, explains the legal handling of the “political regime of prostitution” by the authorities, and repeatedly points out that prostitution policy is the field in which the women’s movement often addresses the bourgeois gender order’s ambiguity. In her book Sperrbezirke,19 Regina Schulte draws upon this claim to examine prostitution as the antithesis of the bourgeois family. Lastly, I would like to mention Nele Bastian and Katrin Billerbeck’s Prostitution als notwendiges Übel?20 which draws upon Foucault’s definitions of power, mechanisms of power, and neoliberal forms of discipline to show how prostitution is regulated. Although this work is predominantly concerned with the twentieth century, I find the conclusions it draws also relevant to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I would like to name another project that provides necessary context for understanding the legal background of prostitution in the nineteenth century: Ungeordnete Unzucht by Dagmar  M.H.  Hemmie, which deals with diverse prostitution practices in the northern European cities Lübeck, Bergen und Helsingør.21 Her research contrasts starkly with the popular myths of early and Victorian Society: Women, Class and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Jill Harsin, Policing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985); Dagmar Herzog, Sexuality in Europe: a twentiethcentury history (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Carol Smart, Regulating Womanhood: Historical Essays on Marriage, Motherhood, and Sexuality (London and New York: Routledge, 1992); Linda Mahood, The Magdalenes: Prostitution in the Nineteenth-century (London: Routledge, 2012); Heide Soltau, “Verteufelt, verschwiegen und reglementiert: Über den Umgang der Hanseaten mit der Prostitution,” in Hamburg im Zeitalter der Aufklärung, eds. Inge Stephan and Hans-Gerd Winter (Berlin: D. Reimer, 1989) and Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press, 2003). 18 Silvia Kontos, Öffnung der Sperrbezirke. Zum Wandel von Theorien und Politik der Prostitution (Königstein: Ulrike Helmer Verlag, 2009). 19 Regina Schulte, Sperrbezirke. Tugendhaftigkeit und Prostitution in der bürgerlichen Welt (Hamburg: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1994). 20 Nele Bastian und Katrin Billerbeck, Prostitution als notwendiges Übel? Analyse einer Dienstleistung im Spannungsfeld von Stigmatisierung und Selbstermächtigung (Marburg: Tectum Verlag, 2010). 21 Dahmar  M.H.  Hemmie, Ungeordnete Unzucht. Prostitution im Hanseraum (Cologne: Böhlau, 2007).

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modern prostitution and research conducted primarily in southern European cities. All of these works view prostitution and venereal disease in civil society, mentioning military prostitution on the side.22 Prostitution as a Problem of Perspective Where there are soldiers, there are also prostitutes – this is an accepted truth within social history. By taking private and personal collections into consideration, it is plain to see that, regardless of punishment and regulation, military prostitution could never fully be kept at bay. The sources available on the topic, however, hardly allow for a complete reconstruction of the scene. One must read the remaining available sources against the grain to glean information from them, with careful consideration for the conditions under which they were written. The portrayal of prostitutes in these sources from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries focus on the services they offer. In documents pertaining to military prostitution, the picture is even more one-dimensional. Individual accounts mention prostitutes, but only in the sober language of transaction. The perspective of women as protagonists is completely missing. This all too common problem of missing sources is made more difficult by the prevailing conditions of the day. Women working as prostitutes in the rural vicinity of the military were presumably less likely to be able to read or write than their urban counterparts and we can assume that many hailed from rural poverty or city slums, living hand-to-mouth, and unable to save for illness or age. While it is possible to reconstruct the social position of the women portrayed in these sources, their subjective experiences and attitudes towards their profession remain inaccessible. Would they have described their sexual relations with equal remove? We cannot know. All significant sources on the topic of military prostitution are written from men’s perspectives, either as authorities or handling actors. Furthermore, the public perception of prostitution in the

22 For examples of local historiography which mention military prostitution, see Jean Morvan, Le soldat impérial (1800–1814) (Paris: Editions Historiques Teissèdre, 2002); Friedrich Gotthilf Friese, Breslau in der Franzosenzeit 1806–1808 (Whitefish, MO: Kessinger Publishing, 2010); Marina Moritz and Horst Moritz, Das Fürstentum Erfurt und die Herrschaft des großen Kaisers: Leben und Sterben in bewegter Zeit 1806–1814 (Erfurt: Museum für Thüringer Volkskunde, 2008).

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nineteenth century was one of women indolent by nature, “vicious and lazy women who have freely chosen their way of life.”23 While Lieutenant Johann Friedrich Carl Paris’s diary is unique for its detailed and blunt descriptions, we must ask ourselves what it is we expect to read out of ego documents and how much of that is constituted by our own projections of how internal thoughts and experiences should be portrayed. In most journals, prostitution is written about more discreetly or in heavily coded terms. One reads of “matrons,” “camp followers,” and “young ladies.” In Paris’s accounts, euphemism has no place. In the following section, I will outline the norms of military prostitution in their historical context, as well as introduce the legal sources penned by French General Friant. I will compare the findings from these authoritative sources to the experiences Paris described in his journal in order to highlight the discrepancy between the official orders and their actual execution. To conclude, I will elaborate upon the role of sexuality and desire in perceptions of self, based on Paris’s journal. Prostitution Norms and Praxis Around the Troops In the following section, I will discuss the situation of prostitutes surrounding French and Prussian troops during the military occupation of France and the subsequent liberation wars, as well as the actual implementation of official attempts at regulation. As a result of increased recruitment numbers and the ever-expanding power of the military between 1792 and 1815, military prostitution reached new and previously unknown proportions. The period of time I will focus on here includes the revolutionary wars from 1792–1802, the Napoleonic wars from 1800–1814 (including the Russian campaign of 1812 and the liberation war of 1813–1815), as well as the battles following the 100 day rule after Napoleon’s return from exile in 1815. It is important to mention the recruitment of soldiers from the Rhein coalition as a result of the pact made with France,24 the Europe-wide formation of troops in preparation for the Russian campaign,25 the Prussian territorial decree from March 17, 1813, which stipulated compulsory participation in defense for all men between the ages of 17

23

Mary Louise Roberts, What Soldiers Do. Sex and the American GI in World War II (Chicago: University Press, 2013), 142. 24 Helmut Bock, Napoleon und Preußen. Sieger ohne Sieg (Berlin: Dietz, 2013), 198. 25 Bock, Napoleon und Preußen, 209.

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to 40,26 as well as the introduction of the conscription from September 3, 1814. As a result of these expanded efforts at recruitment, the social demographics of the troops also changed. Never before were so many men from bourgeois urban societies and agricultural sectors involved in the events of war.27 By entering the army, soldiers’ lives were fundamentally changed. Suddenly, they wore uniforms and found themselves in an environment where, in contrast to their previous surroundings, sex with women was discussed openly and became a matter of daily life. Because day-to-day life in military service had little exciting variation to offer, contact with women offered the rare exception.28 General Friant, in an attempt to provide structure for the soldiers who passed the time in the barracks with gambling, women, and alcohol, published a series of health, educational, and disciplinary regulations for the Prussian soldiers. His work also provided strict instruction on socializing with the ever-present prostitutes, expanding upon the legislation already provided by the Code Civil (which mostly pertained to medical examination, obligatory registration with officials, and internment and punishment in the case of venereal infection).29 These regulations gave directives that dictated the capture of prostitutes in Mecklenburg and Pommern, who were put into detention and forced to undergo medical treatment in prisons and camps specifically designed for that purpose. There were also regulations in place for regulating a soldier’s contact with women, meant to be controlled under threat of corporal punishment and guarded detainment. Friant’s regulations also contain a section which outlines the rights and duties of doctors and magistrates who came into contact with habitual prostitutes. These professionals were obliged see that the women remained in confinement until they completed their treatment and convalescence. Doctors were disallowed from accepting bribes from women who wanted to return to their homes or families before the end of their treatment. The hailing legislative powers of the day, the Prussian land rights laws from 1794, the Code Civil from 1804, and the Austrian Civil Code from 1811, all exercised influence upon one other.30 After the recapture of the Rhein lands previously occupied by the French, French law remained in place. The first decree against prostitution after the withdrawal of French troops from Mecklenburg 26 27 28 29 30

Bock, Napoleon und Preußen, 246. Bock, Napoleon und Preußen, 274. Jean Dubreton-Lucas, Soldats de Napoléon (Paris: J. Tallandier, 1977), 303. Jill Harsin, Policing Prostitution in Nineteenth Century Paris, 102–103. Gerhard Dilcher, “Die janusköpfige Kodifikation. Das Preußische Allgemeine Landrecht (1794) und die europäische Rechtsgeschichte,” Zeitschrift für Europäisches Privatrecht 1994, 2 (1994): 446–447.

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serves as a good example of this continuation. The ordinance by Grand Duke Friedrich Franz  I of 23  July  1813 is based almost one-to-one on the wording of Friant’s decrees.31 After Napoleon’s abdication in 1814, the Code Civil was divided into five individual books and some aspects were incorporated into modifications of the 1792 Prussian Civil Code.32 While the Prussian Civil Code contained detailed legislation about prostitution in civilian settings and about inn-keeping and dancing in public,33 legislation on the prostitution and venereal disease during wartime in the vicinity of the troops was not included. As a result of a renewed enthusiasm and popular concern for morals at the end of the eighteenth century, the view of prostitution in Prussia also shifted within legislation. It was no longer a question of designating a safe, controlled environment for prostitutes and clients. Instead, officials sought to make their working conditions as difficult and restrictive as possible, thus curbing the entire prostitution trade, which was no longer permitted but only tolerated.34 Because Friant’s collection of regulations was so unique for its time – in terms of its breadth as well as its detailed accounts of normalizing behaviors – its core statements had an impact upon the broader population of Prussian troops stationed in France with the introduction of the Napoleonic system. Even after the end of the Napoleonic era and the Congress of Vienna, the core elements of Friant’s decrees remained in place among the Prussian troops. In France, the mechanisms of this system of control remained in place until after the end of the Second World War. Friant’s resolutions officially forbade prostitutes from taking up residence near troops who were passing through or stationed in an area. For this reason, they camped out in front of the city walls, at a safe distance from the military camps, or followed the troops just outside of the stipulated limits behind the moving caravan. The following excerpts from the individual articles of the regulations from 1812 describe situations that can only be understood with the help of a diary. Paris’s entries reveal exactly how these regulations were

31 32

Gesetzsammlung für die Mecklenburg- Schweriner Lande II. 3. 1848. 808. N. 2781. Thilo Ramm, Die friderizianische Gesamtkodifikation und der historische Rechtsvergleich. 19 in Das Preußische Allgemeine Landrecht. Politische, rechtliche und soziale Wechsel- und Fortwirkungen. Motive, Texte, Materialen. Vol 70, ed. Jörg Wolff (Heidelberg: Müller, 1995), 1–30. 33 Dietlind Hüchtker, “Prostitution und städtische Öffentlichkeit. Die Debatte über die Präsenz von Bordellen in Berlin 1792–1846,” in Ordnung, Politik und Geselligkeit der Geschlechter im 18. Jahrhundert. Supplementa 6, ed. Ulrike Weckel (Göttingen: Wallstein, 1998), 345–364. 34 Hüchtker, “Prostitution und städtische Öffentlichkeit,” 346–347.

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implemented and how they affected the daily lives of soldiers, or at least those in Paris’s regiment. The term prostitute appears fluid in both texts. The first article makes it clear that the concrete occupational term maid (Dirne) incurred a type of stigma. Waitresses, actresses, and servant girls were all viewed with suspicion as women who possibly earned some of their paycheck in exchange for sex with men. Role was often conflated with reality;35 by portraying sexuality and the naked body on stage, the theater and the brothel were both conceived of equally as spaces of desire.36 The conditions for employed women were also portrayed in Johann Friedrich Carl Paris’s journal. He wrote of intercourse with cooks who sought to add a little to their low wages at the end of the day.37 He also wrote of actresses who could be booked for an appointment after the night’s performance by wealthier audience members. In an entry from July 30, 1815, he claimed to have used a type of coupon slip to place his order for a woman after the show. This exclusive pleasure was granted to him at a cost of 15 thaler, more than half of his monthly income.38 Friant’s regulations sought to manage the movements of women and their clients. In the words of the rulebook, “Every girl who walks alone in daylight through the camp or sets foot in the barracks” must be detained or brought to jail. The code goes on: “Every girl found on the campsite at night will have her hair cut off and her face blackened” and is then to be “chased down by soldiers in rank and file.”39 Descriptions of punishments doled out to commanders, soldiers, and other members of the military are given in articles 12 and 14. Punishments ranged from arrest to camp guard duties of up to fifteen days.40 Punishments for men in general seem to have been milder; they lacked the component of humiliation compared with the punishments meted out to women. Punishments directed at men had more of an educational component. The ever-present threat of expedient and uncompromising punishment for women does not appear realized in Paris’s journals. In one entry, he described:

35

Melanie Hinz, Das Theater der Prostitution. Über die Ökonomie des Begehrens im Theater um 1900 und der Gegenwart. (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2014), 45–46. 36 Hinz, Das Theater der Prostitution. 54. 37 Paris, Das Tagebuch des J. Carl Friedrich Paris, 110. 38 Paris, Das Tagebuch des J. Carl Friedrich Paris, 139. 39 W. Haberling, Das Dirnenwesen in den Heeren und seine Bekämpfung: eine geschichtliche Studie (Leipzig: J.A. Barth, 1914), 78. 40 Haberling, Das Dirnenwesen, 78.

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“On Sunday [in] my bunk we had a good time. In the evening a G.[irl] came to visit me in the C.[amp].”41 The will of the military commanders to keep order did not stop at celebrations either. In article 16, “The city and camp commander, as well as the magistrate of Rostock, have within their discretion the ability to forbid soldiers to dance if they seem inclined to seek out women who exhibit undesirable ways of life.”42 Arrest and imprisonment also served as a threat here. However, various accounts found in the diaries of soldiers and officers contradict the nature of these orders. According to these sources, the cities where they were stationed regularly held social events and dances with the explicit purpose of serving the military community and distracting them for their monotonous daily lives. Primarily when soldiers were obliged to find private quarter along their journeys, they received invitations to these “dancing delights.”43 Prussian troops on their campaign in the Russian empire frequently attended theater performances and balls and socialized at local cafes.44 Over the course of the war at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the hard divisions among the civilian population and the military began to fade.45 Paris used dances and parties as opportunities to meet new women. In principle, he made no distinction between prostitutes and his host’s daughters.46 These events not only functioned as a distraction from their soldierly duties but were also seen as possible farewells. On the eve of important battles, these encounters with women were seen as one last pleasure before the uncertainty that awaited come dawn.47 As these examples demonstrate, the disparity between the written law and their actual enforcement was wide.

41

“Sonntag, (in) mein Quartir ging es ziemlich lustig zu. Abends kam ein M.(ädchen) zu mir ins L.(ager)” Paris, Das Tagebuch des J. Friedrich Carl Paris, 67. 42 “der Stadt- und Lagerkommandant, sowie der Magistrat von Rostock, jeder innerhalb seines Befehlsbereichs, die Tanzlustbarkeiten der Soldaten, bei denen sich nur Mädchen von schlechtem Lebenswandel einfinden können.” Haberling, Das Dirnenwesen, 78. 43 See journals such as those from Otto Gotthard Ernst von Raven or Boris Uexküll. 44 Eckhart Kleßmann (ed.), Unter Napoleons Fahnen (Bielefeld: Westfalen Verlag, 1991), 32. 45 Stephanie Poßelt, Die Grande Armée in Deutschland 1804–1815. Wahrnehmungen und Erfahrungen von Militärpersonen und Zivilbevölkerung (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013), 6. 46 See journal entry from May 24, 1812. “bei älteren Leuten untergekommen. Zwei Mädchen hier. Sehr armlich doch etwas zurückhaltend, weil die ältere Schwester von ein Soldat 1807 beschwängert und fatiguée war.” Paris, Das Tagebuch des J. Friedrich Carl Paris, 57, 133–134. 47 Makepeace, “Male Heterosexuality During the Great War,” 69.

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Portrayal of Desire and Sexuality in Self-Testimony Paris recounted his sexuality – like stops along the route of the march – in the staccato tone of a diarium that marked rations. On May 14, 1812, he wrote for the first time of his encounter with a prostitute. “4 miles behind Königsberg. I had a good time. Pretty G.[irl] in my quarters. Until midnight. Quiet.”48 Paris used the same sober tone in his later accounts. Expressions of judgement – such as the entry from February 6, 1813 in Thirgarten, “I still had lice. The girls here are all ugly.”49 or the comment, “met a pretty girl… . Whose opening was the smallest that I’ve ever had”50 – are rare exceptions. Women mostly remain anonymous and are not described with any particular detail or attributes. Apart from his longer affairs, Paris did not see any particular reason to note these women’s names down, which shows that his interest in these encounters was one of satisfying pure physical need, rather than intimacy and social interaction. Sex with prostitutes and ‘book-keeping’ did not seem to stand in contradictory terms with the (admittedly limited) life he led outside of the army. During the first ten years of his career, he was engaged to a young woman in Detmold to whom he penned letters several times a week and whose answers he described himself as awaiting eagerly. His letters to his fiancée and his experiences with prostitutes coexisted so seamlessly that one must ask if his emotionless accounts of sexual activities, along with his emotional emissions to his fiancée, portray his attempt to satisfy a learned convention. The adoption of such remarkably different registers so close together is worth considering. The note “Love must have driven me crazy” reads differently in light of his regular sexual escapades.51 The tension between engaging in taboo sexual activity and elaborating upon that activity in words posed a problem for Paris on the other side of the front. Paris spent the first two weeks of January  1816 with his fiancée in Detmold. Once again, he adopted a staccato tone in meticulously recounting when and how often he had sex with his betrothed, making note of whether she wore her dress or not and which parts of her body he was allowed to kiss. He also 48

“4 Meilen hinter Königsberg. Ziemlich gut gelebt. Hübsches M(ädchen) im Quartier. Bis zum 24. Ruh.” Paris, Das Tagebuch des J. Friedrich Carl Paris, 57. 49 “ich hatte immer noch Läuse gehabt. Mädchen hier alle heßlich.” Paris, Das Tagebuch des J. Friedrich Carl Paris, 76. 50 “traf ein hübsches Mädchen (…) deren Oeffnung am kleinsten von allen die ich bisher gehabt habe.” Paris, Das Tagebuch des J. Friedrich Carl Paris, 256. 51 “Liebe muss mir den Kopf verdreht haben.” Paris, Das Tagebuch des J.  Friedrich  Carl Paris, 81.

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describes the difficulties imposed by her period.52 In his detailed notation of each step of intercourse, which he seems to move through as if crossing items off a list, it becomes clear Paris processed premarital sex and the taboo of specific sexual practices through his writing. The Cost of Regular Visits With Prostitutes Back at the front, accompanied by his growing debts, Paris used his journal more and more frequently as an accounting book. As shown in prior entries, the journal helped Paris keep track of his expenses, as well as to relieve his guilty conscience. He began to keep track of his expenses alongside his daily entries in August of 1913. From these entries, it is clear he spent the majority of his monthly salary on women, paying for gifts, evening outings, and sex.53 Paris prefaced one journal with a chiding quote from the H. Clauren book “Der Wanderer im Sande,” – “Don’t let yourself be tempted to start anew with money from others, and beware of borrowing money from a friend or relative,” – while at the same time regularly borrowing ever-growing sums of money from his fellow soldiers. Paris and his peers were constantly faced with the problem of how to pay for prostitutes. This was both a result of their low salaries and an issue with the various forms of currency. Before the Zollverein made the first coinage contracts in the 1830s, the Prussian thaler, called the Reichstaler in Paris’s records, was the most important means of payment in northern Germany.  24 guten Groschen corresponded to 1 Reichstaler in this region.54 Based on the records of the Royal Prussian Statistical Bureau, the Prussian population needed on average 14 Reichstaler and 18 groschen per person to cover their basic consumer needs at the beginning of the nineteenth century.55 Rent, firewood and food that exceeded the absolute minimum requirement were not included in this calculation. A family of five, therefore, would require between 100 to 120 Reichstaler per year to survive.56 At the beginning of his military career Carl received 48 groschen, i.e. 2 Reichstaler per month. As a non-commissioned officer he received 3 Reichstaler, 6 as a sergeant, and as a lieutenant, 25 Reichstaler. Compared to his monthly expenditures on prostitutes after 1813, 52 Paris, Das Tagebuch des J. Friedrich Carl Paris, 170. 53 Paris, Das Tagebuch des J. Friedrich Carl Paris, 92–93. 54 Frank Otto, Die Entstehung eines nationalen Geldes. Integrationsprozesse der deutschen Währungen im 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2002), 33. 55 Zeitschrift des königlich Preußischen Statistischen Bureaus 4. Jahrgang (Februar 1864), 18. 56 Michael Doege, Armut in Preußen und Bayern (1770–1840) (Munich: UNI-Druck, 1991), 34.

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it is clear Paris maintained his lifestyle at a financial loss. Furthering these difficulties, the monthly salary could often only be paid in installments or with long delays, whereas prostitutes required immediate compensation for their services. Paris’s entries give an insight to the pecuniary dimension of the lives of prostitutes at this time. Because there are so few sources that reveal any information about prostitutes’ rates for service, Paris’s notes are particularly important. He makes short notes of price that range from 8–16 groschen up until March  1814, which is equal to the average amount recorded in other accounts. On October 11, 1814 he deviated from this pattern by spending “1 rth.,” one Reichsthaler, on one evening with a woman. Paris did not explain in his entry what exactly made the evening with this woman so costly, however in a later entry from March 24, 1814, he went into further detail. “There were a few girls around Tätschau,” he writes, “Frenzkij followed them and got them to spend the night with us. I couldn’t get to it, twice [I was] used up like that, 20 groschen.”57 Given that he was likely paid a salary of around 600 groschen per month,58 his unusual indignation is more understandable. On April  9, 1814, Paris wrote, “9 o’clock this morning, I took a girl to bed f. 6 groschen.”59 Unfortunately, there is no information here about what justified the 14 groschen difference in price between this woman and the one from March 24. As previously mentioned, days that weren’t spent marching or fighting during the war were incredibly dull. Women and gambling were seen as the only possibilities to pass the time. Both activities explain the growing debt that Paris amassed and declared at the end of every month in his journal. Over the course of 1814, Paris began to visit prostitutes more frequently. While he wrote down only five visits in 1813, in the following year the number rose to sixteen. On August 5, 1814 he writes, “Friday we were at Schwatzer’s, took residence in Splitterberg. We went home around 10 in the evening. I met a girl who I ordered to my room (at the) ‘feste Glatz,’ 8 groschen.”60 The next day and on August 8, he also paid a woman 8 groschen. Entries like these became more common and suggest that, despite the fact that women were largely interchangeable to 57 “gingen einige Mädchen im Dorfe Tätschau umher, Frenzkij gleich dahinter, sprach mit sie, welche sich gleich dazu verstand[en], die Nacht bei uns zu bleiben. Ich kam nicht zur Sache, zweimal [wurde ich] so ausgenutzt, 20 ggr.” Paris, Das Tagebuch des J. Friedrich Carl Paris, 106. 58 Paris, Das Tagebuch des J. Friedrich Carl Paris, 25. 59 “Morgens um neun Uhr nahm ich ein Mädchen mir f. 6 (ggr.)” Paris, Das Tagebuch des J. Friedrich Carl Paris, 107. 60 “Freitag bei Schwatzer, zu Splittberger Quartier. Abends 10 Uhr gingen wir nach Hause. Ich traf ein Mädchen, welches ich zu mir [in die] Feste Glatz bestellte, a.8: (ggr.)” Paris, Das Tagebuch des J. Friedrich Carl Paris, 117.

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Paris, he occasionally sought out certain prostitutes for repeat encounters. His notes leave us no clue as to whether he did this out of affection for particular women or because of a lack of alternatives. The Other Side of the Coin – Sexually Transmitted Infections and Treatment Paris appears to have been prepared to ignore medical risks, and this soon manifested in medical self-diagnoses and self-observation in his writing. 1817 proved an important year in Paris’s life, and not only because of his extended affair with a woman of a higher social standing. On February 28 he recorded an encounter with a woman for 8 groschen,61 one that would have repercussions for the rest of his life. On March 4, 1817, he writes “Noticed that I got the clap from the 28th, do not have any pains yet.”62 Considering the five years of sex with prostitutes that Paris had recorded in his journal up to that point, it is remarkable that is took so long for him to become infected. From today’s perspective, it seems from the symptoms Paris described that he was also infected with syphilis and a form of hepatitis.6364 The symptoms of these illnesses, which were incurable during his lifetime, shaped the rest of his lived days. His illnesses led to the stagnation of his military career, as well as long periods in low spirits that today might be described as depression. Ultimately, Paris infected his wife and his children. Just as he took meticulous note of his sex life, Paris also wrote detailed descriptions of his illnesses and treatment. His entries in the week after the diagnosis illustrate the suffering he continued to feel in the months and years after the initial infection. On one occasion, Paris wrote that he “took sick leave,” but “felt not the slightest bit of pain while urinating, the skin at the tip of my 61 Paris, Das Tagebuch des J. Friedrich Carl Paris, 231. 62 “Gemerkt, dass ich vom 28 ten her Triper habe, bis heute noch keine Schmerzen.” Paris, Das Tagebuch des J. Friedrich Carl Paris, 232. 63 The symptoms described shortly before his death also suggest a “Tabes dorsalis,” a spinal cord lurch, which frequently occurred as a late symptom 15–20 years after syphilis infection. See Christina M. Marra, “Neurosyphilis,” Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports 4, 6 (December 2004) 435–440. 64 On the symptoms of syphilis and gonorrhoea, see: Winkle, Geißeln der Menschheit, 516– 518; On the symptoms of Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B and Leptospirosis, Winkle, Geißeln der Menschheit, 942–959. For the effects of syphilis on children of untreated mothers also see Winkler, Geißeln der Menschheit, 516; Werner Köhler und Hans Peter Mochmann, Meilensteine der Bakteriologie (Jena: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1984), 110–111.

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member is very swollen (…)”65 On another day, he felt considerably worse. Paris described his glands as swollen, he “felt quite a bit of pain between my thighs and member,” and would not make it through an evening standing at the theater.66 In the following months, his symptoms worsened and he spent several days in the military hospital. Despite reporting urine in his blood on June 2, 1817, after months of enforced loneliness he did not refrain from spending an evening with a “pretty girl” on June 6 for 12 groschen.67 Sexually transmitted diseases were understood as problems exclusively from the perspective of men. In addition to one of the earliest, clearly misogynistic theory that syphilis was primarily contagious in menstrual blood, in Paris’s time, promiscuous women living vagrant lifestyles were seen as solely responsible for spreading disease.68 Most men knew that certain illnesses were spread through sexual contact and that they were in danger of becoming infected by prostitutes. They had no understanding of the fact, however, that they would also carry the illness and thus infect other women and, indirectly, men. Their limited knowledge of venereal disease did not lead to any change in behavior.69 Paris married again in 1819 after his first engagement ended, and promptly infected his wife as well as their second child together, who was born with a severe gonorrhea infection of the eye.70 Paris took note of these circumstances yet took no personal responsibility.71 This general worldview at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century was the result of hundreds of years of patriarchal ideas about women’s sexuality, which was thought to exist for reproductive purposes exclusively. Just as women were blamed for childlessness among couples seeking to conceive, men were also 65 66 67 68 69 70

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“heute bei Urin lassen nicht die mindesten Schmerzen gehabt, die Vordere Haut zum Glied sehr geschwollen (…).” Paris, Das Tagebuch des J. Friedrich Carl Paris, 232. “schon einige Schmerzen zwischen den Schenkeln und Glied empfunden.” Paris, Das Tagebuch des J. Friedrich Carl Paris, 232–233. Paris, Das Tagebuch des J. Friedrich Carl Paris, 256. Spongberg, Feminizing Venereal Disease, 3–4. Nils Johan Ringdal, Die neue Weltgeschichte der Prostitution (Munich: Piper Verlag, 2006), 209. Because it was common practice in the early nineteenth century to avoid questioning the health of the groom, it was common for women to become infected immediately after the wedding took place. See Winkle, Geißeln der Menschheit, 585. These attitudes towards sexually transmitted infections posed a further problem due to the fact that prostitutes were often diagnosed with gonorrhea, whereas married women with the same symptoms were instead diagnosed with incommunicable urinary tract infections. See Wilhelm von Drigalski, Im Wirkungsfelde Robert Kochs (Hamburg: Hans Dulk Verlag, 1948), 360–361. Paris, Das Tagebuch des J. Friedrich Carl Paris, 390.

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blameless on the subject of sexually transmitted infection.72 Women were commonly advised to sleep with their husbands once per month, while men were advised to have sex once every four days.73 Sex was considered vital to men’s health, which raised the threat of extramarital transmission of sexually transmitted disease.74 The tradition of viewing married men’s visits to prostitutes as a basic need goes back to the Middle Ages. Although prostitutes were also looked down upon in medieval society, they still played an important role by protecting married women and virgins from assault.75 In this period, alms to heavily indebted men covered not only daily groceries but also regular visits to prostitutes.76 In the years after his wedding, Paris wrote in his journal less and less. He no longer mentioned his visits to prostitutes. Whether this is related to the fact that he lived with his family and was no longer on campaigns, or that due to his illness, he was no longer able to have sexual intercourse, remains unclear. His last entries deal with the consequences of his disease. Curtly, he notes on August 3, 1827: “No ejaculate, lots of wine. Evening.”77 The next day: “The same. Always cold (on the tip,) a bit of burning.”78 On August 5, he concludes: “Went to Königsberg on Sunday. Caused a lot of pain!”79 Ten years after writing these lines, Paris died in Königsberg. Assuming the lives of many members of the military were similar to Paris’s, it is clear prostitution and venereal disease were omnipresent phenomena surrounding the stationed troops, only minimally suppressed by rules and regulations.80 Those in charge rolled out comprehensive plans for supervision meant

72 Contemporary advice literature on the topic: Gottfried Wilhelm Becker, Der Rathgeber vor, bei und nach dem Beischlaf. Oder faßliche Anweisung den Beischlaf so auszuüben, daß der Gesundheit kein Nachteil zugefügt, und die Vermehrung des Geschlechts durch schöne, gesunde und starke Kinder befördert wird. (Vaduz: Panorama, 1977; first printed in Leipzig,1809). 73 Makepeace, “Male Heterosexuality and Prostitution During the Great War,” 68. 74 Ringdal, Die neue Weltgeschichte der Prostitution, 286. 75 Ruth Mazo Karras, Sexualität im Mittelalter (Düsseldorf: Artemis & Winkler, 2005), 222. 76 F. Graevell, Notizen für praktische Ärzte über die neuesten Beobachtungen in der Medicin. Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Krankheits-Behandlung (Berlin: Verlag August Hirschfeld, 1851), 648. 77 “kein Ausfluss, viel Wein getrunken. Abends.” Paris, Das Tagebuch des J.  Friedrich  Carl Paris, 471. 78 “dito. Immer kalt vorn (an der Eichel), Wenig brennen.” Paris, Das Tagebuch des J. Friedrich Carl Paris, 471. 79 “Sontag, nach Königsberg gefahren, Besorgnisse für Schmertzen! ” Paris, Das Tagebuch des J. Friedrich Carl Paris, 471. 80 A. Zemanek, Syphilis in ihrer Rückwirkung auf die Berufsarmeen (Vienna: Perles, 1887).

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to reach soldiers in the barracks,81 but these hardly ever met with meaningful efforts at enforcement. Plans for supervision included medical check-ups, with examinations taking place in large rooms with 10 to 30 men at a time. Of course, most infected men sought to avoid these examinations and associated humiliation. Often, the only soldiers who appeared for examinations were the ones who had nothing to hide.8283 Paris made no mention of these regular obligatory scheduled checks up in his journals. Doctors had a difficult time treating these diseases. As a result, historians have repeatedly been able to demonstrate an increase in venereal disease following the Napoleonic wars.84 The military hospitals could not provide continuous treatment to the soldiers. Examinations were limited to the duration of the soldiers’ short stays, so adequate aftercare was impossible. In addition, military doctors often saw it in the best interest of the army to restore each unit to its full capacity, so that soldiers were often sent back to their troops too early, as was the case with Paris. Doctors released syphilitics still in the third contagious phase of the disease back into the public, so they continued indirectly infecting their fellow soldiers.85 Lastly, many soldiers took pains to ensure they were treated privately to avoid staying in military hospitals, which raised the risk of further infection.86 Paris mentions several hospital visits that he was released from early despite still exhibiting acute symptoms. An entry from June 8, 1814 shows how easily diseases was shared and spread. Paris described an occasion where an assistant to a higher service member organized a few women. Paris, the assistant and three other service members from another regiment stayed in a small house with the women to have sex.87 This incident also shows how fluid hierarchies were established through communal sexual activities. Sex as a demonstration of power or weapon of war among two or more nations, as evidenced in Mary Louise Robert’s What Soldiers Do, did not occur in Paris’s account. Generally, accounts of these campaigns make little 81

For further information on the execution of the French system: Aisenberg, “Syphilis and Prostitution: A regulatory couplet in 19th century France,” 21. 82 A. Fournier, Die öffentliche Prophylaxe der Syphilis (Leipzig: Vogel, 1888), 58. 83 In subsequent wars following the invention of penicillin, this mentality changed partially. Soldiers then knowingly paid infected prostitutes more money in order to be sent to hospital and escape the horrors of war and death. See Makepeace, “Male Heterosexuality and Prostitution During the Great War,” 699. 84 Lutz Sauerteig, Krankheit, Sexualität, Gesellschaft, Geschlechtskrankheiten und Gesundheitspolitik in Deutschland im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert, 58, 79. 85 Fournier, Die öffentliche Prophylaxe der Syphilis, 59. 86 Poßelt, Die Grande Armée in Deutschland, 82. 87 Paris, Das Tagebuch des J. Friedrich Carl Paris, 113.

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reference to sexual violence.88 Rape or sexual assault among the occupied population was not a part of Napoleon’s military strategy. The enemy was not meant to be destroyed, but rather made useful for later campaigns.89 Rapists were handled as criminals and punished in military courts.90 However, that there are few sources dealing with rape does not mean that it did not occur. Soldiers of lower rank could rarely read or write, while the higher-ranked member of the military often recorded their thoughts with the intention to publish in mind and thus wrote little of their violent encounters with the civilian population.91 Opposition accounts also rarely included reports of rape – if at all, then only vague reports of incidents outside of one’s own city were reported. Any admission that rape had taken place would have been seen as an admission that the men of the area had failed in their roles as protectors of mothers, daughters and wives.92 Nevertheless, the soldiers’ fantasies about, and thus the concrete sexualization of, French prostitutes was ever-present. Soldiers often had more contact with prostitutes than with the civilian population, which means their interactions were of political significance.93 Despite this, soldiers also had voluntary sexual relationships with women from the civilian population. For many women, these fleeting relationships offered a form of protection and for a short period of time, material security. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the percentage of illegitimate pregnancies in the areas where soldiers were stationed increased dramatically.94 The Code Civil forbade mothers in the occupied zones from contacting fathers or seeking alimony after the birth.95 Paris’s diary is limited in form due to the genre, but is nonetheless unique for its meticulous ‘bookkeeping’ – the precise listings of prices, services and frequency of his visits to prostitutes. In addition, his tone visibly seeks to neutralize the subject through objective description. Emotions and sexuality are handled separately in the text, as in his sexual relationships with his partners. Because his notes were used to track his spending, they can be considered 88 Poßelt, Die Grande Armée in Deutschland, 127. 89 Poßelt, Die Grande Armée in Deutschland, 126. 90 John Elting, Swords around the Throne. Napoleon’s Grande Armée (New York: Hachette Book Group, 1998), 592. 91 Poßelt, Die Grande Armée in Deutschland, 127. 92 Poßelt, Die Grande Armée in Deutschland, 127–128. 93 Roberts, What Soldiers Do, 115. 94 Poßelt, Die Grande Armée in Deutschland, 135–136. 95 Michael Schütz, Napoleons Schatten über Hildesheim. Hildesheim während seiner Zugehörigkeit zum Künigreich Westphalen 1807–13 (Hildesheim: August Lax Verlag, 2003), 24–25.

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largely truthful. Paris’s career was typical of many Prussian soldiers from poor urban backgrounds.96 Due to his financial and social status, Paris’s experiences can serve, to a limited extent, as indicative of the actions of other members of the military of similar status. Though sex could be had at every price range, and some women offered their services for a warm meal or piece of bread, the lifestyle Paris led as an officer cannot be seen as universally applicable to the simple soldier, whose social context differed dramatically. Conclusion During every campaign, members of the military and civilian population came into close personal contact. The generals and their soldiers, despite restrictions, went to performances at the theater, danced at balls, socialized at evening parties, and met women along the way. The monotony of daily life in the army and the brutality of war ensured that many soldiers sought out feminine companionship while they took quarter between each leg of the march. Prostitution took the form of short-lived affairs, longer romantic relationships and quick encounters. To what extent these relationships can be considered voluntary cannot be determined from today’s perspective. It is certain that boundaries were fluid. Many women whose husbands were on the front or who were widowed through war saw their only chance of survival in taking up relations with soldiers who could provide protection, or to enter into prostitution in order to feed their families. Despite numerous laws forbidding contact between soldiers and women judged to pose a danger to the troops, there was never a lack of prostitutes or women in general surrounding the encampments, as confirmed by the diary of Johann Friedrich Carl Paris. The threat of punishment against these women and the men who used their services, as shown in General Friant’s orders, did not register in the slightest among Paris and his fellow soldiers. The routine medical examinations meant to prevent the spread of venereal disease were also missing from Paris’s accounts, despite their official introduction in his regiment. He took his own illness seriously and described in close detail his symptoms and condition. While the official goal of treatment was to prevent the spread of disease among the rest of the troops, military doctors routinely disregarded precautions and in the case of Paris, botched 96

For examples of similar military careers, see Raimund Steiner, Preußisches Soldatenleben in der Fridericianischen Zeit (Leipzig: R. Voigtländer, 1912); Volker Hentschel, Preußische Portraits, Zwischen Revolution und Restauration (Reinbek: Rau Verlag. 1815).

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his treatment. Despite the similarity of legislation in place in the French and Prussian zones, especially after the war of independence, neither side was able to put a stop to prostitution. Customers and women alike found ways around the legislation meant to stand in their way. Translated by Sydney Ramirez

Pushing Boundaries: Localisation of Nineteenth Century Prostitution in Florence Alexandra Skedzuhn-Safir The Regolamento Cavour and the Control of Prostitution Between 1860 and 1888 When Italy became a unified kingdom beginning in 1859, prostitution was treated as a tolerated profession, regulated nationwide through the so-called Regolamento sulla prostituzione1 or Regolamento Cavour.2 The law was issued on February 16, 1860, and by April of the same year it was enforced throughout Tuscany, with the other Italian regions successively adopting the regulation up until 1870, when all of Italy was unified. Tuscany had previously experimented with regulations on prostitution, the most recent one in 1855 being the Istruzioni sulla tolleranza delle pubbliche prostitute.3 Regulations on prostitution in Florence can be traced back at least to the end of the thirteenth century.4 The Regolamento Cavour in its original form was rescinded in 1888,5 after its effectiveness had been forcefully debated in parliament, culminating in setting up a specific commission to investigate the system of tolerated prostitution. This Commissione Peruzzi was founded in 1883, and by 1885 it had published a

1 Translation: “Regulation on Prostitution.” 2 Ministero dell’Interno, Regolamento sulla prostituzione Regulation concerning prostitution. Date of enactment February 16, 1860. This “Cavour Regulation” was named after Italy’s Prime Minister Count Camillo Benso di Cavour. 3 Ministero dell’Interno, Istruzioni sulla tolleranza delle pubbliche prostitute Instructions concerning public prostitution, 1855. 4 Terpstra, Nicolas, “Sex and the Sacred. Negotiating Spatial and Sensory Boundaries in Renaissance Florence,” Radical History Review 121 (2015), 74. 5 Prior to the abrogation of the Regolamento Cavour members of parliament had strived to abolish the regulation, under the ministers Rattazzi, Nicotera and Depretis, see Sara Melotti, Prostituzione: Dalla legge Merlin alle recenti proposte de iure condendo. Prostitution: From the Legge Merlin to recent proposals de iure condendo. (PhD diss., Università degli Studi di Parma, 2009), 18–19. Available online at: http://hdl.handle.net/1889/1003 (Accessed July  9, 2017).

© Brill Schöningh, 2023 | doi:10.30965/9783657790470_003

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report attesting to the many faults of this regulation.6 In line with abolitionist thought, the commission condemned the regulation on moral, economic, and hygienic grounds. Finally, under minister Francesco Crispi, the Regolamento Cavour was modified, though not totally abolished, shifting the focus from control of individual prostitutes to the surveillance of bordellos.7 Reflecting the position Italian legislation took towards prostitution, women working in this field were referred to as donne tollerate,8 and according to the Regolamento Cavour prostitutes were described as “… women who notoriously exercise prostitution,”9 a definition insufficient to clarify what characterises this profession and where its limitations lie.10 In this context, I prefer to employ the term “prostitute” for women in this line of business to avoid their work being misunderstood with the contemporary expression “sex worker,” which would be an anachronism.11 The so-called case chiuse,12 that is, the regulated bordellos, existed in Italy until 1958.13 Their closure was preceeded by lengthy debates on the abolition of state-regulated prostitution, culminating

6

7 8 9 10 11

12 13

Ugo Peruzzi et al., R. Commissione per lo studio delle questioni relative alla prostituzione e ai provvedimenti per la morale ed igiene pubblica [Royal Commission for the Study Concerning Prostitution and the Measures for Morality and Social Hygiene] (Florence: Civelli, 1885). Ministero dell’Interno, Regolamento sulla prostituzione. Regulation of prostitution. Date of enactment March 29, 1888. Translation: “Tolerated women.”. “… che esercitano notoriamente la prostituzione,” Ministero dell’Interno, Regolamento sulla prostituzione, 1860. Ministero dell’Interno, Regolamento sulla prostituzione, 1860, article 16. See also sociologists Martina Löw and Renate Ruhne on the difficulties on defining contemporary prostitution in Löw and Ruhne, Prostitution (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011), 23. In the case of nineteenth century Italy, the idea of choice would have applied to relatively few of women. According to the Peruzzi Commissione, many of the women working as prostitutes did not willingly choose this profession (Peruzzi et al., R. Commissione per lo studio delle questioni relative alla prostituzione, 55–56). For most, prostitution was the last resort to overcome financial misery, particularly during the economic crisis that culminated in 1874 and lasted until the end of the 1870s – See Silvano Fei, Firenze 1881–1898: La grande operazione urbanistica Florence 1881–1898: The Great Urban Development (Rome: Officina Edizioni, 1977), 9 – which would have forced a number of young women to take up prostitution. The financial hardship of these years is reflected in the rising number of registered prostitutes, and to some extent even in the number of third-class bordellos that operated at that time. Translation: Closed bordellos. A decade earlier, for instance, the French bordellos had already been abolished with the so-called Loi de Marthe Richard.

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with a law known as the Merlin law, named after Italian socialist Lina Merlin, who advocated for the end of exploitation of women.14 This research is grounded in the study fields of architectural heritage and conservation. It explores the social and historic value that bordellos had and, to some extent, still have for society.15 The study examines the history of prostitution and the legal framework insofar as it assesses the actual physical location of prostitution in the second half of the nineteenth century.16 The spatialisation of bordellos concerns the places of legally and illegally operating bordellos, thus linking these and other social spaces with the urban fabric to shed light onto the social logic of space. Of general interest is to determine whether, besides the legal framework, historic or economic factors also impacted the location of bordellos. A particular focus of this study is whether prostitutes and bordello owners operated only within determined and conceded spaces, as well as how these rules were contested to increase their presence in public space. This will be linked to the contrasting approaches the police took in controlling prostitution: the clustering or separation of bordellos within the city. The effect of the regulation on the localisation of prostitution in Florence in the second half of the nineteenth century is especially intriguing. When Florence was made Italy’s capital, the city was still enclosed within the last city wall and had undergone no major urban development for several centuries. Thus, the need to modernise the city in a similar vein to Haussmann’s work in Paris and to meet the demands of the sudden increase in population due to the move of government became pressing issues. Of specific concern was enlarging the city and demolishing the outer walls, but there was also pressure to tackle the very heart of Florence: the Mercato Vecchio. Upon Florence’s foundation in the first century BC, the Mercato Vecchio functioned as the central public space. Today, one finds the grand Piazza della Repubblica between the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and the Palazzo Vecchio on the Piazza Signoria instead. In the direct neighbourhood of the Mercato Vecchio was the 14 See also the publication she co-edited in with Carla Barberis, Lettere dalle case chiuse Letters from the bordellos, 2nd edition. (Milan-Rome: Avanti!, 1955). 15 Depending on the cultural and historic context prostitution was to fulfil specific needs of society, and to mitigate (perceived) threats to the order of society. The value of prostitution could encompass the channelling of sexual needs, protection of family, an indirect form of birth control, protection of morality and public health. See Andreas Ziemann, Das Bordell: historische und soziologische Beobachtungen [The bordello: historical and sociological observations] (Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2017), 88–90. 16 This research was conducted for my PhD thesis Hidden in plain sight: The topography of prostitution in Florence between 1860 and 1888 at the Technical University of Brandenburg (BTU) Cottbus-Senftenberg / Germany, Chair of Architectural Conservation. In July 2018 my research work was submitted to the university and defended in December 2018.

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former Jewish ghetto, created in the sixteenth century. This ghetto stood for centuries and was eventually dissolved in the first half of the 1800s.17 With its narrow alleys, decrepit buildings, overcrowding,18 and the considerable lack of hygiene,19 the district was in desperate need of urban works to improve the area. The decision to substitute this market with others was already made in 1865,20 and inhabitants and shopkeepers began to leave this quarter due to the pending demolition.21 The example of this quarter alone allows for an examination of the dynamics in the prostitution business during the period between 1860 and 1888. Various political and economic changes in society, including those related to prostitution, were thus reflected in the use of urban space. In the case of prostitution and its regulation, public space was under continuous negotiation between authorities and prostitutes, legal and illegal. The Cultural Significance of Bordellos Prostitution and historic bordellos as examples of tangible representations have been at large an underrepresented phenomenon in research in architectural conservation, particularly as a type of (typically) vernacular architecture worthy of study and conservation.22 To understand the importance of a single building, ensemble, or entire city, it is pertinent to assess the cultural

17 Roberto Salvadori, Gli Ebrei di Firenze: Dalle origini ai giorni nostri [The Jews of Florence: From its Origins to Today] (Florence: Giuntina, 2000), 42. During the French rule the ghetto were opened to last, however, only until the Habsburg-Lorraine rule was reinstated; see David Kertzer, “Religion and Society, 1789–1892” in Italy in the Nineteenth Century: 1796–1900, ed. John A. Davis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 200–1. 18 Some of the houses even sported 11 storeys, see Guiseppe Conti, Firenze vecchia [Old Florence] eds. Bemporad & Figlio. (Florence: Giunti Gruppo editorale, 2010), 435. 19 The cholera epidemic of 1835 was believed to have spread from this area, see Silvano Fei, Nascita e sviluppo di Firenze città borghese [Birth and Development of the Bourgeois City of Florence] (Florence: Giorgi & Gambi 1971), 2. 20 Fei, Nascita e sviluppo di Firenze, 24. 21 Eduardo Detti and Tommaso Detti, Florence that was (Florence: Valecchi, 1979), 87. 22 One of the few historic bordellos recognised as historic monument is the Parisian former public bordello “Aux Belles Poules” at the Rue Blondel 32, see Adam Nossiter, “Walls Reveal Heyday of a Former Brothel,” Süddeutsche Zeitung in The New York Times International Weekly December 1, 2017, 3; Monumentum Carte des Monuments Historiques français, “Immeuble (ancienne maison close) à Paris 2e Arrondissement” Property (ancient public bordello) in Paris 2nd Arrondissement Accessed January 19, 2018. http://www.monumentum.fr/immeuble--ancienne-maison-close--pa75020006.html.17/01/2023 09:14:00

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significance of a site. According to the ICOMOS23 Australia Burra Charter, cultural significance refers to the “… aesthetic, historic, scientific, social and spiritual value for past, present or future generations.”24 Once the cultural significance has been assessed and the values of a site have been determined, only then can the process of acknowledging and preserving the tangible (and intangible) assets of a place begin. One of the more recent approaches to recognising the value of architectural heritage is determining the so-called storyscape of a place. This is the significance that certain places have in the lives of individuals or groups and the role that their stories connected to such sites have in constituting their identity.25 Architectural heritage is about tangible material, but at its basis are intangible values, namely also the stories of people who have interacted at these sites over time, that have made places, and that have been shaped by places. Built heritage is therefore not merely a physical remnant of the past, but a manifestation of society’s values. In order to examine bordellos as topographical places of cultural significance and to unveil their spatial contexts, a variety of publications were relevant to this research in terms of the social logic of space concerning the localisation of prostitution more generally, and for Florence specifically. Concerning the history of prostitution in Italy up until the end of the nineteenth century, a significant work is Romano Canosa and Isabella Colonnello’s more general overview, Storia della prostituzione in Italia: Dal quattrocento alla fine del settecento.26 However, the topic of social space is only of marginal interest for them. A seminal work on the social history of prostitution in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Italy is Prostitution and the State in Italy, 1860–1915 by Mary Gibson.27 Her work is relevant for this study insofar as it addresses the functioning and reasoning of associated sites that were inherent part of stateregulated prostitution, such as health offices or syphilis hospitals. The 1990s saw significant research concerning prostitution in Florence in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These studies provide 23 International Council on Monuments and Sites. ICOMOS is an international NGO concerned with the conservation of built heritage. 24 ICOMOS Australia, The Burra Charter, article 1.2 (1999). A revised version of this charter was carried out in 2013. Accessed May 2, 2018. australia.icomos.org/wp-content/uploads/ The-Burra-Charter-2013-Adopted-31.10.2013.pdf, 2013. 25 Ned Kaufman, Place, Race, and Story: Essays on the Past and Future of Historic Preservation (New York: Routledge, 2009). 26 Romano Canosa and Isabella Colonnello, Storia della prostituzione in Italia: Dal quattrocento alla fine del settecento [History of Prostitution in Italy: From the 15th to the End of the 18th Centuries] (Rome: Sapere, 1989). 27 Mary Gibson, Prostitution and the State in Italy, 1860–1915 (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1999).

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valuable resources concerning the localisation of prostitution in diachronic terms. In The Florentine Onestà and the Control of Prostitution, 1403–1680, John  K.  Brackett studies the regulation of prostitution by the Florentine Onestà28 from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries,29 while Maria Serena Mazzi focusses her work Prostitute e lenoni nella Firenze del quattrocento30 on the social history of prostitutes, procurers and the spaces they occupied in fifteenth century Florence, a century which saw the establishment of the first Florentine civic bordello at the very centre of the city creating a red-light district.31 In his “Florentine Prostitution in the Fifteenth Century: Patrons and Clients”, Richard C. Trexler examines fifteenth century Florentine prostitution. Relevant here are the spaces associated with prostitution: the bordellos, sites of punishment or redemption.32 Of particular interest is Michela Turno’s Il malo esempio: Donne scostumate e prostituzione nella Firenze dell’ottocento.33 She examines the social history of prostitution in Florence in the nineteenth century. To do so, Turno also studied the questura34 files, though she did not focus on the spatialisation of prostitution.35 Another important work is by Nicolas Terpstra et al. on the spatial context between prostitution and places of worship in Mapping Space, Sense, and Movement in Florence: Historical GIS and the Early Modern City.36 Other current research projects dealing with the topography of prostitution in other cities include those by Matthew Sangster on eighteenth century prostitution in

28 The Ufficio dell’ Onestà (Office of Decency) was founded in 1420. Its main responsibility was the control and administration of prostitution. 29 John Brackett, “The Florentine Onestà and the Control of Prostitution, 1403–1680,” The Sixteenth Century Journal, (1993): 273–300. 30 Translation: “Prostitutes and procurers in 15th century Florence”. 31 Maria Mazzi, Prostitute e lenoni nella Firenze del quattrocento [Prostitutes and Procurers in 15th Century Florence] (Milan: Saggiatore (La Cultura), 1991). 32 Richard Trexler, “Florentine Prostitution in the Fifteenth Century: Patrons and Clients”, Dependence in Context in Renaissance Florence (Binghamton, N.Y: Medieval & Renaissance texts & studies, 1994), 373–414. 33 Michela Turno, Il malo esempio: Donne scostumate e prostituzione nella Firenze dell’ottocento [A Bad Example: Immoral Women and Prostitution in 19th century Florence] (Florence: Giunti, Comune di Firenze (Generazioni), 2003). 34 Translation: “Police.” 35 See also Michela Turno, “Postriboli in Firenze: Un’inchiesta del prefetto del 30 novembre 1849,” Bordellos in Florence: An investigation of the prefect on November 30, 1849 Annali di Storia di Firenze, II, (2007): 233–246. 36 Nicolas Terpstra and Colin Rose, Mapping Space, Sense, and Movement in Florence: Historical GIS and the Early Modern City (London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016).

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London,37 and Michael Kahan’s work on prostitution in Philadelphia between 1912 and 1918.38 Despite the interest in spatial history, very little research exists so far dealing with the spatialisation of prostitution. This study is this an attempt to examine the spatial logic of prostitution during the period covered by the years the Regolamento Cavour was in effect, combined with the historical perspective prior to this timeframe. This study parts on the social space theory by Martina Löw who argues that “space cannot be … distinguished from society, but it is a specific form of society,”39 and that space and society underlie a constant process of negotiation. As a means to demonstrate the links between the location of bordellos in the city, and the factors which influenced their distribution, I visually represent this information by developing relevant thematic maps.40 This method is grounded in spatial history. With the so-called ‘spatial turn,’ a renewed interest in the relationship and the reciprocal influence of space and society has arisen, a method also employed in digital humanities.41 The aim is to discover spatial relations which can only be understood through visualisation. This visual rendering is particularly valuable because of the large amount of data I had to process for this research: more than 1,000 legal and illegal sites of prostitution were recorded by the police. The location of public and private bordellos was contextualised with the larger use of urban space. Of particular interest were places which were considered off-limits to prostitution, as was the question of whether these spaces were respected, particularly when urban works, the number of inhabitants, or tourism changed urban dynamics. The sources for this research draw from the Florentine police files that are conserved in forty-one boxes at the State Archive in Florence. These documents cover exclusively the period between 1860 and 1888 when the Regolamento Cavour was in force. The documents are kept in separate files, one for every

37 Matthew Sangster, “Introduction to Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies – Romantic London.” Accessed March 25, 2018. http://www.romanticlondon.org/harris-list-intro/. 38 Michael Kahan, “Mapping Vice in Early Twentieth-century Philadelphia.” Accessed March 26, 2018. https://web.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-bin/site/project.php? id=1017. 39 Martina Löw, Raumsoziologie [Space Sociology] (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001), 167. 40 The maps were digitally drawn by Yanis Diaz, who employed two sets of cadastre maps. These maps are preserved at the Archivio Storico del Comune di Firenze, dated 1833 and 1884 (Comune di Firenze, Catasto 1833; Catasto 1884). 41 See also Philip Ethington, “Placing the past: “Groundwork” for a spatial theory of history,” Rethinking History 11 no.4 (December 2007): 465–93; and David Bodenhamer, John Corrigan, and Trevor Harris, (eds.) Deep Maps and Spatial Narratives (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2015).

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prostitute,42 no matter if she was officially registered or merely accused of clandestine prostitution (and, after her arrest, perhaps even officially enrolled as prostitute). The documents record, for instance, the registration as a prostitute, any arrest for an infringement of the Regolamento Cavour, the transfer to another bordello in Florence or to another city (or country), and in rare cases, marriage, and sometimes even death. Roughly 6,500 women were registered to have worked as prostitutes in Florence in this period, a number that could even be as high as 7,500, considering that many of the documents are missing. Altogether, an estimated 30,000 documents of these police files have survived, of which approximately 5,400 were relevant for the study of the location of bordellos.43 The Regolamento Cavour and the Spatialisation of Prostitution The Regolamento Cavour consists of ninety-six articles altogether, concerning administration, surveillance, and organisation of prostitution and the bordellos. The main aim of the regulation was mitigating the spread of venereal disease, particularly syphilis, which was seen as posing a threat not only to public health but to also a young nation and its armed forces. For this reason, women working as prostitutes had to register with the police and the health office and had to undergo twice-weekly medical examinations to determine their state of health. If they were diagnosed with a venereal disease, they were compelled to be treated in specifically established syphilis hospitals, or sifilicomi, from which they could only be released upon full recovery.44 42 43 44

For each of these women, a dossier was compiled and given an identification code composed of the first letter of her surname and a consecutive number. It should be noted that missing documents may be the result of misplacement, deliberate former removal or loss due to the devastating flood in November 1966 in Florence, which affected vast amounts of archival material, and cultural heritage at large. According to the police files, the mandatory cure at the Florentine sifilicomio could have even exceeded the usual few months, up to seven months like it had been attested for the prostitute Caterina Gianferatti (Questura di Firenze (1860–1888) Prostituzione. Archivio di Stato Firenze, Box 10, dossier 132 C, October 30, 1867). These hospitals are somewhat comparable to prisons: outside contact was restricted, and patients had to work. In addition, these “dishonest” women received education in reading and writing, as well as moral instruction with the aim of re-education (Ministero dell’Interno, Regio decreto pel riordinamento del servizio dei sifilicomi governativi [Royal decree for the reorganisation of the services at the governmental sifilicomi], 1871a, date of enactment September 2, 1871, articles 64, 98, 99; Ministero dell’Interno, Regolamento generale pei sifilicomi [General regulation for the sifilicomi], 1871b, date of enactment September 2, 1871, articles 91 and 94). Any prostitute who failed to adhere to institutional rules was punished.

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In the interest of not only avoiding the spread of disease but also guaranteeing a steady income through taxable prostitution, the regulation maintained tight control of the bordellos themselves and distinguished between legal and clandestine prostitution. Furthermore, the regulation aimed at upholding a certain morality by controlling prostitution and the fact that the authorities had to directly approve the locales destined as case di tolleranza45 or bordellos. The Regolamento Cavour distinguished between public bordellos, which typically had more than one prostitute, and privately run business operations,46 where only one prostitute was allowed to work. They correspond to the two systems of distributing bordellos in urban space: brothelisation and casernation, respectively.47 Both systems were employed and allowed by the questura. Two other modes of distributing bordellos existed: clustering and separation. The control of prostitution was facilitated by either allowing bordellos to operate within a limited area, creating a red light district, or by fostering an even distribution of bordellos to avoid any disturbances in the neighbourhood caused by competition amongst prostitutes and bordello owners. Among its many stipulations, the regulation declared certain areas offlimits for establishing bordellos. Articles 44 and 32 are of particular interest for the regulation of spatial boundaries and have provided the legal framework for this research. Article 44 stipulated that “the authorities will never allow the opening of a bordello in busy streets, nor near educational institutions, public buildings or places of worship.”48 It was therefore forbidden to open a bordello in areas considered to be morally vulnerable and in need of spatial protection. The regulation did not specify the distance of these buffer zones, so whether a bordello would have been allowed in one area rather than in another would have depended on the interpretation by the respective authorities. In addition, 45 Translation “Tolerated house.” 46 In rare cases, prostitutes were conceded to work in private bordellos, if they had their own family, were no longer considered young, or, more often, for health reasons, when they could no longer endure the working environment of public bordellos (Ministero dell’Interno, Regolamento sulla prostituzione, 1860, article 28). 47 See also Julia Bruggemann, “Prostitution, sexuality and gender roles in Imperial Germany: Hamburg, a case study,” in Genealogies of Identity: Interdisciplinary Readings on Sex and Sexuality, at the Interface, Probing the Boundaries, eds. Margaret Sönser Breen, and Fiona Peters (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005), 24. 48 Ministero dell’Interno, Regolamento sulla prostituzione, 1860, article 44. “L’Autorità non acconsentirà mai che si stabiliscano postriboli in vie frequentate della città, nè in vicinanza di case di educazione di pubblici stabilimenti e di edificio destinanti al culto.” It was further forbidden for prostitutes to live near places where alcohol was served or sold (Ministero dell’Interno, Regolamento sulla prostituzione, 1860, article 32) with the goal of mitigating the risk of additional disturbance to neighbourhoods and the potential threat of criminal activity. In addition, any transition from one bordello to another one, either within the city or to another, had to be communicated to and approved by the authorities.

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Fig. 2.1

Alexandra Skedzuhn-Safir

Theoretical representation of the spatial boundaries stipulated by the Regolamento Cavour on prostitution, in vigour between 1860 and 1888 (image: Alexandra Skedzuhn-Safir 2023).

to mitigate the risk of moral “contamination,” prostitutes were forbidden to “… show themselves at windows and doors of their own residences, and to loiter and frequent busy streets, squares or to use public passageways….”49 The Cavour Regulation also stipulated that bordellos had to maintain a physical boundary between respectable public space and the immoral interior. Therefore, each public bordello had to be fitted with milk-glass windows and blinds, which had to be kept closed.50 Any infringement of the regulation was usually met with incarceration.51 The regulation therefore, despite its lacking specification of actual spatial boundaries in terms of measurable distances, nonetheless enforced the binary concept of respectable and dishonourable social space so that protected sites were associated with the honourable and respectable public, the negative ones with society’s less honourable, or even criminal, elements. These negative, void-like spaces could have been thus used for setting up a bordello, theoretically at least, unless a school or any other protected area was established therein (see fig. 2.1). 49 Ministero dell’Interno, Regolamento sulla prostituzione, 1860, article 32. “… d’affacciarsi alle finestre o di stazionare sulle porte anche della propria abitazione; e di fermarsi e frequentare le vie principali, le piazze o le pubbliche passeggiate… .” 50 Ministero dell’Interno, Regolamento sulla prostituzione, 1860, article 45. 51 Questura, Box 15, dossier 97 F, February 7, 1877.

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Off-Limits: The Legal Framework and Its Effect on Bordellos Archival documents attest to the fact that bordellos were not allowed to open or had to close because of their vicinity to particular places of worship, schools, and public buildings. Despite this regulation, the interpretation of what was considered ‘to be in proximity’ was rather flexible and were dependent on circumstances, as some examples will demonstrate. For instance, a bordello in Via del Moro  29 could not be opened in 1866 because the District Court was set to shortly move in nearby.52 In another case, a prostitute living in Via dei Pinti 18 was ordered to leave her residence because of a nearby school.53 However, in other instances, bordellos were allowed to run even though they were near to schools, or even public buildings. This is particularly evident in the case of the bordello in the Chiasso dei Lanzi, just off the Piazza Signoria, near the Palazzo Vecchio. This area was very busy in the 1860s, particularly as the seat of Italy’s government was in the Palazzo Vecchio itself. Although this bordello was roughly twenty metres away from the central square, even then considered to be one of the principal areas of the city, it operated there for many decades,54 even into the twentieth century.55 Thus, it was not necessarily the vicinity of off-limits areas that influenced the granting of permission to bordellos, but rather their visibility. In fact, by studying the layout of this narrow alleyway, one notices that it is slightly curved, and with its width of about 2 metres, the bordello cannot be seen from any place of the central piazza. As no public building, church, school, or tourist facilities stood on this street, it would have remained rather secluded and accessed only by those who intended to visit this particular street. Although many restaurants, and cafes, as well as the Uffizi galleries, stood nearby, for other people, tourists, or perhaps even families of high standing, this street would have not only have been unappealing, but due to its visual inaccessibility, it may have carried the potential of danger.56 Considering, therefore, the longevity of this 52 53 54

Questura, Box 2, dossier 49 B, November 5, 1866. Questura, Box 18, dossier 35 G, February 22, 1873. By 1814 it had been listed as a bordello (Presidenza del Buongoverno 1814–1848, Archivio di Stato Firenze, affari comunali, prima parte, filza 87, May 17, 1814.). The street names Chiasso dei Baroncelli or dei Lanzi indicate the same street. 55 Comune di Firenze, Stradario. Da Via Colletta a Via dei Maccheroni (1900), Chiasso dei Baroncelli. Held in Archivio di Stato Firenze. 56 Architectural theorist Bill Hillier proposed the term “visual connectivity” to describe one factor which determines the possibility of people preferring one street over another (Hillier, Space is the Machine – A Configurational Theory of Architecture (London: Space Syntax, 2007), 108. Also accessed June 26, 2017 online at: http://spaceisthemachine. com/ ().

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Fig. 2.2

Alexandra Skedzuhn-Safir

After the Cavour Regolamento had come into force a few clusters of legal (registered) public and private bordellos began to form, as indicated by the circle. Most noticeable is the absence of places of worship within these clusters (drawing: Yanis Diaz, 2018).

bordello, we may presume that it was successful because of both its invisibility and proximity to public, social, and political life.57 The vicinity to busy shopping streets or touristic facilities appear to have been the most significant motives for setting up shop. Thus, it is not surprising that many bordellos were located in the city centre, with the numerous hotels, cafes, or restaurants. However, authorities tried to assure that bordellos maintained a certain distance from these places. The most well-known of all of Florence’s bordellos was a place known as the Palla. Giuseppe Conti carefully described this place as one in which “… certain women lived who disrespected virtue and morality.”58 It was situated close to where the first Florentine civic bordello was located at the beginning of the fifteenth century, in the deconsecrated church of Santa Maria di Campidoglio. Not only was adapting a former 57 The bordellos on the Chiasso del Buco are comparable, as they also were close to the Piazza Signoria and parallel to the one in Chiasso dei Lanzi. 58 Conti, Firenze vecchia, 422, “… ed abitato da certe donne che facevano appunto d’ogni virtue e d’ogni decoro”.

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place of worship as bordello a rather unusual decision, but perhaps even more intriguing is the fact that it was located at the far north-west corner of the Mercato Vecchio, behind the fish market designed by the Renaissance architect Giorgio Vasari. In this case, the Regolamento Cavour does not appear to have been interpreted in the strictest sense, particularly considering that the market was a very busy area and that the bordello would have been visible from the square itself, since the entrance was slightly elevated and could only be reached by a flight of stairs. It may be true that the regulation was more laxly interpreted in this case because, firstly, the entire area was already rather discredited, and secondly, the upper social strata was perhaps not expected to be visiting the malodorous and dilapidated market area. In 1874, the police documented that the public bordello in Via dell’Altafronte 3 had come to their attention due to the inappropriate behaviour of the prostitutes living there and the ineffective window blinds, which could be opened so that the prostitutes stood at the windows smoking and exposing their breasts to passers-by.59 Other prostitutes sought the attention of clients by placing a suggestive lamp on the windowsill of their habitation.60 Some prostitutes tried to solicit clients by calling out to them or gesturing, a task easily achieved, considering that some bordellos were located on the ground floor, such as the one in Via Nazionale 51.61 The prostitutes from the bordello in Via dei Lontanmorti 10 were rather creative: They accosted their customers from a small bathroom window but were caught by police officers on their rounds, leading to the closure of the business for two weeks.62 Not mentioned in the regulation, but still mandatory for bordellos in Florence from 1866 onwards, were the metal gates that had to be installed at the entrance of public bordellos. These gates functioned as protection from unwanted guests, as an escape-proof barrier for prostitutes, and as visual protection in the interest of public morality.63 Their role as an imprisoning barrier is demonstrated by the experience of prostitute Francesca della Penna, who

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60 61 62 63

Questura, Box 10, dossier 172 C, June 16, 1874. Usually, private prostitutes were exempt from this regulation (Questura, Box 36, dossier 30 S, August 7, 1867). They had to oblige, though, if neighbours complained: A private letter by a family father and signed as “Friend Aletti”, lamented that the prostitutes in Via Nazionale 51 on the ground and first floor should be forced to keep the window shutters closed (Questura, Box 18, dossier 30 G, not dated). Questura, Box 32, dossier 488 P, not dated. Questura, Box 12, dossier 682 C, June 10, 1886. Questura, box 23, dossier 11 M, May 1866. Questura, Box 23, dossier 11 M, February 11, 1866.

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was incarcerated for having fled the bordello in Via San Miniato fra le Torri 8 upon having found the metal gate open and unguarded.64 Illegal prostitution constituted any activity that took place outside a registered bordello by a woman either unenrolled as prostitute or working in a clandestine bordello. The places where this kind of activity took place and whether they would have operated nearby the sanctioned bordellos are of particular interest. This study demonstrates two opposing strategies concerning the relationship between the locations of clandestine and sanctioned bordellos: in one case, a clandestine prostitute or bordello might profit from the dynamics and reputation that a street or area known for prostitution brought, thus attracting more customers. The other option was illegal prostitution occurring far enough away from notorious sites, the advantage of which would have been twofold: the owner of an illegal bordello would face neither competition nor the regular police control that otherwise took place at the registered bordellos. To escape detection by the police, some women also chose to have sex with their clients in more remote areas of the city, and several police reports document activity at the wooded area to the west, near the Fortezza da Basso.65 This questura report also suggests certain advantages of conducting business away from notorious sites with a cluster of known brothels. Two Contradictory Approaches: Clustering and Separation The two spatial strategies to control prostitution were either to distribute bordellos widely within the urban fabric (separation) or to cluster them in specific areas of the city. The Italian doctor Isaaco Galligo argued in 1860 that bordellos should under no circumstance be located in close proximity; rather, they should be in different isolated areas of the city.66 Similarly, Giovanni Bolis, the head of police in Bologna, also believed a separation of bordellos would facilitate better control and lessen disturbances.67 Earlier, in 1836, French hygienist Alexandre Jean-Baptiste Parent-Duchâtelet authored a highly influential study 64 Questura, Box 13, dossier 159 D, December 12, 1880. 65 Questura, Box 18, dossier 59 G, August 2, 1870. 66 Isaaco Galligo, Progetto di regolamento sulla prostituzione per le principali città d’Italia ed in particolare per quelle della Toscana Project of Regulating Prostitution in the Major Italian Cities, Particularly those in Tuscany. (Florence: Martini, 1860), 27, article 66. 67 Giovanni Bolis, La polizia in Italia e in altri stati d’Europa e le classi pericolosi della società [The Police in Italy and Other European States and the Dangerous Classes of Society] (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1871), 890. Also accessed October 17, 2017 online at: https://archive. org/details/bub_gb_kUwVh6Ej9l4C.

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on prostitution in Paris.68 He advocated, conversely, for a clustering of brothels to render surveillance an easier task.69 In March 1877, Consiglia Lepari, a bordello owner in Florence, asked for the permission to open a bordello in Via dei Pepi, located to the east of the city behind the church of Santa Croce. The police, however, in a letter to the director of the ufficio sanitario,70 advised against another bordello in that quarter because then surveillance would have to be increased: The woman Lepari Consiglia has asked to open a brothel in Via dei Pepi 18. Close to it is Via Ghibellina, a street frequented by many people so that it could be considered to be a principal street. In the previously mentioned Via dei Pepi exists another bordello and not far from there are other bordellos in Via dell’Ulivo. Without even mentioning Via Rosa, there are enough bordellos in this small area, and if another one opened here, consequences have to be taken into account for the quantity of prostitutes and the control of their homes.71

Despite the police force’s clear disapproval, clustering bordellos was unavoidable due to the rather large number of brothels and the restricted space: even before 1865, a slight clustering is present in select areas of the city, chiefly in the working class area of Santo Spirito, between the Palazzo Pitti and Via Maggio, north of the river Arno in several areas, such as the former Mercato Vecchio, and off Via dei Fossi. In following years, some new clusters formed further to the east and the west of the city centre, while other clusters remained and their number of operating bordellos augmented. These clusters persisted even in the years after the capital moved to Rome. At this time, it is noteworthy that registered bordellos were not only established in existing clusters but were also opened in peripheral areas of the city.

68 “De la prostitution dans la ville de Paris considérée sous le rapport de l’higiène publique, de la morale et de l’administration” [On the prostitution in the city of Paris in relation to public hygiene, morals and administration], Alexandre Parent-Duchâtelet, Die Prostitution in Paris. Eine sozial-hygienische Studie [Prostitution in Paris. A Social-Hygienic Study], (Freiburg: Fr. Paul Lorenz, 1903). 69 Parent-Duchâtelet, Die Prostitution in Paris, 130. 70 Translation: “Health office.” 71 Questura, Box 21, dossier 33 L, March 19, 1877. “In numero 18 in Via dei Pepi dove domanda di aprire una casa di tolleranza la donna Lepari Consiglia, è in prossima all’altra Via Ghibellina la quale molto praticata da passanti e si puó ritenere come strade principale. Nella via dei Pepi sud.a vi é l’altro casino e poco lungi da questo, esistono altre case di tolleranza che sarebbero in via dell’Ulivo. Tal che in quel piccolo perimetro senza accennare la Via Rosa i Postriboli sono a sufficienza dovendo ora aumentarene vi sarebbe il caso di dovere in seguito sentirne la conseguenza per la quantità delle prostitute e per il controllo della loro dimora.”

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At first, this clustering of bordellos and their locations in specific areas do not appear to follow specific rules or patterns. It is only upon further examination of the buildings and their functions, as well as of any large urban works nearby, that patterns are revealed. In the 1880s, the state of repair of edifices worsened in the Mercato Vecchio district due to its imminent demolition, and landlords most likely could no longer achieve adequate rents, so rooms were let for very moderate prices. Thus, perhaps predictably, a cluster of private and public bordellos emerged in the area during this period, making this quarter a true red-light district. Contemporary authors describe the place as a safe haven for thieves and the underworld and home to prostitutes.72 Between 1860 and 1888, there were altogether fifteen public and fifty-five private registered bordellos, though not all of them operating at the same time, in an area consisting of roughly 0.05 km2. The clustering in this area was likely due not only to accessible rents, but also the fact that the confluence of many bordellos could offer clients a wide range of different houses and a variety of prostitutes, all in an area with fewer and fewer inhabitants, becoming more debauched. The presence, or dearth, of religious buildings also played a role in the distribution of brothels. Although many convents had been suppressed – first with the reign of Pietro Leopoldo (1765–1790), then under French rule, and finally with the shift of Italy’s capital to Florence when additional buildings were needed for government – Florence was still dotted with numerous places of worship. They were located towards the centre, to a lesser degree towards the periphery, and a distinct lack is noticeable in the area north of the church of Santa Croce. In the years between 1872 and 1888, a high number of bordellos can be found in this quarter devoid of churches of convents, which also contained few schools, public buildings or busy streets. Therefore, an additional factor must have influenced this particular clustering: the neighbourhood itself. It was a predominantly working-class area, interspersed with a few grand palazzi. It was also an area which, together with the Oltrarno in the south, the area of the Borgo Ognissanti towards the west, and San Lorenzo to the north, had been home to immigrant labourers and wool workers in centuries past.73 In the quarter of Santa Croce, setting up a bordello would have thus met little resistance from the authorities and perhaps from the neighbourhood itself. 72 73

Girolamo Checcacci, Del riordinamento del centro di Firenze con piazza nel mezzo, adorna di portici [The Re-arrangement of the Centre of Florence with the Central Square Embellished with Porticoes] (Florence: Cellini, 1865), 5 and 6; Conti, Firenze vecchia, 438. Mazzi, Prostitute e lenoni, 298; Gene Brucker, Florenz in der Renaissance: Stadt, Gesellschaft, Kultur [Florence in the Renaissance: City, Society, Culture] trans. C. Preuschoft (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1990), 44.

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Exceptions to this rule, however, concerned not the presence of prostitutes themselves, but rather the manner in which they went about their business, which could disturb the neighbours (fig. 2.2).74 Apart from the legal framework, which consented to or prohibited the opening of a bordello, the question of the most lucrative location possible was surely a matter which prostitutes and bordello owners dealt with. The affluence of the neighbourhood may have been the reason why more bordellos settled near, but not precisely in, the newly built quarter known as the Mattonaia to the north-east beginning in the mid-1860s. It is not clear whether the prohibitive rents were the reason that impeded bordello owners from opening a bordello actually within the district itself. Perhaps it was also due to the intervention of the authorities, as Elisa Ghebardt experienced: She was hoping to open a bordello in Via Barbano 8, another elegant new quarter to the north-west near the Fortezza da Basso, but her request was denied.75 Considering that the police force was not capable of furnishing valid arguments that would have justified this decision, a possible explanation could be that influential parties urged the police to keep this quarter free of prostitution. The motive for prohibiting a bordello here was thus not grounded in trying to keep bordellos in one of the more remote areas of the city, but to ascertain the binary approach of distinguishing the honourable from the “dishonest,” in separating social classes, reflected in the urban fabric. Dynamics Within the Location of Bordellos Despite strict regulations on spatial boundaries concerning the permitted areas for private and public bordellos, a substantial number of them managed to operate inside historic Florence within an area comprising 505 hectares. Other than the historical and economic factors, there existed three issues which influenced the localisation of bordellos within the city: the number of registered prostitutes, the distribution of prostitutes working in private or public enterprises, and the number of areas declared to be prohibited. When the regulation entered into force, thirty prostitutes were registered with the police, working from sixteen bordellos. When Italy’s political capital 74

75

Attesting to this is the letter of a family father to the director of the health office (ufficio sanitario) complaining about the bordello in Via dei Macci 66 in the Santa Croce quarter, which is deplorable compared to another one nearby (Questura, Box  7, dossier 705 B, January 29, 1886). Questura, Box 18, dossier 46 G, January 10, 1867, and February 4, 1867.

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was transferred from Turin to Florence in 1865, there were approximately 132 registered prostitutes distributed to circa twenty-three public and fifty-two private bordellos. With the stark increase of about 30,000 more inhabitants living in Florence, the number of prostitutes also rose, rising to 372 in 1871. At that moment, there most likely existed 152 bordellos; 37 public and 115 private ones. In 1874, for instance, a total of 50 public bordellos and 121 private enterprises existed, amounting to 171 locales. At that time, roughly 330 registered prostitutes worked in Florence, a relatively high number compared to other years.76 This phenomenon may be attributed to the fact that, when the government moved from Florence to Rome, some of the women who had worked in service to these families found themselves out of work, and became prostitutes to make ends meet in this period marked by economic hardships. Considering that bordellos could accommodate either an individual or several prostitutes, the shift from a majority of private enterprises to primarily public ones may be interpreted as the consequence of a lack of sufficient locations. This concerned not only available affordable houses within a growing city undergoing major urban works and gentrification processes but also an increase of places protected by the regulation, such as additional schools, or busy streets with eateries and hotels. Contesting Public Space Public space, one should be aware, was one of the few possible spaces available for prostitutes to advertise their services during a time when no signage

76 In that year, Florence counted 167,167 inhabitants (Ugo Giusti, Demografia fiorentina 1862–1914 [Florentine Demographics 1862–1914] (Florence: Barbera (Comune di Firenze, Monografie e studi dell’ufficio di statistica, 6), 1916), 17). In 1862, 72 prostitutes were registered in Florence for a population of 114,363 (Giusti, Demografia fiorentina, 17). In the year 1878, there were 234 legally working prostitutes compared to 168,135 inhabitants. The number of registered prostitutes is based on a mixed calculation: for several years, the amount was attested by statistics compiled by the authorities (Prefettura del compartimento fiorentino 1859–1864, Archivio di Stato Firenze, affari governativi, 1863, filza 81, n.d.; Prefettura di Firenze 1865–1952, Archivio di Stato Firenze, affari ordinari, 1868, fiza 161, busta 3; 1871, filza 116, busta 6, n.d.; 1872, filza 142, 4th trimestre 1871; Questura, Box 31, dossier 443 P, September 8, 1877; Box 32, dossier 488 P, September 14, 1878; Box 39, dossier 173 V, July 18, 1887; Box 30, dossier 146 P, January 20, 1887; Box 35, dossier 304 R, April 9, 1884), for the remaining years the amount was presumed in accordance with the established bordellos operating at that time.

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on bordello entrances77 was allowed; printed guides like those in England78 or in France79 were not permitted. However, in public space, prostitutes were nonetheless to remain as invisible as possible; they had to refrain from visiting and lingering in busy streets, following passers-by, or openly soliciting clients. Prostitutes were not allowed to wander the streets near their house, especially during meal times, or to be outside after 8pm or 10pm, according to season.80 Additionally, public prostitutes had to obtain permits from the authorities to leave the bordello, and they were not to go to theatres. In public, they had to be decently dressed and sober. The particular streets favoured by prostitutes in search of customers were usually the busy shopping streets, like Via dei Calzaiuoli, a street that young women sought out in order to be seen,81 or Via dei Tornabuoni, with its elegant shops and the well-known, upper-class café Doney. It was just off this street, in Via dei Giacomini, where a successful, long running bordello existed; in fact, one of the more prominent bordello owners, Enrichetta Marchionni, was listed as its proprietor in 1900.82 Many police reports inform us of arrests of prostitutes in these streets, some of whom had devised intriguing systems to draw attention to themselves: Agata Innocenti was arrested by patrolling officers when she strolled the streets in a flashy red dress and hat.83 Any kind of flamboyant appearance was seen as an indicator of solicitation. A young woman was observed walking a big black poodle in the streets, and perhaps in combination with presenting herself as either an English or French national, she

77

Interestingly, Isaaco Galligo proposed installing coloured lanterns at the entrance of bordellos, either in red or green, depending on whether the bordello was a private or public one (Galligo, Progetto di regolamento sulla prostituzione, 27). This measure surely would have not found much support. 78 From 1756 to 1795, a guide known as Harris’s List of “Covent-Garden Ladies, or Man of Pleasure’s Kalendar” was published in London (Harris, Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies or Man of Pleasures Kalendar, 1793. Accessed August 18, 2018 online at https://www. exclassics.com/harris/listA5.pdf (). 79 According to a document from 1864, a Carlo Catteneo had requested the addresses of bordellos from Italian authorities in order to compile a guide similar to those in use in France and England (Prefettura di Firenze 1859–1864, 1864, filza 61, busta 5, Ministero dell’Interno, June 13 and 17, 1864). His wish was not granted, fearing that he was trying to organise a ring of pimps, with him as their boss. 80 Ministero dell’Interno, Regolamento sulla prostituzione, 1860, article 32. 81 Conti, Firenze vecchia, 412. 82 Comune di Firenze, Stradario. 83 Questura, Box 38, dossier 135 V, June 8, 1878.

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raised the suspicion of police officers.84 Even gestures85 and open flirtatiousness were grounds for arrest: a woman who dared to look some men directly in the face in Via dei Tornabuoni was taken to be a prostitute and subsequently arrested.86 Although prostitutes in Italy were generally prohibited from visiting theatres, an exception was made in Florence, so that they were only banned from visiting those frequented by the upper classes.87 Although there was a rule that prostitutes were only given this liberty if they had previously proven to not cause disgrace, it is clear that some of them used this opportunity to gain attention: Documents attest to cases where prostitutes visiting the theatre were subsequently arrested for scandalous behaviour.88 Considering that prostitutes had to remain out of sight but still needed to communicate with their clients, they had few options. Naturally, they could use a pimp, but an intermediary could also be engaged. Such a person could have simply been somebody who acted as an informer, like in the case of a porter working in a large pub and café known as the “Cornelio” behind the cathedral. The police were informed that he distributed addresses of prostitutes to male customers.89 Other times, women would have masqueraded in jobs that would have appeared innocuous, like itinerant flower girls.90 In doing so, they could move in and out of public space and talk to men in cafes or restaurants without raising suspicion of the police officers on patrol. Another occupation that explained an alternative lifestyle but would have also given the possibility of contact with men was being an artists’ model.91 An even less obvious way, already practised and witnessed in Florence during the early modern period92 was for prostitutes to cross-dress as a man.93 It has been argued that public space in the nineteenth century was divided according to gender. Although the presence of women on large and busy streets would have been acceptable, their freedom of movement was limited 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

Questura, Box 38, dossier 135 V, June 8, 1878. In this case, it turned out that the woman in question did not work as a prostitute. A prostitute had solicited military men near Via dei Tornabuoni (Questura, Box 9, dossier 76 S, June 15, 1868). Questura, Box 20, dossier 385 G, July 16, 1882. Questura, Box 21, dossier 9 L, February 18, 1870. Questura, Box 18, dossier 25 G, January 11, 1873. Also, the space in front of the theatre was a promising place to solicit clients. Questura, Box 33, dossier 709 P, not dated. Questura, Box 20, dossier 385 G, June 15, 1882. Questura, Box 33, dossier 598 P, n.d. Canosa and Colonnello, 1989, 32. Questura, Box 20, dossier 385 G, June 15, 1882.

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to specific hours of the day.94 Space thus became divided into predominantly male or female spaces. For an honourable woman, walking on secluded streets would have appeared morally suspicious, especially after dark, and would have been acceptable only for women with already questionable morality. State-controlled prostitution and the prohibition of bordellos in close contact with respectable society used and reinforced this gendered division of space, which coincides with the significance specific sites and buildings are given in Florence. Despite these limitations placed on women, prostitutes controlled the use of public space to some extent through their working networks and through the acquisition of buildings employed as brothels. In this way, bordello owners and prostitutes actively took, to some extent at least, charge of these secondary streets. While regulated prostitution controlled the use of public space, prostitutes still strove to penetrate male dominated public space at every opportunity. Concluding Thoughts As this study into the spatial history of prostitution demonstrates, the legal framework provided by the Regolamento Cavour cannot be seen as the sole parameter that impacted the location of prostitution in Florence; historical and economic factors must also be taken into account. With the numerous registered prostitutes and bordellos in the city, prostitution had a distinct presence in areas that were lacking religious, public, or educational buildings and touristic facilities. Areas that stood in the shadow of honourable public spaces – down alleyways and on side streets ignored or avoided by respectable people, were areas where prostitution frequently took place. It was a parallel world. Concurrently, with a rising number of prostitutes and bordellos, prostitution branched out to the more remote areas of the city, carrying with it ever greater visibility. The idea that prostitution should be contained within physical boundaries, to be neither seen nor heard, was primarily a means of keeping public space respectable and decent. Despite these restrictions, brothel owners managed to set up their business in many areas in the city, some of them very close to prominent and heavily visited areas, not only by the middle and upper classes, but also by tourists. Prostitutes, too, searched for a variety of ways to bypass these limitations imposed on them to solicit potential customers. Ironically, in 94 Ann Hallamore Caesar, “About Town: The City and the Female Reader, 1860–1900,” Modern Italy, 7 (2), (2002): 131–32.

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spite of laws prohibiting prostitutes and bordello owners from openly advertising their business, prostitution was conspicuous, clashing with any underlying aim of morality. There were three major factors that influenced the clustering of bordellos: the availability of affordable houses and apartments, the vicinity to tourist facilities and places of social encounter, and the lack of urban space not defined as prohibited zones for prostitution. Changes in the urban fabric and use of spaces also affected the location of bordellos. Changes within society, too, influenced the available places that were employed as bordellos. Boundaries were continuously tested and negotiated. Being able to physically locate bordellos in the urban fabric is of importance for the history of prostitutes, bordello owners, and clients, but also reflects how society strived to cope with and control what it perceived to be a morally and hygienically threatening phenomenon. It thus provides us with an insight into society’s values at a given time, manifested in its tangible heritage. For many prostitutes, this part of their lives may have been uncomfortable memory, just as the topic of prostitution today remains – outside of academic discourse – a difficult one. For others, historic and abolished bordellos carry positive undertones, perhaps even evoking sentiments of nostalgia, especially if they are connected to upper-class places. Therefore, bordellos can be considered to have a Streitwert, or ‘contention value,’ not despite but because they provoke discussion and disagreement among different groups of people.95 Values attributed to a specific site, however, may change over time, so that a contention value may emerge only after a determined period of time. Therefore, recognising bordellos as a part of our heritage or consciously ignoring them constitutes a political act.

95 Gabi Dolff-Bonekämper, “Gegenwartswerte. Für eine Erneuerung von Alois Riegls Denkmalwerttheorie,” [Present-day Value. Towards a Renewal of Alois Riegl’s Theory of Monument Values] in DENKmalWERTE: Beiträge zur Theorie und Aktualität der Denkmalpflege: [Georg Mörsch zum 70. Geburtstag] eds. Georg Mörsch, Hans-Rudolf Meier and Ingrid Scheurmann (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2010), 34.

Prostitution and the Security Culture of the German Empire (1871–1914) Tobias Bruns Introduction During the nineteenth century, prostitution was depicted as a mass phenomenon in Germany.1 Contemporary observers described the seemingly evergrowing numbers of prostitutes2 as a biproduct of modernization processes like the industrialization and urbanization. Maids, waitresses and female factory workers were especially associated with an above average prostitution risk. Prostitution was seen as an urban phenomenon that went hand in hand with the formation of a night life culture in the Reich’s metropolises. While there was a certain ambivalence regarding prostitutes, who especially fascinated artists and writers, many contemporaries saw their perceived rising numbers as a threat. Like many other European countries, prostitution in Germany was regulated by the state, although with a high level of variation between regional and local practices.3 Historians have offered various explanations of why prostitution was perceived as a threat (and therefore criminalized and regulated) during the German Empire. From a feminist-marxist point of view, Regina Schulte stated that the bourgeoise society of the nineteenth century declared prostitution an “ineradicable, necessary evil”4 since it needed prostitution to repress women 1 During the German Empire, the term prostitution almost exclusively meant female heterosexual prostitution, which is also the focus of this paper. 2 The term prostitute is understood as a contemporary discursive construct rather than a description of an actual sex worker. 3 For depictions of the history of prostitution during the German Empire see Regina Schulte, Sperrbezirke: Tugendhaftigkeit und Prostitution in der bürgerlichen Welt (Frankfurt am Main: Syndikat, 1979); Richard J. Evans, Tales from the German underworld: Crime and punishment in the nineteenth century (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1998), 166–212; Sybille Krafft, Zucht und Unzucht: Prostitution und Sittenpolizei im München der Jahrhundertwende (Munich: Hugendubel, 1996); Claudia Thoben, Prostitution in Nürnberg: Wahrnehmung und Massregelung zwischen 1871 und 1945 (Nuremberg: Stadtarchiv Nürnberg, 2007), 37–392; Fritz Koch, Verwaltete Lust: Stadtverwaltung und Prostitution in Frankfurt am Main, 1866–1968 (Frankfurt a.M.: Waldemar Kramer, 2010), 15–114. 4 Schulte, Sperrbezirke, 174. (This and all following quotes have been translated by the author of this article).

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on the grounds of “the economic interests of the patriarchal society,”5 while noticing “with horror what it does not want to realize about itself.”6 Richard Evans criticizes this depiction, arguing that proletarian workers also frequented prostitutes. Furthermore, there was a broad resistance against regulation, especially from bourgeoise activists (who nonetheless saw prostitution as a threat). According to Evans, prostitution “represented the fears of social disorder that haunted all respectable people when they contemplated the mass of unemployed or casually employed in the great cities”7 and was consequently politized.8 However, the problematization of prostitution cannot simply (only) be interpreted as the result of the fear of the middle and upper classes of social change. Social Democrats were scandalized by prostitution in their struggle against the capitalist society and depicted prostitutes and their surroundings as elements of the “Lumpenproletariat”9 that discredited the reputation of the ‘real’ working class. To properly acknowledge the ambiguous discourses on prostitution it is necessary to consider that, according to Benjamin Ziemann, the German Empire was an era of poly-contextuality “in which a plurality of observing points of view existed that could not be summarized or subsumed and in which every event fell into the reference of the most diverse observers and contextures.”10 The class-crossing depiction of prostitution as a threat therefore cannot simply be reduced to a result of class struggle.11 Furthermore, a focus on the regulation of prostitution as a bourgeois approach of reacting to its attributed threat ignores the fact that after the turn of the century it underwent a process of legal reform and was eventually abolished in Germany in 1927. As Silvia Kontos has shown, the history of 5 6 7 8

9 10 11

Schulte, Sperrbezirke, 11. Schulte, Sperrbezirke, 8. Richard J. Evans, “Prostitution, State and Society in Imperial Germany,” Past and Present 70, no. 1 (1976): 119. See Richard  J.  Evans, “Geschichte, Psychologie und die Geschlechterbeziehungen in der Vergangenheit: Bemerkungen zu zwei Neuerscheinungen über Mann-Frau Beziehungen im Kaiserreich und in der Weimarer Republik, Review of: Klaus Theweleit, Männerphantasien: Band 1 – Frauen, Fluten, Körper, Geschichte; Band 2 – Männerkörper. Zur Psychoanalyse des weißen Terrors. Frankfurt 1978; Regina Schulte,  Sperrbezirke. Tugendhaftigkeit und Prostitution in der bürgerlichen Welt. Frankfurt 1979,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 7 (1981); Evans, Tales from the German underworld, 166–212. Heinrich Lux, Die Prostitution, ihre Ursachen, ihre Folgen und ihre Bekämpfung (Berlin: Verlag der Expedition des ‘Vorwärts’, Berliner Volksblatt, 1892), 12. Benjamin Ziemann, “Das Kaiserreich als Epoche der Polykontexturalität,” in Das deutsche Kaiserreich in der Kontroverse, eds. Sven  O.  Müller and Cornelius Torp (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009), 61–62. See Krafft, Zucht und Unzucht, 234.

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prostitution was characterized by an oscillation between more and less repressive approaches, a dynamic that is not simply a reflection of different phases of bourgeois hegemony.12 To incorporate the heterogony of different perceptions, descriptions and discussions of prostitution and its politics during the German Empire and at the same time explain its potential to be problematized as a threat, this paper suggests that it should be interpreted in the context of the specific security culture of the German Empire, “the sum of the beliefs, values and practices of institutions and individuals that decide what (a society) sees as a threat and how and with which measures it reacts to threats.”13 But since discourses on prostitution were highly complex, it is necessary to accompany the rather monolithic concept of a security culture by an approach that catches its internal heterogony of different perceptions of threats (that nonetheless shared a common background). The paper focuses on the various efforts to securitize prostitution during the German Empire and draws conclusions regarding its security culture. Securitization14 is defined as the process whereby certain political, societal, or cultural phenomena are successfully constructed as security issues in order to justify extraordinary or emergency actions or, more generally, a drastic change in legislation. The central element of a specific securitization attempt is the existence of Bedrohungskommunikation,15 a sociological model that analyses threat discourses. It has been applied by historians to explain how historical 12

Silvia Kontos, Öffnung der Sperrbezirke: Zum Wandel von Theorien und Politik der Prostitution (Königstein im Taunus: Ulrike Helmer, 2009), 284. 13 Christopher Daase, “Sicherheitskultur als interdisziplinäres Forschungsprogramm,” in Sicherheitskultur: Soziale und politische Praktiken der Gefahrenabwehr, eds. Christopher Daase, Philipp Offermann and Valentin Rauer (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 2012), 40. 14 Regarding the concept of Securitization see: Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A new framework for analysis (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Pub., 1998); Ole Wæver, “Securitization und Desecuritization,” in On security, ed. Ronnie  D.  Lipschutz (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995); Thierry Balzacq, ed., Securitization theory: How security problems emerge and dissolve (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, New York: Routledge, 2011); On the benefit of the concept of securitzation for historians, see Eckart Conze, “Securitization. Gegenwartsdiagnose oder historischer Analyseansatz?,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 38, no. 3 (2012). 15 On the concept of Bedrohungskommunikation, see Werner Schirmer, Bedrohungs­ kommunikation: Eine gesellschaftstheoretische Studie zu Sicherheit und Unsicherheit (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2008); Fabian Fechner et al., “‘We are gambling with our survival’: Bedrohungskommunikation als Indikator für bedrohte Ordnungen,” in Aufruhr – Katastophe – Konkurrenz – Zerfall:  Bedrohte Ordnungen als Thema der Kulturwissenschaften, eds. Ewald Frie and Mischa Meier (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014).

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actors were able to make a specific threat plausible to recommend a reaction to said threat. It is thus the core element of a specific securitization attempt. A single act of Bedrohungskommunikation consists of three basic elements: a review of the status quo (1), a description of a desirable or avoidable future scenario (2) and recommendations for the course of action (3).16 The source material for the analysis therefore consists of a wide array of publications in which actors used Bedrohungskommunikation in order to securitize prostitution, e.g. in form of parliamentary debates, speeches, pamphlets or journals. But the securitization of a political or societal topic cannot be limited only to speech acts. It is also important, as Didier Bigo points out, to incorporate in an analysis the everyday practices of securitization.17 The paper thus integrates the analysis of the prostitution debate during the German Empire with a description of contemporary practices to regulate, control and prohibit prostitution and its alleged consequences.18 The paper begins with a chronological overview (Part  I) of the prostitution regime(s), the prostitution debate and specific securitization attempts during the German Empire 1871–1914, thus offering comprehensive overview of the history of prostitution during the Kaiserreich for readers who are new to the subject. The paper then analyses (Part II) why certain securitization attempts were successful while others failed, showing that there was a shift in the referent object of securitization discourses from the social question to the biologized nation. In a concluding section (Part III) the paper argues that phenomena of mobility were at the core of the perception of prostitution as a threat in the security culture of the German Empire. Part I: The Prostitution Debate During the German Empire 1871–1914 The Prohibition of Brothels and Its Consequences (1871–1880) During most of the nineteenth century, prostitution was generally seen as a ‘necessary evil’ that was morally despised but depicted as the only way to relieve men of their natural Sinnlichkeit (sensuality). It was believed that men needed to express their sexuality, or they would otherwise become sick. Since pre-marital sex between fiancées was taboo and masturbation counted as a 16 Fechner et al., “We are gambling with our survival,” 161. 17 Didier Bigo, “Security and Immigration: Toward a Critique of the Governmentality of Unease,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 27, no. 1 (2002). 18 See Claire Wilkinson, “The limits of spoken words: From meta-narratives to experiences of security,” in Securitization theory: How security problems emerge and dissolve, ed. Thierry Balzacq (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, New York: Routledge, 2011).

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health risk, prostitution seemed to be the only viable alternative. Even though prostitution was implicitly accepted as a social institution, it was perceived as a danger to public order, safety, and hygiene since it was associated with low-life criminality and venereal diseases, especially syphilis and gonorrhea. It was widely believed, particularly among bureaucrats, police officers, and physicians, that the accompanying risks of prostitution were most effectively controlled by a confinement and concentration of prostitutes in certain supervised structures. As a result, many German states introduced a system of licensed brothels (Bordellierung) on the basis of municipal police orders.19 An exception was the state of Prussia that, at least officially, prohibited brothels in 1851. After the founding of the German Empire in 1871, the federal criminal law (Reichsstrafgesetzbuch), which was closely based on the old Prussian penal code, prohibited the supervision of brothels by the police in all other federal states of the newly formed nation. Two articles addressed prostitution, which were, to a certain extent, contradictory. While  § 361, 6 implicitly permitted prostitution by women who adhered to police-imposed guidelines, § 180 explicitly forbade any facilitation or procuration of prostitution. The latter article was generally interpreted as a prohibition of a direct supervision of brothels by the police and led to a series of brothel closures all over Germany. The end of the (legal) Bordellierung was strongly contested by municipal authorities, police officials and especially doctors. They lobbied for a re-legalization of the brothels arguing that the accompanying lack of control posed a serious threat to public order, safety, and hygiene.20 In the context of a successful 1876 lawsuit in Hamburg, where a married couple had sued the city for not shutting down its (in)famous brothels, Carl Petersen, head of the police department of the city, stated that: “The only difference to the current state of affairs would be that those crude evils that the police are now removing and limiting by controlling the brothel keepers could proliferate without disturbance.”21 He added: “It’s a big scandal for 19

20

21

Evans, “Prostitution,” 108–10; Evans, Tales from the German underworld, 181–188, 198–199; Sabine Gless, Die Reglementierung von Prostitution in Deutschland (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1999), 15–46; On Berlin as an example: Dietlind Hüchtker, “Elende Mütter” und “liederliche Weibspersonen”: Geschlechterverhältnisse und Armenpolitik in Berlin (1770– 1850) (Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 1999), 165–97. Evans, “Prostitution,” 110–111, 117–118; Ilya Hartmann, Prostitution, Kuppelei, Zuhälterei: Reformdiskussion und Gesetzgebung seit 1870 (Berlin: BWV – Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2006), 67–72; See also Evans, Tales from the German underworld, 183–86; Gless, Regle­ mentierung von Prostitution, 47–65. Carl Petersen, “Einem hochpreislichen Obergericht,” in Das Deutsche Strafgesetzbuch und Polizeilich concessionirte Bordelle: Aktenstücke einer Meinungsverschiedenheit zwischen

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respectable people, the girls are excessively exploited and the syphilis is spread ubiquitously.”22 Petersen also warned: If all prostitutes could reside without restrictions, and if the disciplinary tool of the brothels was absent, then the meaner among them would cause a nuisance that we can’t even imagine […]. The demoralization that [the closure] is causing is infinitely more corrupting than the one emitted from brothels.23

In his securitizing move, Petersen thus aimed at a re-legalization of brothels (course of action) to avoid the spread of venereal diseases, demoralization and social disorder (future scenario), arguing that the brothels helped the police to control these perils (status quo). Eventually, after a majority of legal experts and the Bundesrat (federal council) had supported the prohibition of brothels, the Reichsgericht (Supreme Court of the German Empire) confirmed their legal prohibition in 1880. While some cities, most notably Hamburg, ignored this decision and tried to keep their brothels running, most cities accepted the legal status quo, gradually closed the remaining brothels and tried to find alternative solutions to control prostitution. Even though the system of Bordellierung had been declared illegal, other forms of regulation were still possible. Many cities now created or expanded a scrutinous surveillance system, commonly known as Reglementierung (regulation).24 The central instrument of this system of regulation was the registration of prostitutes in lists supervised by the local police. Registered women had to undergo regular, often weekly, medical examinations in an effort to limit the spread of venereal diseases. If a registered prostitute became infected, she had to undergo treatment until cured, often under some sort of confinement to a hospital or even jail. A consequence of registration was also the obligation to obey certain rules that limited the personal freedom (especially of movement). Prostitutes often had to obey strict rules that limited the areas where they could reside, for example, a certain distance from schools, churches or barracks had to be maintained. Some cities limited legal prostitution or residences of prostitutes to certain areas. Since it only set a limiting framework and avoided a direct involvement of the police, this so-called Kasernierung

22 23 24

dem Deutschen Reichskanzleramt und dem Senat von Hamburg mit Rechtsgutachten von Sechzehn Deutschen Universitäten (Hamburg: Richter, 1877), 31. Petersen, “Einem hochpreislichen Obergericht,” 32. Petersen, “Einem hochpreislichen Obergericht,” 34–35. Evans, “Prostitution,” 110–11; Kontos, Öffnung der Sperrbezirke, 273–75; Evans, Tales from the German underworld, 197–200.

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(barrackization) strained the boundaries of legality but was generally uncontested by courts. Prostitutes were also often prohibited from frequenting theaters, operas, museums, pubs, or public squares and even from using certain streets. Some cities forbade certain behaviors like strolling, philandering or even singing. Prostitutes that did not abide by these rules or failed to enroll in a police-supervised list could be fined, punished with a prison sentence, or sent to a workhouse.25 As a result, many prostitutes tried to avoid registration. The compulsory medical examinations were perceived as a form of sexual violence and the forced treatment with mercury, the only known remedy for syphilis until 1910, was feared because of its severe side effects. Also, many women who rendered sexual services did not consider themselves to be prostitutes. In fact, occasional prostitution seems to have been much more common than an exclusive professional occupation as a sex worker. Most of the women who actually registered themselves did so only after several conflicts with the police, in order to evade a possible prison sentence.26 Public Visibility of Prostitution (1880–1891) During the 1880s, this system of regulation was increasingly seen as ineffective since the number of unregistered illegal prostitutes seemed to vastly outnumber the registered ones. Prostitution also became more visible, especially in those places that, according to the code of conduct of the police, were offlimits, like popular town squares or cafés. As a result, many contemporary observers were preoccupied with the apparent expansion of prostitution into the public sphere. The understaffed morality police units tried to counteract 25

26

Due to the vast extent of the literature on the different local regulation regimes, this paper focuses on a few expansive and detailed or generalist studies to avoid redundancies; Krafft, Zucht und Unzucht, 30–32, 51, 76–79, 97–99, 118–119, 202–232, 239–245; Koch, Verwaltete Lust, 20–34, 70–71; Evans, Tales from the German underworld, 183–85; Thoben, Prostitution in Nürnberg, 124–127, 280–294; Lynn Abrams, “Prostitutes in Imperial Germany 1870–1918: Working girls or social outcasts?,” in The German underworld:  Deviants and outcasts in German history, ed. Richard  J.  Evans (London, New York: Routledge, 1988), 191–193, 197; Lutz Sauerteig, Krankheit, Sexualität, Gesellschaft: Geschlechtskrankheiten und Gesundheitspolitik in Deutschland im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1999), 28–34; Gless, Reglementierung von Prostitution, 54–63. Abrams, “Prostitutes in Imperial Germany 1870–1918,” 194–98; Thoben, Prostitution in Nürnberg, 379–85; Krafft, Zucht und Unzucht, 31, 70–71, 99–100, 110, 118–119; Evans, Tales from the German underworld, 178–179, 194–197; On the contemporary perception of the medical examinations as sexual violence, see Malte König, Der Staat als Zuhälter: Die Abschaffung der reglementierten Prostitution in Deutschland, Frankreich und Italien im 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2016), 42–43.

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this development by concentrating their activities on groups that were seen as having a high affinity towards prostitution, especially waitresses and jobhunting maids from the countryside. But generally, any women that behaved ‘suspiciously’ in public was at risk of being picked up by the police and forced to undergo a gynecological examination. An infection with a venereal disease was interpreted as proof of prostitution and normally led to their registration as a prostitute. Despite these drastic measures, most prostitutes still seemed to evade the control regime. New forms of occasional, hidden, or secret prostitution seemed to be on the rise and the apparently increasing number of pimps in particular was interpreted as a direct result of the closure of the brothels. Therefore, the still numerous supporters of a re-introduction or legalization of the Bordellierung tried to influence the opinion of the public and lawmakers.27 Carl Fricke, an outspoken supporter of the confinement of prostitutes in brothels, wrote in 1885 in an anti-feminist pamphlet: The advantages that one would achieve through the creation of such houses are of such a great, far reaching significance that one cannot even reflect upon the disadvantages. First of all, one would eliminate all of the numerous dangers for the honor, body and health that under the current circumstances are approaching our youth. Also, the shameful pimps would have to vanish as well as prostitution from the streets. If ladies from the latter class are still loitering on the streets, one should pick them up and punish them relentlessly! Furthermore, the practice of secret prostitution would be shaken in its foundation; this type of woman would either be forced to give up her horizontal handiwork and earn her living from practical labor, or to seek out the public houses and continue to vegetate there. At least this awful class of prostitution would be decimated considerably, which would be a success by itself.28

Fricke stated that the prohibition and subsequent closure of brothels had led to the endangerment of youths, the emergence of pimps, and an increase in secret prostitution (status quo); he argued that the creation of brothels (course of action) would be an effective countermeasure to these threats (future scenario). The call for a re-introduction of brothels was far from uncontested. Protestant activists protested the wide-spread prostitution and its implicit acceptance or 27

Evans, “Prostitution,” 111–16; Krafft, Zucht und Unzucht, 41–56, 73–74, 78–79, 157–159; Thoben, Prostitution in Nürnberg, 108–17; Koch, Verwaltete Lust, 36–39, 54–58, 66; Evans, Tales from the German underworld, 177, 193–197. 28 Carl Fricke, Die Frauenfrage in ihrer Beziehung zur Prostitution (Berlin: Verlag von Paul Edler, 1885), 46.

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even facilitation in form of the system of regulation as a threat for Sittlichkeit29 (morality/moral purity). From the mid-1880s onwards, a series of so called Sittlichkeitsvereine (moral purity associations) were founded. Their members saw the widespread “Unzucht” (fornication/debauchery), in form of prostitution, as a sign of a general process of Entsittlichung (moral impurification/ depravation) that threatened the future of the German nation and sought to completely prohibit prostitution and to severely punish prostitutes. To achieve this goal, these activists, often teachers or pastors, explicitly tried to lobby the public opinion and especially lawmakers by constantly giving speeches and publishing pamphlets in which they depicted quite dramatic future scenarios as a result of the widespread Unsittlichkeit (vice/moral impurity).30 Wilhelm Philipps, a pastor and founder of a moral purity association in Berlin, claimed: “The Unzucht is not only spoiling the individual morally and physically, it is also ruining whole generations and nations.”31 In general, he claimed that Unzucht was the “most widespread and at the same time most pernicious of all sins.”32 Another moral purity activist (and pastor), Hermann Dalton, criticized the regulation of prostitution: Don’t underestimate the disastrous effect of such contradictory articles in the legal code of a Christian nation. They are facilitating the growing devastations of the Unzucht. In wide social circles, the regulation of this shameful vice by the police is regarded as an approval and recognition from the police, and this fact

29

For the semantic history of the term “Sittlichkeit” see Karl-Heinz Ilting, “Sitte, Sittlichkeit, Moral,” in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland. 5. Pro – Soz., eds. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze and Reinhart Koselleck (Stuttgart:  Klett, 1984); For its importance as a legal category, see Dieter Schwab, “Sittlichkeit: Zum Aufstieg und Niedergang einer rechtlichen Kategorie,“ in Festschrift für Gerd Kleinheyer zum 70. Geburtstag, eds. Franz Dorn and Jan Schröder (Heidelberg: C.F. Müller, 2001). 30 On the history of the Sittlichkeitsvereine, see Isabell Lisberg-Haag, ‘Die Unzucht – das Grab der Völker’: Die evangelische Sittlichkeitsbewegung und die ‘sexuelle Moderne’ 1870– 1918 (Münster: LIT, 2002); Christiana Hilpert-Fröhlich, Auf zum Kampfe wider die Unzucht: Prostitution und Sittlichkeitsbewegung in Essen, 1890–1914 (Bochum: SWI-Verlag, 1991); Edward Ross Dickinson, Sex, freedom, and power in imperial Germany, 1880–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 13–29. 31 Wilhelm Philipps, Die Notwendigkeit eines organisierten Kampfes gegen die Unsitt­lichkeit: Vortrag, gehalten in der ersten öffentlichen Männer-Versammlung des “Männerbundes zur Beförderung der öffentlichen Sittlichkeit in Breslau” am 22. Januar 1890 (Berlin: Verlag der Buchhandlung der Berliner Stadtmission, 1890), 15. 32 Philipps, Die Notwendigkeit eines organisierten Kampfes, 17.

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The choice of words by pastor Ludwig Klemm were especially dramatic: The calamities alone are crying out loud enough and unite in a distressing call: the Unzucht is killing our people. No observer of our public life can delude himself that of all of the dark powers that are poisoning it, the Unsittlichkeit has the most horrible effects and prepares the ground on which all other sins […] flourish opulently.34

The moral purity activists tried to achieve a complete prohibition of prostitution (course of action), stating that its enduring effects on the German people’s health and moral (status quo) would eventually lead to the downfall of the German nation (future scenario). Apart from the Sittlichkeitsvereine, another group of activists sought to end the system of regulation: In 1880, Getrude Guillaume-Schack founded a German branch of the international abolitionist movement, the Deutsche Kulturbund. Unlike the moral purity activists, the Kulturbund called for the abolition of punishments for prostitution and argued that the current system was a debasement of the weibliche Ehre (female honor) and the result of a double moral standard. While men could pursue a debaucherous sexual life without any negative consequences (apart from occasional infection with a venereal disease), every woman who dared to be alone in the public sphere was at risk of being suspected a prostitute and treated as such.35 33 Hermann Dalton, Auf zum Kampfe wider die Unzucht! Vortrag, gehalten in der von dem Männerbund zur Bekämpfung der Unsittlichkeit am 25. Februar 1890 zu Berlin veranstalteten Männerversammlung (Berlin: Verlag der Buchhandlung der Berliner Stadtmission, 1890), 9. 34 Ludwig Klemm, Die öffentliche Unsittlichkeit und ihre Bekämpfung: Vortrag in der General-Versammlung des Landesvereins für innere Mission im Königreich Sachsen. Am 17. April 1888. (Dresden: Reichel, 1888), 3. 35 Lutz Sauerteig, “Frauenemanzipation und Sittlichkeit: Die Rezeption des englischen Abolitionismus in Deutschland,” in Aneignung und Abwehr:  Interkultureller Transfer zwischen Deutschland und Grossbritannien im 19. Jahrhundert, eds. Rudolf Muhs, Johannes Paulmann and Willibald Steinmetz (Bodenheim: Philo, 1998), 173–78; Dirk Götting, Das Aufbegehren der bürgerlichen Frauenbewegung gegen die Sittenpolizei des Kaiserreichs und der erste Versuch weiblicher Polizeiarbeit in Deutschland (1875–1914): Frauen im Polizeidienst zwischen “Rettungsarbeit” und “Sittenschnüffelei” (Frankfurt a.M.: Verl. für Polizeiwissenschaft, 2010), 49–86, 526–527; On the original British abolitionist movement and the Contagious Disease Acts, see Paul R. McHugh, Prostitution and Victorian social reform (London: Croom Helm, 1980); Judith R. Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian society: Women, class, and the state (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).

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In a petition to the Reichstag (the German national parliament), the women’s rights activist Jeanette Schwerin demanded the repeal of § 361, 6 and criticized the treatment of prostitutes: If a women falls into the hands of the vice squad, she will, without a legal investigation or a verdict, undergo a procedure that officially brands her, expels her from society, robs her of the possibility to win her bread in an honest way, surrenders her to complete exploitation by others, and subjects her to a forced medical procedure that our criminal law would never include in the legal code because it is too degrading for the law and too disgraceful for a woman.36

Women’s rights activists like Guillaume-Schack or Schwerin argued that the current system of regulation was a threat to the reputation and selfdetermination of those on the register and to all women (status quo) and thus should be abolished (course of action) to provide legal certainty for women (future scenario). Due to their different interpretations of the problem of prostitution, abolitionists were not able to ally themselves with the moral purity activists. These latter, as well as the supporters of the Bordellierung, treated the Kulturbund as a threat, especially after Guillaume-Schack cooperated with the stigmatized social democrats. More generally, the public activity of women against prostitution was declared to be immoral itself. Even the mainstream of the women’s movement did not (yet) publicly support the abolitionist cause and mostly ignored the topic of prostitution. Therefore, the Kulturbund eventually dissolved itself in 1886.37 The fate of the first German abolitionist movement was in a way representative of the public discourse on prostitution in the 1880s. Even though different social actors tried to achieve a drastic change in the regulation of prostitution, especially because of its greater visibility, the majority of the German public and also politicians were undecided or uninterested. The Reichstag acknowledged that the current legal status quo was to a certain extent contradictory but was not willing to change anything before further considerations. There

36

Stenografische Berichte des Reichstags (StenBerRT). 6. LP, 1884/85 (7): Aktenstück Nr. 419, 18. Bericht der Kommission für die Petitionen, Anlage II: 2069. The quoted stenographic reports of the Reichstag are completely digitalized and accessible online, accessed July 12, 2020, https://www.reichstagsprotokolle.de. 37 Theresa Wobbe, Gleichheit und Differenz: Politische Strategien von Frauenrechtlerinnen um die Jahrhundertwende (Frankfurt a.M, New York: Campus, 1989), 35–45; Götting, Das Aufbegehren der bürgerlichen Frauenbewegung, 81–85.

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also, although less vocal than its opposers, seemed to exist a steady support for the current system of regulation inside the bureaucracy and jurisprudence.38 The Morality Debate and the Rebirth of Abolitionism (1891–1900) In 1891, a trial in Berlin against an alleged pimp named Heinze who killed a night guard while attempting to steal a church’s treasure ignited a far-reaching public debate on morality that lasted almost a decade. During the trial and its coverage by the press, the scandalized bourgeois public gained an insight into the sub-proletarian underworld associated with prostitution. Even Kaiser Wilhelm II himself stated that “the activity of pimps, and the extensive prostitution in the big cities, especially in Berlin, has become a general danger for state and society.”39 As a result of the Kaiser’s intervention, the German government drafted a law later known as the Lex Heinze that, among other changes, would have legalized police-supervised brothels by removing the wording that explicitly criminalized the facilitation or procuration of prostitution. This solution met almost unanimous protest: while moral purity activists criticized the official acknowledgment of the regulation, liberals criticized it as an exceptional actionist law that threatened the legal order, and the supporters of the Bordellierung demanded a more explicit legalization. In fact, after the articles regarding prostitution were also cut during a Reichstag debate in 1892, a government official reassured the members of parliament that the government did not intend the legalization of brothels. Subsequently, the bill was assigned to a parliamentary commission that not only revoked the reform of the regulation but completely changed the general purpose of the law towards a drastic restriction of the freedom of press and art in order to battle the perceived rise of Unsittlichkeit. Due to these drastic changes in both the content

38 On the indecisiveness of the Reichstag, see StenBerRT.  6. LP, 1884/85 (7): Aktenstück Nr.  419, 18. Bericht der Kommission für die Petitionen, 13.05.1885: 2054–2061; On the question of indifference, see StenBerRT. 8. LP, 1892/93 (1): 16. Sitzung, 15.12.1892: 372; For two examples of supporters of the existing regulation, see Die Stellung des Staates zur Prostitution und ihrem Gefolge: Von einem praktischen Juristen (Hannover: Helwing’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1883); Carl Pelman, “Der Staat und die Prostitution vom Standpunkt der öffentlichen Gesundheitspflege,” in Zur Prostitutionsfrage. Aus den Verhandlungen der 56. Generalversammlung der Rheinisch-Westfälischen Gefägniß-Gesellschaft am 9. Oktober 1884 in Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf:  Selbstverlag der Rheinisch-Westfälischen Gefängniß-Gesellschaft, 1884). 39 Deutscher Reichs-Anzeiger und Königlich Preußischer Staats-Anzeiger, October  27, 1891, 1.

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and intent of the Lex Heinze, the government halted the legislative process of the bill for the time being.40 While the parliamentary discussion on prostitution stalled, the public debate on prostitution and morality continued. The existing system of regulation continued to be criticized by press, politicians, and legal commentators due to its lack of efficacy. As a result, police units conducted raids for hidden prostitutes and many cities authorities imposed even stricter rules on registered prostitutes. This of course only made a registration even less desirable. The ongoing public scandalization by brothels led to the shutdown of remaining ones in many cities. The still heavily understaffed morality police units were therefore unable to stop the perceived growth of unregistered prostitutes and their visibility while the numbers of registered ones actually began to decline. Not only activists but also ordinary citizens increasingly complained about the presence of prostitutes on the streets, in cafés and bars. Municipal authorities therefore tried to relocate prostitutes from wealthier upper and middle-class neighborhoods to poorer working-class areas, only to spark resistance there.41 The public discussion on prostitution gathered additional momentum by several lurid press reports on Mädchenhandel (literally the ‘girl trade,’ meaning trafficking), often called ‘white slavery’. The idea of German girls lured under false pretenses into brothels all over the world was sensationalized, especially by anti-Semites who claimed that traffickers were exclusively of Jewish descent. The Reichstag continued to receive petitions that demanded more decisive action against trafficking in women. But citizens also took matters into their own hands: as a direct result of the discourse on Mädchenhandel from the mid1890’s on, railway missions were founded. Their primary goal was to keep girls from falling into the hands of pimps, panderers, and traffickers. In general, the

40

41

Evans, “Prostitution,” 119–20; Philipp Müller, Auf der Suche nach dem Täter: Die öffentliche Dramatisierung von Verbrechen im Berlin des Kaiserreichs (Frankfurt, New York: Campus, 2005), 77–91; Michael Stolleis, “Der ‘Mordfall Heinze’ und die ‘Lex Heinze’,” in Recht und Literatur: Interdisziplinäre Bezüge, ed. Bernhard Greiner (Heidelberg: Winter, 2010); Robin J.V. Lenman, “Art, Society, and the Law in Wilhelmine Germany: The Lex Heinze,” Oxford German Studies 8, no. 1 (1973): 86–88; Peter Mast, Künstlerische und wissenschaftliche Freiheit im Deutschen Reich 1890–1901 (Rheinfelden: Schäuble, 1980), 140–41; On the parliamentary discussions of the (second draft) of the Lex Heinze, see StenBerRT.  8. LP, 1892/93 (1): 8. Sitzung, 03.12.1892: 133–152; StenBerRT. 8. LP, 1892/93 (1): 16. Sitzung, 15.12.1892: 352–381. Evans, “Prostitution,” 112–15; Krafft, Zucht und Unzucht, 32–34, 41–56, 62–64, 94–96; Thoben, Prostitution in Nürnberg, 167–82; Koch, Verwaltete Lust, 45–56, 66–67; Evans, Tales from the German underworld, 193–98.

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enduring effect of the politization of the Mädchenhandel not only additionally fueled the morality debate but had the lasting effect of discrediting brothels.42 Facilitated by the morality debate, prostitution became a mainstream topic of the German women’s movement. After its foundation in 1894, the Bund deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF, Federation of German women’s associations), initially chose a rather conservative stance and petitioned the Reichstag in favor of a general penalization of prostitution without the existing exceptions. However, after several cases of forced examinations and registrations of ‘innocent’ girls gained the general public’s attention, women’s rights activists organized spectacular protests against the conduct of the morality police. Subsequently, from 1899 onwards, new German branches of the International Abolitionist Federation were founded. Like her predecessor Guillaume-Schack, the most prominent German abolitionist Anna Pappritz argued for the abolition of the system of regulation, which she saw as the manifestation of a double moral standard that punished women for their own exploitation and incentivized men to pursue morally impure behaviors.43 Unlike the 1880s, the abolitionists soon gained support from the bourgeois women’s movement, especially its radical wing, which had been institutionalized in the newly formed Verband Fortschrittlicher Frauen (Association of Progressive Women). But they were still unable to convince the male public to support their cause. Neither the Sittlichkeitsvereine nor the anti-trafficking 42 Anne Dietrich, “Die Rede vom ‘Mädchenhandel’ im zeitgenössischen Kontext,” in Migration, Flucht und Exil im Spiegel der Sozialen Arbeit, eds. Gisela Hauss and Susanne Maurer (Bern:  Haupt Verlag, 2010); See Bruno Nikles, Soziale Hilfe am Bahnhof: Zur Geschichte der Bahnhofsmission in Deutschland (1894–1960) (Freiburg im Breisgau: Lambertus, 1994), 50–102; On the history of the German railway missions, see Astrid Mignon Kirchhof, Das Dienstfräulein auf dem Bahnhof: Frauen im öffentlichen Raum im Blick der Berliner Bahnhofsmission 1894–1939 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2012); Anne Dietrich, “Das Deutsche Nationalkomitee zur Bekämpfung des Mädchenhandels,” in Frauenhandel in Deutschland, ed. Tübinger Projektgruppe Frauenhandel (Bonn:  J.H.W.  Dietz, 1989); See StenBerRT.  8. LP, 1892/93, 1: 8. Sitzung, 03.12.1892: S.  146; StenBerRT.  9. LP, 1895/97 (14): Aktenstück Nr.  678, 62. Bericht der Kommission für die Petitionen: S.  3358–3361; StenBerRT.  9. LP, 1897/98 (6): Aktenstück Nr.  173, 11. Bericht der Kommission für die Petitionen: S. 1731–1732; StenBerRT. 9. LP, 1893/94 (2): 42. Sitzung, 06.02.1894: S. 1025–1031. 43 Sauerteig, “Frauenemanzipation und Sittlichkeit,” 160–89; n the history of the German abolitionist movement, see Bettina Kretzschmar, ‘Gleiche Moral und gleiches Recht für Mann und Frau’: Der deutsche Zweig der internationalen abolitionistischen Bewegung (1899– 1933) (Sulzbach (Taunus): Ulrike Helmer, 2014); Kerstin Wolff, Anna Pappritz (1861–1939): Die Rittergutstochter und die Prostitution (Sulzbach (Taunus): Ulrike Helmer, 2017); On the international abolitionist movement, see Anne Summers, “Liberty, Equality, Morality: The Attempt to Sustain an International Campaign against State-regulated Prostitution 1875– 1906,” in Politische Netzwerkerinnen: Internationale Zusammenarbeit von Frauen 1830–1960, eds. Eva Schöck-Quinteros, Anja Schüler and Annika Wilmers (Berlin: Trafo Verlag, 2007).

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activists were interested in cooperation. Even the Social Democrats distanced themselves, in part due to the idea that prostitution could only be abolished by a socialist state. In general, skepticism towards women’s engagement in the fight against prostitution persisted. Authorities, especially in Prussia, forbade and dissolved abolitionist meetings and speeches on the grounds of state laws that forbade the activity and membership of women in political associations. A representative of the state of Hamburg claimed during a parliamentary debate that “ladies who speak in such way about such a question […] constitute a much more serious danger for public morality than those institutions that they set as their task to combat.”44 The abolitionists evidently were (still) not taken seriously, and their moralistic arguments failed to convince most (male) contemporaries.45 Meanwhile the morality debate had continued to rage. The moral purity activists were continuously pushing for a legislative change and the Reichstag had become frustrated with the government’s halt of the Lex Heinze. In 1897, the catholic Zentrumspartei (Centre Party) introduced its own version of the bill that led to a chain reaction of several other drafts aimed at a drastic restriction of the freedom of press and especially art. This eventually led to a wave of protest from writers, artists, scholars, and scientists against the Lex Heinze. The bill was drastically reduced in its last parliamentary reading in 1900 and no real changes to the legal status quo were made. Regarding prostitution, only one new article that explicitly sanctioned the activity of pimps and the possibility to send prostitutes to reformatory institutions or women’s shelters instead of a workhouse was added added. A more indirect result of the morality debate was that brothels were now unanimously discredited. There were no further major efforts to re-introduce the Bordellierung or even to provide a more solid legal base for the failing existing regulation after the turn of the century.46

44 45

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StenBerRT. 11. LP, 1903/05 (1): 20. Sitzung, 28.01.1904: 550. Kretzschmar, Gleiche Moral und gleiches Recht, 49, 57–60, 111–112, 126–127, 139–140, 173–174, 222–232; Sauerteig, “Frauenemanzipation und Sittlichkeit,” 171–173, 180–191; Vera Konieczka, “Arten zu sprechen, Arten zu schweigen: Sozialdemokratie und Prostitution im deutschen Kaiserreich,” in Frauenkörper – Medizin – Sexualität: auf dem Wege zu einer neuen Sexualmoral, eds. Johanna Geyer-Kordesch and Annette Kuhn (Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1986); Evans, Tales from the German underworld, 204–5. Lenman, “Art, Society, and the Law,” 88–110; Stolleis, “Der Mordfall Heinze,” 225–33; Mast, Künstlerische und wissenschaftliche Freiheit, 141–86; Evans, Tales from the German underworld, 192–193, 206. Cf. Reichsgesetzblatt, no. 23 (1900), 301–303.

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The Medicalization of Prostitution (1900–1914) With the turn of the century, the focus of the debates on prostitution shifted to a new threat. After the publication of statistics and two international conferences on syphilis raised awareness regarding an apparent surge of venereal diseases, the Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten (DGBG – German Society for the Prevention of Venereal Diseases), was founded in 1902. Since prostitutes were deemed to be the main vector of syphilis and gonorrhea and the current system of regulation evidently failed to limit their spread, many doctors, especially venereologists, now argued for a reform of the regulations based on the principle of public health. These reformists argued that prostitution should be exclusively seen and treated as a medical problem and therefore regulated by sanitary commissions or doctors instead of the police. In a series of publications and talks organized by the DGBG, its members tried to lobby politicians and bureaucrats for legislative change as well as to inform the general public about the risks of venereal diseases and the ways to avoid infection.47 For example, cofounder and secretary general of the DGBG Alfred Blaschko warns, in one of his countless books on the subject, that venereal diseases posed a serious threat to the German population, since they were: Plagues with dramatic consequences, that strike in the same way the just and unjust (if those exist), they destroy the health and ability to work, the spirit and vitality of the best part of the population, let some perish insidiously, let the offspring of the nation wither away and gnaws at its core.48

The leading venereologist depicts prostitutes as the major source of the spread of venereal diseases:

47

Q.v. on the history of the DGBG: Sauerteig, Krankheit, Sexualität, Gesellschaft; Cf. Gerd Göckenjan, “Syphilisangst und Politik mit Krankheit: Diskurs zur Geschichte der Geschlechtskrankheiten,” in Sexualitäten in unserer Gesellschaft: Beiträge zur Geschichte, Theorie und Empirie, ed. Rolf Gindorf and Erwin J. Haeberle (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1989); Dickinson, Dickinson, Sex, freedom, and power in imperial Germany, 1880–1914, 177–89; Q.v. for an English paper on the topic: Lutz Sauerteig, “‘The Fatherland is in Danger, Save the Fatherland!’: Veneral disease, sexuality and gender in Imperial and Weimar Germany,” in Sex, sin, and suffering: Venereal disease and European society since 1870, ed. Roger Davidson and Lesley A. Hall (London, New York: Routledge, 2001). 48 Alfred Blaschko, Die Geschlechts-Krankheiten: Ihre Gefahren, Verhütung u. Bekämpfung, Dritte vollständig umgearbeitete Auflage (Berlin: Verlag der Central-Kommission der Krankenkassen Berlins und Vororte (E. Simanowski), 1904), 3–4.

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Because of their frequent usage, professional prostitutes are naturally the main source of venereal contagion. An attempt was made to fight against venereal diseases by a sanitary surveillance, the so-called regulation or control of prostitution, but various experiences have shown that this control is almost completely without effect. […] It is possible to say that anyone who engages with a prostitute – controlled or not – but also with any frivolous girl is highly endangering himself.49

Blaschko insistently demands an end of the current system of the regulation even though prostitution itself could never be abolished: But perhaps much could already be achieved if the entanglement of the sanitary police with the vice police, the whole regulation, the inscription in lists as well as the frequent forced examinations, all ceased to exist. The decriminalization of prostitution would have to go hand in hand with the abolition of the vice squads, provided that the former does not directly cause a public offense.50

Blaschko states that the current system of regulation was ineffective against the spread of venereal diseases (status quo) and should be radically reformed (course of action), otherwise the German population would continue to suffer from their dramatic consequences (future scenario). The change of heart of many doctors resulted in an informal strategic alliance with the abolitionists, who also picked up the subject of venereal diseases. Despite differences in their final goals, both activist groups agreed that prostitution was a matter of public health rather than crime and order. The abolitionists’ cooperation with the DGBG can be interpreted as part of a general attempt to establish themselves and to gain broader public acceptance. In 1902, they were able to convince the mainstream organization of the bourgeois women’s movement BDF to support their cause. A central turning point was the foundation of a German umbrella organization in 1904, the Deutsche Zweig der Internationalen Abolitionistischen Föderation (German Branch of the International Abolitionist Federation), which soon distanced itself from its more radical members like Lida Gustava Heymann and actively aimed to cooperate with moral purity associations, municipal administrations and occasionally even the morality police. The fact that the abolitionists now focused their rhetoric more on public health rather than on (highly controversial) moralistic

49 Blaschko, Die Geschlechts-Krankheiten, 9. 50 Alfred Blaschko, Die Prostitution im 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Verlag Aufklärung, 1902), 46.

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arguments was of major importance for this development.51 For example, Anna Pappritz wrote: Venereal diseases represent a serious danger for the healthy evolution of civilized nations; they render the degeneration, if not the elimination, of large parts of the population, something to be feared. […] What can we do to fight against this cancerous damage that is wearing on the essence of the people?52

Unsurprisingly, her suggested solution was an end of the regulation: Whoever wants to repeal or even just curtail this evil has to tackle it at its root. He has to try to drain the murky, poisonous swamp from which all these toxic springs are originating. This can’t be realized by ‘regulation’, but only by sanitary, social, legal and educational reforms.53

Like Blaschko, Pappritz argued that the current regulation had to be abolished and substituted by the implementation of reforms (course of action) to stop or at least to limit the spread of venereal diseases that were damaging the German population (status quo), seriously endangering its survival (future scenario). Venereal diseases also began to play a major role in the discourse on colonial prostitution. Since the 1880s, Germany had become a colonial power with territories mostly in Africa, but also in China, New Guinea and the Pacific.54 Because the German colonial population was almost completely male, most of the personnel in the colonial services had sexual relations with indigenous women. After the turn of the century, these sexual relations were increasingly seen as scandalous and formal marriages in the two biggest colonies – Deutsch-Südwestafrika (German South West Africa), including Namibia, and Deutsch-Ostafrika (German East Africa), including today’s Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi – were even prohibited. However, this led to an increase of 51

52 53 54

Kretzschmar, Gleiche Moral und gleiches Recht, 51, 60–62, 66–68, 71–89, 104–105, 108–109, 124, 127–133, 142–147, 169–171, 176–185, 203–218, 232–235, 244–268, 307–308; Evans, Tales from the German underworld, 207–8; See Ann T. Allen, “Feminism, Venereal Diseases, and the State in Germany, 1890–1918,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 4, no. 1 (1993); On the cooperation between abolitionists and moral purity activists, see Nancy  R.  Reagin, “‘A True Woman Can Take Care of Herself’: The Debate over Prostitution in Hanover, 1906,” Central European History 24, no. 4 (1991). Anna Pappritz, Herrenmoral, 5. Auflage (Leipzig: Verlag der Frauen-Rundschau, 1903), 3. Pappritz, Herrenmoral, 6. See for a short English overview on German colonial history: Jürgen Zimmer, “Colonialism and Genocide,” in The Ashgate research companion to Imperial Germany, ed. Matthew Jefferies (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015).

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prostitution that was followed by a surge in venereal diseases. The spread of syphilis in particular was seen as a threat to the colonial regime since it weakened the performance of soldiers and symbolized a failure of the civilizing mission. The consequential introduction of regulation that, in some cases, extended compulsory medical examinations to the entire indigenous population, all soldiers, or even all traders (and was therefore even stricter than in Germany itself) nonetheless had, just as in the Reich, little or no effect. Some colonial authorities now argued for the creation of brothels with European prostitutes which would ostensibly have a lower contagion risk than indigenous women. While abolitionists were scandalized, with racist undertones, at the widespread prostitution in the colonies, colonial authorities and even some church representatives who strictly opposed regulation in Germany itself, preferred prostitution over legal interracial sexual relations.55 The effort to medicalize prostitution was eventually a success. The state of Prussia enacted a protocol that limited the powers of the vice squads and permitted an exclusively medical surveillance in some cases. Many cities tried to install reform projects to control prostitution with a focus on public health. At the same time, no efforts were made to stop the ongoing disintegration of the old regulatory system. In 1911, the German government formed a commission to revise the articles regarding prostitution with the goal to limit the spread of venereal diseases. These efforts were halted after the start of the First World War but continued during the Weimar Republic. In cooperation with the DGBG and the abolitionists, the Gesetz zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechts­ krankheiten (law for the prevention of venereal diseases) was drafted, which ended the regulation of prostitution in Germany in 1927.56

55 Daniel  J.  Walther, Sex and control: Venereal disease, colonial physicians, and indigenous agency in German colonialism, 1884–1914 (New York: Berghahn, 2015); Lora Wildenthal, “Race, Gender, and Citizenship in the German Colonial Empire,” in Tensions of empire: Colonial cultures in a bourgeois world, eds. Frederick Cooper and Ann  L.  Stoler (Berkeley, CA:  University of California Press, 1997); Birthe Kundrus, Moderne Imperialisten: Das Kaiserreich im Spiegel seiner Kolonien (Cologne: Böhlau, 2003): 219– 279; Daniel J. Walther, “Sex, Public Health and Colonial Control: The Campaign Against Venereal Diseases in Germany’s Overseas Possessions, 1884–1914,” Social History of Medicine 26, no. 2 (2013); Anette Dietrich, “Sittlichkeit zwischen weiblicher Emanzipation und ‘Hebung der Rasse’,” Ariadne 23, no. 55 (2009): 14–16. 56 Evans, Tales from the German underworld, 193–198, 208; Sauerteig, Krankheit, Sexualität, Gesellschaft, 293, 380–408; Hartmann, Prostitution, Kuppelei, Zuhälterei, 104–28; König, Der Staat als Zuhälter, 54–66.

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Part II: Shifting Referent Objects – From the Social Question to the Biologized Nation During the debates on prostitution in the German Empire, three major efforts to securitize the topic can be identified. At first, municipal administrations, police officials, and doctors tried to (re-)legalize brothels by arguing that widespread public prostitution resulted in imminent dangers for public order, safety, and hygiene. Secondly, from the 1880s onward, moral purity activists demanded a complete prohibition and severe punishment of prostitutes due to a perceived process of demoralization that threatened the future of the German society and nation. Finally, after the turn of the century, doctors and abolitionists argued in favor of an end of the system of regulation to limit the growing numbers of infections with venereal diseases (allegedly spread by prostitutes) that not only threatened the German population but also colonial rule. Each of these approaches at certain times seemed to have been more convincing in public discourse than others. This is also reflected by the political and administrative measures that each seemed to have differing levels of plausibility at different times during the debate. A major shift can be identified in the central referent object that seemed threatened that led to a change in persuasiveness of the securitization attempts. From the 1870s to 1890s, social order was at the heart of both the approach to legalize brothels and the demand of the complete prohibition of prostitution. While the supporters of brothels argued directly with the risks of criminality, civil unrest, and diseases, the moral purity activists’ argument was more abstract. Sittlichkeit seemed to be about morals rather than the social question, but through a closer analysis of the apocalyptic future scenarios it becomes clear that also moral purity activists were anxious about the survival of the traditional social order.57 Moral purity activists feared a revolution as a result of the decline of morals. The already quoted pastor Philipps wrote: “If the social revolution should one day break out, […] it will have been the prostitutes and their companions who stoked up the flames. Vice is the biggest crater that pours out its glowing eradicating lava over countries.”58 Pastor Niemann, another moral purity activist, wrote about prostitutes: 57 See Isabell Lisberg-Haag, “‘Die Pestbeule am Leibe unseres Volkes’: Die evangelische Kirche im Kampf gegen Prostitution und Unzucht,” in Sitten und Sittlichkeit im 19. Jahr­ hundert: Les morales au XIXe siècle, ed. Peter Brockmeier (Stuttgart: M & P, Verl. für Wiss. und Forschung, 1993), 167. 58 Philipps, Die Notwendigkeit eines organisierten Kampfes, 23.

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And every one of those unfortunate girls becomes the center of continuous new sins. […] This way a proletariat of the worst sort is developing, which […] from time to time lays everything in ruins, robs, singes and burns, and celebrates its wild orgies on the bloody ruins and piles of corpses, just as it already happened more than once in horrible revolutions, in which the public whore regularly played an eminent role.59

The fact that the moral purity debate began in 1891 has to be contextualized within the so-called moral panic, which describes the reaction towards several contemporary events and developments that sparked a renewed fear of a revolution. Bismarck’s anti-socialist law failed to be extended and other attempts to pass laws to fight the rise of the Social Democrats were unsuccessful. They seemed almost unstoppable, continually winning more and more parliamentary seats with almost every election. Furthermore, there were a series of anarchist assassination attempts on European heads of state, some of them successful.60 While always present in the discourse on prostitution, even against the background of the fear of revolution, venereal diseases initially played a subordinate role in justifying brothels or regulation. Only after the turn of the century, did gonorrhea and syphilis become the center of attention. This shift was a direct result of growing fears concerning decreasing birth rates. Many observers, especially social Darwinists, saw a decline in population as a direct threat for the future of the German nation.61 For example, Prussian medical counsel Otto Krohne warned: A decline of our population would equal a disastrous weakening of our national power, it would endanger our position as a global power. A nation that has a declining population cannot permanently hold its ground against powerful 59

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U. Niemann, Der gegenwärtige Stand des Kampfes gegen die Unsittlichkeit in Europa, mit besonderer Rücksicht auf unsere Aufgabe in Deutschland und Berlin: Vortrag gehalten auf der Generalversammlung des Männerbundes zur Bekämpfung der Unsittlichkeit, in Berlin am 21. Oktober 1889 (Berlin: Verlag der Buchhandlung der Berliner Stadtmission, 1889), 8–9. See Evans, “Prostitution,” 125–27; Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, “Gewalt als Praxis und Herrschaftsmittel: Das Deutsche Kaiserreich und die Dritte Republik in Frankreich im Vergleich,” in Das deutsche Kaiserreich in der Kontroverse, eds. Sven  O.  Müller and Cornelius Torp (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009), 160–64; Lisberg-Haag, “‘Die Pestbeule am Leibe unseres Volkes,” 166–71. See Anna Bergmann, Die verhütete Sexualität: die Anfänge der modernen Geburten­kontrolle (Hamburg: Rasch und Röhring, 1992); Matthias Weipert, “Mehrung der Volkskraft”: Die Debatte über Bevölkerung, Modernisierung und Nation 1890–1933 (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 2006), 33–74.

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While conservative observers held the growing women’s movement or other factors responsible for the decline in birth rates, the DGBG and the abolitionists successfully argued that the ubiquitous venereal diseases were its primary origin, since they could cause infertility and sterility as well as miscarriages and stillbirths. In the words of Blaschko: “Among the natural causes [of the decline of the birth rate], venereal diseases are primarily to be named.”63 Progressives and nationalists alike were not only worried about the quantity but also the quality of the German population. The emerging disciplines of eugenics and racial hygiene problematized venereal diseases, since they could be transferred from carrying mothers to the unborn infant and cause birth defects and other health problems in children.64 Blaschko, who himself sympathized with eugenics, wrote: And it is not enough that the carrier of the sickening poison often has to pay for a moment of juvenile neglect with his health, yes, even with his life. Often his family also has to suffer the consequences; syphilis is spreading to the progeny, it can lead to premature deliveries and stillbirth and also cause the birth of mentally and physically atrophied and often crippled and idiotic children that for their whole life are a terrible accusation against their parents.65

Unlike the efforts to re-legalize brothels or completely prohibit prostitution, this call for a medical reform was eventually successful. It can be argued that, even though the future scenarios of brothel supporters and moral purity activists were persuasive and influential in the public debate, prostitution 62

Otto Krohne, Die Beurteilung des Geburtenrückganges vom volkshygienischen, sittlichen und nationalen Standpunkt: (Vortrag gehalten auf Einladung des Vereins Deutscher Studenten im großen Saal der Kriegsakademie in Berlin am 29. Januar 1914.) (Leipzig: Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung Theodor Weicher, 1914), 16. 63 Alfred Blaschko, Geburtenrückgang und Geschlechtskrankheiten: (Nach einem auf der 11. Jahresversammlung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Bekämpfung der Geschlechts­ krankheiten gehaltenen Vortrage) (Leipzig: Verlag von Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1914), 4. 64 Bergmann, Die verhütete Sexualität, 51–90, 243–294; See Ute Planert, Antifeminismus im Kaiserreich: Diskurs, soziale Formation und politische Mentalität (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 110–17;. Sauerteig, Krankheit, Sexualität, Gesellschaft, 29–31, 42–52; Ann  T.  Allen, “German Radical Feminism and Eugenics, 1900–1908,” German Studies Review 11, no. 1 (1988); Katja Weller, “Gemäßigt oder radikal? Eugenische Tendenzen in den Flügeln der Frauenbewegung,” in Geschlechtergeschichte des Politischen: Entwürfe von Geschlecht und Gemeinschaft im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Gabriele Boukrif (Münster: LIT, 2002). 65 Blaschko, Die Geschlechts-Krankheiten, 8.

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was already actively securitized and an extraordinary measure in form of the regulation was in place. The two further aiming but contradictory attempts of either a Bordellierung or complete prohibition thus reached in a similar direction while weakening each other. The securitized state of prostitution becomes even more evident if one considers that attempts by early abolitionists and liberals to criticize the existing system as a threat to legal certainty were completely unsuccessful. Only the shift of the referent objects caused by a sudden awareness regarding venereal disease due to the birth decline debate (and an underlying process of the ‘biologization of the social’) made a different securitization of prostitution focused on the quantity and quality of the German population possible finally made the regulation of prostitution itself seem like a threat. Actors such as the abolitionists and medical reformers were now successful, while their former rivals vanished (brothels supporters) or adapted (moral purity activists).66 The depicted major shift at the turn of the century from the social to the biologized as the referent objects of successful securitization attempts is not limited to prostitution but reflects a general element in the security culture of the German Empire. For instance, the topic of work safety was originally heavily associated with the social question: Its supporters demanded the extensive protection of workers to combat the rise of social democracy, while its opponents argued that German industry would not be able to compete on the world market, which would lead to mass unemployment and imminent dangers for the social order. This argument was also used by industrial and agrarian lobbyists who argued in favor of protective tariffs on iron and grain. But after the turn of the century, both fields of politics became associated with the birth decline debate. Now the political discussion on work safety especially focused on restraints for female workers, arguing that the high infant mortality rates were basically a result of the (over-) employment of women. At the same time, consumers, social democrats, and liberals argued in favor of an abolition of food tariffs since malnutrition due to high food prices were also seen as a factor causing infertility and miscarriages.67 66

On the state of securitization, see Thierry Balzacq, “Enquiries into methods: A new framework for securitization analysis,” in Securitization theory: How security problems emerge and dissolve, ed. Thierry Balzacq (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, New York: Routledge, 2011), 32. 67 Regarding shifts of the security culture of the German Empire and also regarding securitization attempts of the topics of work safety and trade policy referencing the social question, see Tobias Bruns, “1878 als sicherheitskulturelle Wende in der deutschen Geschichte,” in “Security turns its eye exclusively to the future”: Zum Verhältnis von Sicherheit und Zukunft in der Geschichte, eds. Christoph Kampmann, Angela Marciniak and Wencke

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Part III: The Problem of Mobility in the Security Culture of the German Empire Beyond the question of why certain attempts to securitize prostitution were successful at certain times, a perspective that integrates the topic of the security culture of the German Empire also makes it possible to explain why it was constantly perceived as a threat. In the securitization discourses, attempts, and practices regarding prostitution, it is possible to identify another core element of the Kaiserreich’s security culture: the perception of spatial and social mobility as a threat. While this is not the place to engage in an extensive discussion on mobility, it is worth mentioning that the connection between mobility and security has recently been explored by sociologists and political scientists. However, these rather explorative papers are on the one hand, a lacking a historical dimension and, on the other hand, almost exclusively focus on physical mobility, especially (but not only) migration and traffic. The same is true for historical studies on mobility during the German Empire. The interdependence of social and physical mobility has mostly been neglected.68 In this paper, mobility is defined as the movement of an actor, object or symbol, that transgresses, transitions or transforms physical borders (like the nation, cities and centers/peripheries) and/or social boundaries (gender, class, race). While phenomena of mobility in general have the potential to be perceived as a threat, it was a core element of the security culture of the German Empire. Chronologically, the Kaiserreich was an era that was, in comparison to pre- or early modern times, characterized by mobilization processes of a new, until this point historically unique, intensity – industrialization, urbanization and the first wave of globalization. Insecurity was not yet understood as a state

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Meteling (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2018); On female work safety and infant mortality, see Sabine Schmitt, Der Arbeiterinnenschutz im deutschen Kaiserreich: Zur Konstruktion der schutzbedürftigen Arbeiterin (Stuttgart, Weimar: J.B. Metzler, 1995), 32–33, 74–75; On consumer protests against high food prices, see Christoph Nonn, Verbraucherprotest und Parteiensystem im wilhelminischen Deutschland (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1996). On the nexus of mobility and security, see Matthias Leese and Stef Wittendorp, “The new mobilities paradigm and critical security studies: exploring common ground,” Mobilities 13, no. 2 (2018); Barbara Lüthi and Patricia Purtschert, “Sicherheit und Mobilität “Making the World a Safer Place?”,” Traverse 16, no. 1 (2009); For studies on mobility during the German Empire, see Sebastian Conrad, “Globalisierungseffekte: Mobilität und Nation im Kaiserreich,” in Das deutsche Kaiserreich in der Kontroverse, eds. Sven  O.  Müller and Cornelius Torp (Göttingen:  Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009); Steve Hochstadt, “Population: Demograpy and Mobility,” in The Ashgate research companion to Imperial Germany, ed. Matthew Jefferies (Abingdon, Oxon:  Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, 2015).

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of normalcy. This is reflected by the political language, which was not dominated by the dynamic term ‘security’ (Sicherheit) but the reactive terms of ‘protection’ (Schutz) and ‘order’ (Ordnung). Geographically, the German Empire was particularly influenced by phenomena of mobility, since it was not only a space of immigration and emigration, but also transmigration, due to its position in the center of Europe. It is also, following Joachim Radkau, possible to identify a particularly intense level of anxiety as a result of mobilization processes and challenges to the traditional social, political and economic order. Completely different arguments like free trade, migration or homosexuality became securitized because they involved the transgression of physical, social, and symbolic boundaries.69 Mobility was also at the core of the securitization of prostitution and its surroundings: Prostitutes were depicted as highly mobile, strolling in the cities in the search of customers. They continuously invaded the public sphere and remained visible. According to municipal statistics, they constantly changed their residences. But more importantly than their physical mobility, prostitutes transgressed social boundaries: They openly contested the traditional role of women as housewives and mothers and therefore represented a challenge to the patriarchal gender order, as did growing female employment rates and the women’s movement. In fact, every woman who did not abide by traditional gender roles or simply left the (female) private home alone and entered the (male) public sphere was a potential threat and therefore also at risk of being arrested and examined. It is no coincidence that the police focused their activity on working women in general and that the (female) abolitionists’ public opposition was sanctioned or at least ridiculed. This anxiety towards women that entered the public sphere also became evident during the discussions 69

See: Tobias Bruns. “Thresholds of Threat in (Historical) Security Cultures: Overcoming the Good-Versus-Bad Mobilities Dichotomy,” in The Mobility-Security Nexus and the Making of Order. An Interdisciplinary and Historicizing Intervention, eds. Heidi Hein-Kircher and Werner Distler (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2022). On the influence of the first wave of globalization on German tariff policy, see Cornelius Torp, The challenges of globalization: Economy and politics in Germany, 1860–1914 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2014); In contrast to the security culture of the German Empire, see Eckart Conze, “Sicherheit als Kultur: Überlegungen zu einer ‘modernen Politikgeschichte’ der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 53, no. 3 (2005); On the transition from “Ordnung” to “Sicherheit”, see Achim Saupe, “Von “Ruhe und Ordnung” zur “inneren Sicherheit”. Eine Historisierung gesellschaftlicher Dispositive,” Zeithistorische Forschungen 9, no. 2 (2010); On (trans-) migration durig the German Empire, see Thomas Mergel, “Das Kaiserreich als Migrationsgesellschaft,” in Das deutsche Kaiserreich in der Kontroverse, eds. Sven  O.  Müller and Cornelius Torp (Göttingen:  Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009); On the contemporary anxiety, see Joachim Radkau, Das Zeitalter der Nervosität: Deutschland zwischen Bismarck und Hitler (Munich: Hanser, 1998).

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on Mädchenhandel, primarily as a reaction to the growing numbers of young women who migrated into the cities in search of a job. Furthermore, prostitution was associated with the dissolution of gender boundaries. The focus on pimps since the 1880s especially fits this pattern, since their relation to prostitutes, the latter acting as the breadwinners, turned traditional roles upside down. In fact, contemporary observers depicted pimps as lazy, unwilling to work or parasitic.70 Since spatial and social transgressions were securitized, it is far from random that places where phenomena of mobility accumulated, e.g. transportation hubs or public institutions, were perceived and depicted as simultaneously threatening and threatened. Prostitutes were often not allowed to reside or even travel close to schools, universities, military bases, or churches; train stations, harbors, pubs, and factories were the primary places of police or activist intervention. Some critics of regulation who otherwise strictly opposed brothels were willing to tolerate them in (big) port cities. The reformist venerologist Ernst von Düring wrote: “one might say that such an institution might be necessary for the protection of innocent girls in harbor cities with their large masses of men who disembark daily.”71 Even though prostitution also existed in small cities and the countryside, it was exclusively depicted as an urban phenomenon, a byproduct of the emergence of metropolises. Pastor Klemm wrote: “A capital is a moral hospital, where the concentration of so many people leads to the creation of new moral diseases. [It’s] a large-scale factory of sins.”72 Prostitution (of native women) in colonies was especially problematic, since it was not only associated with the same threats as their European counterparts, but also with the transgression and erosion of racial boundaries.73 70

See Karin Walser, “Prostitutionsverdacht und Geschlechterforschung: Das Beispiel der Dienstmädchen um 1900,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 11 (1985); Rita Gehlen, “‘Öffentliches Ärgernis’: Zugriffe der öffentlichen Gewalt auf ‘ärgerliche’ Geschlechterbeziehungen zur Zeit des Wilhelminischen Kaiserreiches,” in Frauenleben – Frauen leben: Zur Geschichte und Gegenwart weiblicher Lebenswelten im Saarraum (17.–20. Jahrhundert), ed. Eva Labouvie (St. Ingbert: Röhrig, 1993); Susanne Frank, “Die Disziplinierung der weiblichen Körper: Kanalisation und Prostitution in der Großstadtentwicklung des 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Vernunft, Entwicklung, Leben:  Schlüsselbegriffe der Moderne Festschrift für Wolfgang Eßbach, eds. Ulrich Bröckling, Axel  T.  Paul and Stefan Kaufmann (Munich:  W.  Fink, 2004), 167–169, 172–173; Schulte, Sperrbezirke, 7–9; Kretzschmar, Gleiche Moral und gleiches Recht, 218, 228–229; Krafft, Zucht und Unzucht, 154–159, 162; Thoben, Prostitution in Nürnberg, 45–46; Evans, Tales from the German underworld, 194–195. 71 Ernst von Düring, Prostitution und Geschlechtskrankheiten (Leipzig: Verlag von Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1905), 26. 72 Klemm, Die öffentliche Unsittlichkeit, 8. 73 See Franziska Roller, “Flaneurinnen, Straßenmädchen, Bürgerinnen: Öffentlicher Raum und gesellschaftliche Teilhabe von Frauen,” in Geschlechter-Räume: Konstruktionen von

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The fact that the municipal administration of Hamburg, Germany’s most important port, insisted so vehemently that they had to keep the brothels running was no coincidence either. The central logic of the system of regulation was based on limiting and controlling mobility. Prostitutes were either confined to brothels or had to accept drastic limitations to their freedom of movement. Violations of any kind were sanctioned by internment, whether in prisons, workhouses, women’s shelters, or hospitals. Some cities tried to relocate prostitutes to more peripheral areas and police raids often led to the deportation of women who did not possess German citizenship. Beyond the direct regulation of prostitution, politicians, municipalities, but also social reform activists tried to limit the mobility of women in general; railway missions intercepted girls searching for jobs, the police dissolved abolitionists meetings, and work safety laws from 1891 forbade night shifts in factories for women and instructed employers to separate genders at workplaces. Hospitals often had special separated wings for patients infected with venereal diseases. With registration, the boundary between ‘whore’ and ‘mother’ was restored and literally fixed in black and white.74 That there were no further attempts to re-establish brothels after the turn of the century is based on the fact that this form of regulation was closely associated with the highly controversial Mädchenhandel. Thus, another phenomenon of (of spatial and symbolic) mobility superposed the promised limitation of mobility, which led to the brothels’ loss of legitimacy. The fact that venereal diseases also became the major associated threat at the same time can be explained as a problematization of mobility, since the diseases did not respect social boundaries either, indiscriminately spreading from prostitutes to husbands to wives to children. It is important to mention that the problematization of prostitution as a phenomenon of mobility was not limited to the middle- and upper-classes. While there was a certain sympathy towards prostitutes, since they were depicted as victims of capitalist society, socialists also saw widespread prostitution as “gender” in Geschichte, Literatur und Alltag, ed. Margarete Hubrath (Cologne:  Böhlau, 2001); Kirchhof, Das Dienstfräulein auf dem Bahnhof, 13; Krafft, Zucht und Unzucht, 41, 52, 57–64; Cornelia Essner, “Zwischen Vernunft und Gefühl: Die Reichstagsdebatten von 1912 um koloniale ‘Rassenmischehe’ und Sexualität,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 45, no. 6 (1997), 508–9; Dietrich, “Sittlichkeit zwischen weiblicher Emanzipation”. 74 See Schulte, Sperrbezirke, 174–204; Frank, “Die Disziplinierung der weiblichen Körper,” 179–83; Abrams, “Prostitutes in Imperial Germany 1870–1918,” 191, 201, 204–205; Kontos, Öffnung der Sperrbezirke, 272; Sauerteig, Krankheit, Sexualität, Gesellschaft, 126–136; On work safety legislation for women, see Schmitt, Der Arbeiterinnenschutz im deutschen Kaiserreich; Kathleen Canning, Languages of labor and gender: Female factory work in Germany, 1850–1914 (Ithaca, London: Cornell University, 1996).

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a threat. It was believed that the physical proximity of prostitutes in working class areas would infect proletarian children with immorality and seduce honest hard-working women into prostitution as well. Socialists also were on the forefront of condemning pimps and Mädchenhandel. In their choice of words, socialists were sometimes barely distinguishable from moral purity activists or medical reformers.75 For example, the socialist journalist Heinrich Lux wrote: “prostitution is not only poisoning morally, but just all too disastrously physically the people’s health.”76 He also warned that the “mental poison, that prostitution emits”77 could cause homosexuality, another mobility phenomenon. Furthermore, he predicted that: “sooner or later the whole society has to be contaminated by the poison of venereal diseases.”78 This drastic language regarding prostitution was not limited to socialist elites. An anonymous, ordinary worker in Hamburg is quoted in the notes of a police spy as saying: “The biggest cancerous damage of today’s society is prostitution.”79 Another worker is quoted calling pimps “the scum of humanity.”80 Lastly, it should not be omitted that the majority of actors, such as police officers, politicians, and doctors, who spoke about prostitution, sought to securitize it, or were actively involved with the regulation were men. It could be argued that the perception of prostitution as a threat (on the grounds of its association with phenomena of mobility) is simply a reproduction of the male view. However, conservative women fought actively side by side with anti-feminists against their own emancipation (as a transgression of gender boundaries). Furthermore, the few women who spoke publicly about prostitution, especially the abolitionists, were not at ease with prostitutes even though they defended their legal rights. Prostitutes were often depicted as ‘lost,’ morally bankrupt, and physically diseased. The numerous female welfare activists who tried to convert prostitutes into potential housewives and mothers were strongly motivated by a normative bourgeois understanding of family that strictly pathologized (sub-) proletarian lifestyles. Consistently, from 1904 onwards, German abolitionists emphatically supported the training and employment of female morality police assistants. Finally, the topic was 75 76 77 78 79

Konieczka, “Arten zu sprechen, Arten zu schweigen,” 103–104, 113–118. Lux, Die Prostitution, 22. Lux, Die Prostitution, 23. Lux, Die Prostitution, 27–28. Bericht des Polizisten Graumann, 26.08.1897, in: Richard J. Evans, ed., Kneipengespräche im Kaiserreich: Die Stimmungsberichte der Hamburger Politischen Polizei 1892–1914 (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1989), 200. 80 Bericht des Polizisten Graumann, 25.06.1901, in: Evans, Kneipengespräche im Kaiserreich, 202.

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only picked up by the majority of the women’s movement after the restrictive practices of the morality police led to a series of wrongful arrests and examinations, blurring the supposed borders between the honorable bourgeois woman and the immoral prostitute.81 Conclusion After the founding of the German Empire, the new federal criminal law prohibited the formerly common practice of confining (female) prostitutes in licensed brothels. Municipal authorities and especially doctors argued that the closure of the brothels was a threat to public order, safety, and hygiene. Instead of reinstating brothels, many cities avoided legal conflicts and created or expanded a scrutinous surveillance system that registered prostitutes, drastically limited their personal freedom, and forced them to undergo regular medical examinations. In the 1880s, it became obvious that this system of regulation was ineffective since morality police units were seriously understaffed and most prostitutes evaded the control regime. Many contemporary observers were preoccupied with the apparent expansion of prostitution into the public sphere. Moral purity activists began to dramatize the widespread Unzucht as a threat to German society and the nation and demanded a complete prohibition of prostitution. After the so called “Heinze case,” moral purity activists were able to ignite a far-reaching public debate on morality that lasted almost a decade. With the turn of the century, a new threat was identified: Widespread venereal diseases seemed to be a major cause for declining birth rates and prostitutes were deemed to be their primary source. Arguing that prostitution was primarily a matter of public health, many doctors now strategically allied with abolitionists to end police-supervised regulation, a goal they eventually achieved after the First World War in 1927. The discussions on prostitution during the German Empire reflect several characteristics of its security culture. The general perception of prostitution 81 On female antifeminism, see Ute Planert, Antifeminismus im Kaiserreich: Diskurs, soziale Formation und politische Mentalität (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 118–176; On abolitionism, social welfare and female police assistants, see Kretzschmar, Gleiche Moral und gleiches Recht, 176–79; Götting, Das Aufbegehren der bürgerlichen Frauenbewegung; On the ambivalence of the abolitionist movement, see Susanne Omran, “‘Woran erkennen wir die Prostituierte?’: Sittlichkeit, Großstadtdiskurs und Antisemitismus im Kontext der Frauenbewegung,” in Bürgerliche Frauenbewegung und Antisemitismus, eds. Mechthild Bereswill and Leonie Wagner (Tübingen: Edition Diskord, 1998).

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as a threat was based on its association with physical and social mobility, which was perceived as a threat to the security culture of the German Empire. Prostitutes reflected the changing social order and challenged gender boundaries. Therefore, places where mobilities accumulated were seen as both threatening and threatened and became the focal point of police and political activity. Limiting and control the mobility of prostitutes and groups associated with them was the central practice regarding prostitution. During these discussions, it is possible to identify a major shift in securitization discourses. While the so-called social question was initially their major referent object, it was substituted by the biologized population after the turn of the century. Even though both supporters of the legalization of brothels and moral purity activists were unable to actually change the law in their interest, they were very successful in dominating the political discourse. In the end, the morality debate of the 1890s was a zero-sum game. No one eventually got the upper hand, since there was already an extraordinary measure in place (in form of the regulation) and although supporters of the existing system may not have been very vocal, they were nonetheless more influential. With the emergence of the birth decline debate, reformist doctors and abolitionists were much more successful in speaking with a unified voice that was not effectively contradicted in public. Brothel supporters had more or less vanished or switched sides, and the moralistic arguments of the Sittlichkeitsvereine had become unconvincing. Thus, the attempt to securitize prostitution via medicalization was successful and paved the way for to the eventual abolition of the regulation of prostitution in the Weimar Republic.

Ravishers or Tradesmen? Understanding East European Jewish Traffickers at Home and Abroad, 1880s–1920s Keely Stauter-Halsted “What do I deal in? Ha ha! Not in Hanukkah candles, my friend, not in Hanukkah candles!” Sholem Aleichem, The Man From Buenos Aires

Recent research on sex trafficking has moved away from portraying traffickers as ruthless villains and their charges as naïve victims. Once inclined to view the sex trade through the lens of the fin de siècle “white slavery panic,” scholars have increasingly highlighted the contingent circumstances prompting young women to turn to paid sex and the complex relationships they develop with their “handlers” en route to their new homes.1 This approach ascribes more agency to sex migrants navigating international borders and recognizes their complicated relationships with the “chaperones” who controlled their fate.2 We now understand the position of mobile sex workers as neither entirely powerless nor fully autonomous. Rather, as Elisa Camiscioli has argued, those who labored in foreign brothels travelled “in the gray zone between coercion and choice … neither fully free nor wholly subjected.”3 Social science research 1 Foundational works on trafficking in women include Donna J. Guy, Sex & Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990); Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). More recently, Nancy  M.  Wingfield has published on Jewish and non-Jewish traffickers from the perspective of reformers and Austrian imperial efforts to police the practice. See “Destination: Alexandria, Buenos Aires, Constantinople; ‘White Slavers’ in Late Imperial Austria,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 20, no. 2 (2011): 291–311; and The World of Prostitution in Late Imperial Austria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). See also, Keely Stauter-Halsted, The Devil’s Chain: Prostitution and Social Control in Partitioned Poland (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015). 2 Jo Doezema, “Loose Women or Lost Women? The Re-emergence of the Myth of White Slavery in Contemporary Discourses of Trafficking in Women,” Gender Issues 18, no. 1 (1999): 23–50; and Laura Agustin, “The Disappearing of a Migration Category: Migrants Who Sell Sex,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies vol. 32, no. 1 (January 2006): 29–47. 3 Elisa Camiscioli, “Coercion and Choice: The ‘Traffic in Women’ between France and Argentina in the Early Twentieth Century,” French Historical Studies 42, no. 3 (2019): 483–507.

© Brill Schöningh, 2023 | doi:10.30965/9783657790470_005

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on the recent refugee crisis in Europe reflects a similar move away from the rigid dichotomies of coercion and voluntary movement, emphasizing the complex lived experiences of migrants, including those who sold sex.4 But the same attention has not been paid to migration facilitators – many of them Jews – who drove the trafficking crisis at the turn of the twentieth century.5 The close focus on the agency of female migrants has overshadowed attempts to understand the motivations of the agents who squired them across international boundaries. Specialists working at the nexus of paid sex and international migration have documented the role Jews played as pimps, procurers, and long-distance traders in women, but never fully analyzed what drove their turn to trafficking or how their participation in the sex industry was perceived in the broader Jewish community.6 The purpose of this chapter is to suggest some avenues for understanding East European migration facilitators and to propose a reconsideration of their position in Jewish life back home. It is my contention that increased imperial restrictions on migration and the growing impediments on Jewish livelihoods in general prompted Jews to turn to the work of human smuggling, assisting would-be migrants to transit from small-town Eastern Europe to the shores of Latin America and the United States. Many female clients would end up in brothels and their Jewish facilitators would frequently play a role in placing them there. But the relationship between agent and migrant was not always, or not only, one of coercion. In what follows, I look at the appearance of Jewish 4 Giorgia Serughetti, “Smuggled or Trafficked? Refugee or Job Seeker? Deconstructing Rigid Classifications by Rethinking Women’s Vulnerability,” Anti-Trafficking Review 11 (2018): 16–35. 5 Scholars have addressed the position of Jewish of female “victims” of trafficking schemes and the aid efforts of Jewish welfare agencies, but the position of the Jewish procurer has rarely been the subject of scholarly research. See, for example, Lloyd P. Gartner, “Anglo-Jewry and the Jewish International Traffic in Prostitution, 1885–1914,” AJS Review  (1982): 129–78; Paul Knepper, “British Jews and the Racialisation of Crime in the Age of Empire,”  British Journal of Criminology 47, no. 1 (2007): 61–79; Rachael Attwood, “Looking Beyond―White Slavery: Trafficking, the Jewish Association, and the Dangerous Politics of Migration Control in England, 1890–1910,” Anti-Trafficking Review, no. 7 (2016): 115–38. 6 Social reformer Bertha Pappenheim first broadcast her concern about the Jewish role in sex trafficking operations in her 1904 expose, Sisyphus: Gegen den Mädchenhandel: Eine Studie über Mädchenhandel und Prostitution in Osteuropa und dem Orient. The classic historical work on the subject is Edward J. Bristow’s Prostitution and Prejudice: The Jewish Fight against White Slavery, 1870–1939, which addresses Jewish participation in the transatlantic sex trade, but overlooks relationships between migrating women and their Jewish agents before their departure from Europe. Regarding the use of the terminology, “pimp” for those who recruited women into sex work, see Magaly Rodriguez Garcia, “The League of Nations and the Moral Recruitment of Women,” International Review of Social History vol. 57 (2012): 99.

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“traffickers” in official documents from court transcripts to the testimonies of returning prostitutes. These records suggest that migration facilitators operated in a liminal space not unlike that of their female charges. Jewish handlers worked at the cusp of licit and illicit activities; they plied “legitimate” professions while simultaneously violating local and international law; they served as helpers and cheats, saviors and sinners, ravishers and tradesmen. This complex positionality is further reflected in the reports of Paul Kinsie, who toured red light districts around the world from 1924 to 1926 as a representative of the League of Nations Special Body of Experts on Traffic in Women and Children. I rely on the dozens of interviews Kinsie conducted with brothel keepers and international traffickers in Yiddish-speaking communities across Central Europe to flesh out official documentation on Jewish trafficking rings. And finally, I highlight popular accounts of the Jewish “underworld” from contemporary memoirs and Yiddish-language literature that affirm the multiplicity of roles Jewish fixers played in early twentieth-century Eastern Europe. As we will see, portrayals of trafficking agents and brothel owners in Yiddish stories reveal a striking degree of grudging respect for these figures and their ability to solve very real problems, an indication of their important function within the community. The increasing encroachment of the liberal state in constricting human mobility provided the backdrop for the rise in human smuggling and trafficking schemes.7 By the late nineteenth century, fluid movement across borders had been restricted due to invasive medical examinations, minimum financial requirements for migrants, and the need for valid passports and proof of military service. Nowhere were efforts to control the exit of mobile populations more acute than in the empires of early twentieth-century Eastern Europe.8 Especially in the borderlands along the Russian and Austro-Hungarian frontier, enhanced migration regulations and stringent document requirements drove a whole industry of forgery and human smuggling, trades that Jewish practitioners often dominated.9 Empires sought to stem the exodus of migrants in order to curtail loss of revenue from taxes and fees, shrinking 7 John Torpey, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State (Cambridge University Press, 2000). 8 On migration controls of laborers leaving East Central Europe, see Tara Zahra, The Great Departure: Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World (Norton & Company, 2016). 9 Regarding the role of border police and the management of population mobility in the Habsburg Monarchy, see Tracie L. Wilson, “Migration, Empire, and Liminality: Sex Trade in the Borderlands of Europe,” Aspasia 11, no. 1 (2017): 71–96.

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military manpower, and a shortage of laborers to work the fields.10 As a desperate population sought relief on foreign shores, Jewish middlemen stepped in to facilitate their passage to a new life. Single women, among others, frequently turned to these agents for help in escaping East European poverty. At the same time, international agencies and anti-trafficking activists like the national Associations for the Protection of Woman and Children worked to demonize would-be migration agents, characterizing them as ruthless slavers intent on corrupting the morals of innocent young women. As Julia Laite shows, in this period “the idea of pimping and trafficking was being codified, and deployed to rearticulate prostitution as part of a criminally organized underworld that stood firmly apart from the normal world of work, migration and licit relationships.” Traffickers, she concludes, “were caricatured, demonized and racialized, and increasingly seen as the chief cause of prostitution.”11 In the borderlands of Eastern Europe, demonization and racialization of Jewish practitioners helped reinforce images of the innocent victimhood of single female migrants. The Image of the Jewish Trafficker Anthony Kirkor’s iconic melodrama, The Ravisher, neatly encapsulates the paradigmatic image of the Jewish trafficker that prevailed for much of the twentieth century. The novel paints Fanny Ozorek as the victim of a vicious migration scam that uproots her from a Polish village and imprisons her in a bawdyhouse in the harbor district of Buenos Aires.12 Fanny appears as a virtual slave, forbidden to communicate with her family, forced to receive up to seventy men per day, beaten regularly, and finally dying from her wounds alone in her cell. As in thousands of plays, films, and news reports highlighting sex trafficking operations out of Eastern Europe in these years, the engine behind the conspiracy is an amoral Jew, who manages a vast network of agents supplying “fresh meat” to brothels across the globe. Such characterizations of Jewish villains luring Christian virgins away from European city streets were commonplace in contemporary newspaper reports, brochures, and educational materials, where the racial dimension of a non-Christian malefactor overpowering innocent 10 Siobhán Hearne, “Prosecuting Procurement in the Russian Empire,”  Journal of Social History 54, no. 1 (2020): 185–209. 11 Julia Laite, “Traffickers and Pimps in the Era of White Slavery,” Past and Present 237, no. 1 (2017): 238. 12 Anthony Kirkor, pseud. Antoni Marczyński, The Ravishers, A Novel of White Slavery in Its Heyday (New York: The Ignis Company, 1955). Originally published as W szponach handlarzy kobiet (1929) and produced as a film, Szlakiem hańby (1929).

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white girls made the drama of trafficking all the more frightening to European and North American audiences. By 1914, experts estimated that some one billion pages had been written on white slavery in North America alone, most of it shaped around the melodramatic plot of female vulnerability and evil, “foreign,” migration handler.13 And yet, these two-dimensional depictions of the migrant-trafficker relationship failed to capture the patterns of interaction transatlantic travellers developed with their migration agents or the complex circumstances surrounding the exodus of thousands of single, young women from Eastern Europe around the turn of the century. Indeed, by sexualizing and racializing a relationship that may have been rooted primarily in economic exchange, contemporary observers and historians alike have overlooked deeper structural realities that help explain the role of Jewish mediators in facilitating the flight of thousands of young women out of Eastern Europe in this period. Nowhere was the figure of the enterprising Jewish trafficker more ubiquitous than in the Polish lands. Across the territories of partitioned Poland, popular assumptions about Jewish involvement in organized crime and smuggling operations fed stereotypes about a community living on the edge of the law that would stop at nothing to earn a ruble.14 If consular documents, police transcripts, and court testimonies are any indication, the vast majority of suspected traffickers and most of those convicted and imprisoned for coerced migration were Jews. Paul Kinsie confirmed the widespread Jewish role in trafficking schemes while conducting his global investigation into hundreds of Yiddish speaking prostitution rings.15 Leading Polish anti-prostitution activists made no secret of their assumptions that Jews were central to sex trafficking operations. Legal scholar, Professor Stanisław Posner, himself of Jewish origin, famously proclaimed in 1901 that “from beginning to end, the guilty ones, the agents, their associates, and all the links in this devil’s chain are of Jewish faith.”16 Josef Schrank, a Viennese physician and a member of the Austrian Vigilance Society, pointedly labeled trafficking in human goods 13 Edward J. Bristow, Vice and Vigilance: Purity Movements in Britain since 1700 (New York, Gill and Macmillan: 1977), 188–89. 14 On Jewish criminality and its role in anti-Semitism in the Polish lands, see Robert Blobaum, “Criminalizing the ‘Other:’ Crime, Ethnicity and Antisemitism in Early Twentieth Century Poland,” in Blobaum, ed., Antisemitism and its Opponents in Modern Poland (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), 81–102. 15 Jean-Michel Chaumont, Magaly Rodríguez García, and Paul Servais. Trafficking in Women 1924–1926: The Paul Kinsie Reports for the League of Nations, 2 Vols. (2017). 16 Posner’s comments appeared in serial form in 1901 and were later reprinted in his longer study, Nad otchłania.

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“a special occupation of the Jews.”17 Abolitionists like Augustyn Wróblewski agreed, noting that “procurers in Poland are mostly Jews.”18 Historians of trafficking have largely accepted this presentation of Jews as central to the coerced trade in women, echoing the impressions of contemporary observers. Wacław Zalewski’s 1923 portrayal of Warsaw-based trafficking rings assigns primary responsibility for the trade to enterprising “Litvaks” (Jews from the Lithuanian region).19 Stanisława Paleolog, head of Warsaw’s interwar Women’s Police Battalion, graphically depicts “souteneur-husbands” in the Polish Jewish community and their links to the Latin American criminal world.20 Scholars such as Marion Kaplan, Edward Bristow, and Ruth Rosen have offered more sympathetic accounts of the Jewish role in international trafficking, citing the extreme poverty, legal restrictions, and cultural limitations of East European Jewish communities that conditioned the turn to the overseas trade in women.21 Despite these added perspectives, however, accounts of Jewish “migration agents” rarely address the complex relationship between Jewish mediators and their female “customers,” leaving the caricature of traffickers’ conniving behavior with their clients more-or-less intact. Yet when we look beneath the stereotype of Jewish complicity, the historical record reveals that in many cases those who transported young women out of Eastern Europe were well-known “underworld” characters to whom locals turned for solutions to very real problems. Existing in liminal legal spaces, these Jewish “fixers” assisted their neighbors in avoiding taxes and tolls, forging official documents, and transporting illicit items across international frontiers. Among their marginal economic practices was the operation of unlicensed brothels. Prostitution across Eastern Europe was tolerated by all imperial powers before the First World War and the postwar new democracies as long as those who practiced it registered with the police and appeared for twice weekly medical examinations. Procurement of women for the brothel trade, forced migration for the purposes of selling sex, and the hiring of underaged girls was strictly prohibited, yet Jews were involved in all of these illegal 17

Quoted in Augustyn Wróblewski, “Handel kobietami,” Czystość 5, no. 23 (May 14, 1909): 354–55. 18 Wróblewski, O prostytucji i handlu kobietami, 18. 19 Zaleski, Z dziejów prostytucji w Warszawie (Warsaw: Druk Policyna, 1923), 87–91. 20 Stanisława Paleolog, The Woman Police of Poland (London, 1957), 5–7. 21 Marion Kaplan, “Prostitution, Morality Crusades and Feminism: German-Jewish Feminists and the Campaign Against White Slavery.” Women’s Studies International Forum 5, no. 6 (1982), 619–27; Edward  J.  Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice: The Jewish Fight against White Slavery 1870–1939 (New York, 1983); Ruth Rosen, The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America, 1900–1918 (Baltimore, 1982).

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activities.22 These endeavors represented essential components of Jewish life, tolerated because their financially desperate clientele depended upon their services, yet targeted by the often anti-semitic state law enforcement agencies. Examining the intersection of trafficking with Jewish ethnicity highlights the embattled position in which Jewish communities existed. As we will see, since imperial regulations and employment restrictions often forced Jews to live outside the law, Jewish participation in various “criminal” activities did not it itself make them “ravishers.” Rather, many served as guides to emigration, job acquisition and illicit border crossing, working in the blurred space between legality and illegality, legitimacy and stigma. As such, they came to be trusted by their often-destitute clientele. Indeed, as Adam McKeown has argued, the early twentieth century represented a transitional moment for the image of the migration broker. Though travel agents had long been perceived as a legitimate element in the infrastructure of human movement, state agencies began in this period to target them as shady characters in order to force control of migration into official hands.23 Popular representations and government efforts to de-legitimize brokers in the eyes of the wider public may have mutually reinforced one another. And yet informal, illicit, and unregistered migration facilitators remained very much a part of the underground economy of border crossing in this period. The encroachment of the imperial state into the everyday lives of their subjects helped encourage the turn to illegal methods for circumventing restrictive residence rights, marriage controls, and professional statuses around the turn of the twentieth century. In fact, the totalizing state often created criminals and criminality by turning customary practices that had existed below the radar of imperial surveillance in earlier periods into illicit activities now monitored by an expanding bureaucracy. Understanding the importance of three key functions in East European Jewish communities helps clarify some of the conceptual slippage between Jewish middlemen and Jewish traffickers, and between customary practices and criminality. First, as the pressure to leave Eastern Europe in search of fortunes overseas increased, Jews turned to work as emigration agents. Imperial restrictions preventing legal emigration combined with Jewish connections across international borders meant that Jews increasingly served as the contact for those wishing to emigrate illegally. 22 Stauter-Halsted, The Devil’s Chain, 169–95. 23 Adam McKeown, “How the Box Became Black: Brokers and the Creation of the Free Migrant,” Pacific Affairs 85, no. 1 (March 2012): 21–45. See also Ruben Andersson’s Illegality, Inc.: Clandestine Migration and the Business of Bordering Europe for another view on the “invention” of illegal migrants (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2014).

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Second, and related to their function as migration agents, the occupational structure within Jewish communities meant that Jewish businessmen had long served as “jobbers” or employment agents, connecting job seekers with those wishing to hire them. Their longstanding positions as village innkeepers or local scribes meant that literate Jews frequently served as arbiters of information between Gentiles and Jews alike, including gossip about job opportunities. Promises to place unskilled women in favorable positions thus echoed a routine practice that depended on connections and information flow. Finally, the much-maligned institution of ritual marriage, in which prospective Jewish grooms convinced impoverished parents to give up jurisdiction over their daughters without proper civil documentation contributed to suspicion about unmarried couples travelling abroad. Poorer families wishing to avoid expensive imperial marriage taxes often resorted to these informal weddings, after which their daughters were free to accompany their “husbands” overseas. Each of these practices reflected longstanding elements of East European Jewish life, patterns that would have been familiar to young women negotiating with Jewish mediators. It is important to recognize, as I have argued elsewhere, that even when migration agents convinced their targets to willingly sojourn abroad with them, this decision did not negate the possibility of deception or physical force later in the journey.24 We know that pimps and procurers frequently abused their clients, as many of those trapped in foreign brothels could no doubt attest.25 Moreover, most human smugglers engage in some combination of false promises, financial trickery, and blatant neglect of their clients’ safety. Those who transported women for sexual purposes were likely no different. Nevertheless, recognizing the symbiotic relationship between the enterprising migration agents who squired women abroad and the thousands of desperate migrants who turned to them allows us to fit these facilitators into a broader social milieu both within and beyond the boundaries of East Europe.26 24

Keely Stauter-Halsted, “Sex at the Border: Trafficking as a Migration Problem in Partitioned Poland,” Migration and Mobility in the Modern Age: Refugees, Travelers, and Traffickers in Europe and Eurasia, ed. Anika Walker, Jan Musekamp, and Nicole Svobodny (Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 2017), 164–87. 25 Laura Maria Agustin, Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets, and the Rescue Industry (London: Zed Books, 2007). 26 The migration of young women out of Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the fall of communism has also been broadly characterized as sexually-motivated and hence coerced, a conclusion that ignores local conditions generating the exodus and that has broad policy implications. See, for example, Jacqueline Berman, “(Un) popular Strangers and Crises (Un) bounded: Discourses of Sex-Trafficking, the European Political Community and the

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The Panic: Trafficking Tales and Anti-Semitic Trials The drama of “white slavery” that gripped much of the world at the dawn of the twentieth century touched East Central Europe with a particular vengeance.27 Jewish traffickers and their Christian victims were at the center of a series of high profile criminal prosecutions in the lands of partitioned Poland, the reputed source for many young women trapped in overseas brothels.28 The trials played out in an atmosphere of heightened ethnic and confessional tension across the region, drawing on sexualized and racialized accounts of cross-border economic exchanges. A series of ritual murder accusations in the Habsburg Monarchy and the Russian Empire gave currency to the notion that Jews sought the blood of Christian innocents, including travelling maidens.29 The newly established Polish boulevard press captured it all, subtly linking the trade in human “flesh” with rumors of Jewish blood libel atrocities.30 Among the most highly publicized cases of the pre-World War I period was the prosecution of twenty-seven accused traffickers in the Austrian provincial capital of Lwów (L’viv, Lemberg), the seat of the Galician crownland government. The trial was dubbed “the sensation of the century” and established many of the tropes by which trafficking would be understood in the popular Panicked State of the Modern State,” European Journal of International Relations 9, no. 1 (2003): 37–86. 27 Regarding the growth of sensational journalism via reporting on white slavery, see Gretchen Soderlund, Sex Trafficking, Scandal, and the Transformation of Journalism, 1885– 1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). 28 On Polish trafficking trials and their Jewish defendants, see Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice; and Keely Stauter-Halsted, “‘A Generation of Monsters’: Jews, Prostitution, and Racial Purity in the 1892 L’viv White Slavery Trial,” Austrian History Yearbook 38 (2007): 25–35. 29 Regarding turn-of-the-century blood libel trials across the region, see Hillel J. Kieval, “The Rules of the Game: Forensic Medicine and the Language of Science in the Structuring of Modern Ritual Murder Trials,” Jewish History 26, nos. 3–4 (December 2012): 287–307; Kieval, “Neighbors, Strangers, Readers: The Village and the City in Jewish-Gentile Conflicts at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 12, no. 1 (2005): 61–79; and Helmut Smith, The Butcher’s Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town (New York, 2002). For a summary of officially investigated ritual murder accusations in Galicia, see Andrzej Żblikowski, Żydzi krakowscy i ich gmina w latach 1869–1919 (Warsaw, 1994), 292–93. 30 For traffickers as “flesh eaters, “ see “Handlarze kobiet,” Słowo, July 31, 1891, 4. Nathaniel Wood looks at the role of sex scandals in the growth of the Polish popular press in “Sex Scandals, Sexual Violence, and the Word on the Street: The Kolasówna Lustmord in Cracow’s Popular Press, 1905–1906,”  Journal of the History of Sexuality  20, no. 2 (2011): 243–269.

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imagination. Its conduct reportedly “shook listeners to the very core” with its representation of “lust, passion, desire, and delight.” The local press clearly labeled the defendants “typically Jewish,” contrasting their alleged behavior with European standards of civility and vilifying them as “Jewish pimps (male and female), devoid of any human feelings.” News media stressed the defendants’ stereotypically Jewish character, their faces reflecting “typically Jewish” physiognomy, similar to that found “in Lwów gutters, or in our dirty provincial towns.” In a reference to Jews’ status as tradesmen of all kinds, the accused were depicted as the type that “wears payot and a caftan, or rather a common pimp and supplier of ‘everything.’” Though the names of the witnesses suggested many among them were of Jewish background, the press nonetheless referred to the victims as “Christian girls,” “Polish girls,” or “farmers daughters,” helping to enhance perceptions of sexual vulnerability among the victims.31 The majority of the defendants in the Lwów trial were found guilty, though of the lesser charge of procuring rather than international trafficking. Following the verdict, a steady stream of reports emphasized Jewish participation in international trafficking rings. In January 1895, “some Jew” was reported arrested on suspicion of trafficking at the Sanok train station for travelling alone with an “attractive blond” girl en route to Hungary.32 Well-publicized trials of accused Jewish “white slavers” in Bytom and Sosnowiec in July 1901 and the June 1912 arraignment of three Jewish merchants in Lwów continued the feeding frenzy among Polish readers for colorful and intimate accounts of trafficking operations.33 The February 1914 trial of an innkeeper from the Russian border town of Modrzejów stressed the defendant’s “Jewish faith” and his close connections to the emigration bureau of the “Jew” Weichmann.34 Across Polish territory the press characterized trafficking as “an historical calling of the Jewish nation.”35

31 “Handel ludźmi,” Kurjer Lwowski, June  18, 1892, 1; “Handlarze dziewcząt,” Gazeta Narodowa, October 19, 1892, 2–5; “Handlarze dziewcząt,” Kurjer Lwowski, October 20, 1892, 4–5; “Handlarze dziewcząt,” Kurjer Lwowski, October 23, 1892, 5; “Handlarze kobiet,” Słowo, July 31, 1891, 4. 32 “Aresztowanie handlarza dziewcząt,” Gazeta Sanocka, February 17, 1895, 4. 33 Posner, Nad otchłanią, 3–9; “Handel żywym towarem,” Wiek Nowy, June 1912. 34 “Handlarze żywym towarem,” Słowo Polskie, February 21, 1914, no page numbers. 35 “Handel kobietami,” Czystość  5, no. 23 (1909): 354–56; “Raz na miesiąc. Gawęda,” Pracownica Polska 3 (September 1909): 15–16.

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Imperial Restrictions, Jewish Responses Tales of Jewish intrigue and underworld activities reflected tensions around a very real shift in the status and conditions of East European Jewish life in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The restrictions facing Jews after the pogroms of 1881–84 in southwestern Russia and the imposition of the restrictive May Laws placed them in a uniquely dismal position.36 Official discrimination was less severe in Austrian Galicia, but Jewish poverty in the remote shtetl towns was legendary and local harassment persisted. In Russia, Jews were prevented from settling in small towns and villages and separated from the peasant population with whom they had traditionally traded. Regulations forced them into already overcrowded cities with little hope of earning a decent livelihood.37 Since a substantial fraction of the Jewish population in Russia already lacked permanent, stable employment, the new decrees increased their pauperization. “In some communities,” David Vital has observed, “the pauperized – meaning those devoid of skills, resources, and specific occupations and largely or even wholly dependent on charity – might form as much as 40–50 percent of the population.”38 When it became apparent that the “temporary” decrees of 1882 were to remain in force and with them the grinding poverty, Jews flocked to the ports and land borders of imperial Russia, heading for North and South America, South Africa, Palestine, and Australia. Together with migrants who traveled only as far as Western Europe, the exodus out of Russia became a mass flight. The steady trickle of Jews who made their way to the United States turned into a stream in the 1880s and a flood between 1891 and 1910 when almost a million Jews emigrated to the US and an additional one and a half-million left Russia for other destinations.39 In addition, a substantial portion of the

36

Kaplan, “Prostitution, Morality Crusades and Feminism,” 620–23; John Klier, Russians, Jews and the Pogroms of 1881–82 (Cambridge, 2011). 37 The 1882 May Laws imposed new regulations on Jewish employment and new residency restrictions on Jewish settlement. They were inconsistently enforced, leading to still greater insecurity among the Jewish population of Russian Poland. Antony Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, Vol. II: 1881–1914 (Oxford, 2010), 5–17; David Vital, A People Apart: The Jews of Europe, 1789–1939 (Oxford, 1999), 883–84. 38 Vital, A People Apart, 302–03. 39 Zvi Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present (Bloomington, IN, 2001), 1–13; Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, Vol. II, 18–21.

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800,000 impoverished Jews of Galicia, subject to fewer legal restrictions but comparable poverty, fled to other shores.40 It is no coincidence that the years of overpopulation, oppression, pauperization, and migration among East European Jews corresponded with the popular panic about the Jewish role in trafficking. Jews were indeed intricately involved in migration processes – as facilitators, as agents, and as émigrés themselves. In many respects, human trafficking became a Jewish problem because migration was a Jewish issue at the turn of the century. As the Chief Rabbi of Britain related to an audience at the 1910 Jewish International Conference on the suppression of trafficking, “we can trace this deplorable change [in Jewish participation in trafficking] directly to the recrudescence of active Russian persecutions in 1881.”41 Without the particular Jewish experience of pogroms, crippling anti-Semitic legislation, and grinding poverty, Edward Bristow agrees, “there would have been very little participation in the overseas [sex] traffic.”42 The crisis within East European Jewry during the late nineteenth century necessitated a degree of resourcefulness that counted on constant economic adaptability and physical mobility. As Eugene  M.  Avrutin has noted, “Jews resorted to a variety of scams, cover-ups, and swindling tricks.” They “forged passports” or “refashioned their social identities” to subvert the maze of legal codes designed to regulate their professional and residential existences.43 They engaged in multiple trades from fishmonger to wine merchant, in addition to long distance smuggling, nimbly switching from one to another as conditions required.44 The Polish-Jewish traffickers in Paul Kinsie’s report operated as forgers of passports, marriage brokers, and employment agents, all practices that helped facilitate the transport of young women abroad under the radar of international migration authorities. At the same time, Jews came under constant imperial suspicion because they relocated more frequently than Christians and frequently avoided registering with authorities to bypass taxes, fees, or the harassment of local officials. Strict imperial restrictions on migration made exiting the Russian Empire virtually impossible without false 40 Vital, A People Apart, 299–302. 41 Report of the Jewish International Conference on the Suppression of the Traffic in Girls and Women (London, 1910), 94. 42 Edward J. Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice, 48–50. For a slightly exaggerated account of Jewish vulnerability to trafficking, see also Brigitte Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna. 43 Eugene  M.  Avrutin, Jews and the Imperial State: Identification Politics in Tsarist Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010), 8–12. 44 Convicted procurers of women in the 1892 Lwów case also worked as waiters, landlords, shoemakers, carpenters, painters and bakers, suggesting trafficking in women was neither a fulltime nor a primary occupation. “Handlarze dziewcząt,” Kurjer Lwowski, October 19, 1892, 4; October 20, 1892, 5.

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documents, bribes, or knowledge of secret border crossings. As Isaac Bashevis Singer’s character, Max, recalls in his novel, Scum, he could easily smuggle a girl out of Russia at the Mlava crossing since “twenty years earlier he and a smuggler had stolen across the border to Germany [there] and he knew the route.”45 Jews often facilitated these clandestine exits because they were among those most affected by the restrictions. Such knowledge made them uniquely qualified to aid in the transfer of all migrants abroad. Of Jobbers and Migration Agents Because Jews fled Eastern Europe in huge numbers during these years, they necessarily played a role in all types of migration: as facilitators, as migrants themselves, as recruiters for overseas companies, as smugglers, and as keepers of brothels abroad.46 The transcripts of trafficking trials from the period demonstrate the confluence between the status of Jewish “factors” or “jobbers,” who arranged employment for needy members of the community, on the one hand, and those involved in illicit migration or human trafficking, on the other. The nine-day trafficking trial held in the border town of Bytom in 1914 encapsulated the multivalent status of mediators in the Jewish community. The defendant, a Mr. Lubelski, spent most of his professional life in the threeempire border of former Polish territory, having managed a tavern in Niwka/ Modrzejów in the (Russian) Polish Kingdom and then moving to Mysłowice on the German side to work in an emigration bureau. Lubelski was depicted as a real talent in recruiting laborers for positions in America and he made a handsome commission on each migrant he signed. Many locals turned to him for help sneaking across the porous Russian/German border since exit papers were notoriously difficult to acquire from Russian imperial authorities. Thanks to Lubelski’s industrious recruiting, Weichmann’s emigration bureau began

45 Singer, Scum, 156. 46 Jewish migration out of the Russian Pale of Settlement to the United States alone reached a pace of over 80,000 per year by the end of the nineteenth century, with a total of 2.8 million Jews leaving Russia between 1880 and 1930. Antony Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, Volume II: 1881–1914 (Oxford, 2010), 18–21. See also, Jonathan Frankel, “The Crisis of 1881–82 as ‘Turning-Point in Modern Jewish History,’” in The Legacy of Jewish Migration: 1881 and its Impact, ed. David Berger (New York, 1983), 9–22; Zosia Szajkowski, “How the Mass Migration to America Began,” Jewish Social Studies 4, no. 4 (1942): 291–310; and Hans Rogger, “Government Policy on Jewish Emigration,” in Jewish Policies and Right-Wing Politics in Imperial Russia (Berkeley, 1996), 176–87.

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processing 300 to 600 workers daily, sending them on to shipping companies in Hamburg, an increase of three-fold from earlier periods. One of the secrets to Lubelski’s success appears to lie in the expansion of the business from mere labor migrants to brothel employees. As court proceedings revealed, the recruits were “sorted” in Mysłowice, with the men, older women and children sent on to the emigration bureau for processing, and the younger girls forwarded directly to Argentina where Lubelski’s brother managed a brothel.47 Despite what appears to have been widespread suspicion about the destination of these young women, Lubelski’s recruitment numbers continued to grow. His position as a longstanding employee of a legitimate emigration bureau no doubt helped build the trust of the women he recruited; whether he promised them “legitimate” positions or indicated what awaited them in South America is unclear. Time and again, state officials and Jewish actors alike conflated the status of travel agent with that of human trafficker. One correspondent for the Viennese paper, Neue Freie Presse, reported in 1888 that every week shipments comprising “poor people from Galicia … expecting a wonderful future” arrived in the Turkish capital, only to be “thrown into miserable slavery.” The paper identified the “agents and traffickers” as “mainly Galician Jews” labeling them “agents of human goods” who were “a hundred times worse and more dangerous than the emigration agents to America.”48 Such an elision of labor migration with slavery was brought even more starkly to the public’s attention during the 1889 Wadowice trial, in which sixty-five Jewish travel agents were prosecuted for employing fraudulent schemes to wring the life savings from migrating peasants on the Austrian border.49 Details of the trial echoed across Eastern Europe, helping to link labor migration to images of coercion and abuse.50 Thanks to the publicity surrounding such trials, Jews, migration and trickery were easily associated in the public’s eye. The function of Jews as migration facilitators also served as an important way of circumventing legal restriction that made the crossing of international borders a hardship for women travelling alone. Kinsie’s interlocutors 47 Lubelski’s willingness to pursue a wide range of livelihoods was particularly ambitious. The trial revealed that he was also occupying himself with spying in Russia for Prussia and, later, spying for Russia. The defendant was sentenced to nine years hard labor for a combination of violating emigration laws, human trafficking, and bribing officials. “Handlarze żywym towarem,” Słowo Polskie, February 21, 1914 (no page numbers). 48 “Galicyjskie niewolnice w Konstantynoplu,” Gazeta Przemyska, August 16, 1888, 5. 49 On the Wadowice trial as part of a larger campaign to discourage emigration out of East Central Europe, see Zahra, “Travel Agents on Trial.” 50 Kowalski, Przestępstwa emigracyjne w Galicji, 158.

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could obtain French passports and Argentinian visas in a matter of days with no documentation or birth certificate, suggesting they had contacts at all levels of government bureaucracies.51 A huge portion of the Eastern and Southeastern European population was on the move in the latter years of the nineteenth century, among them tens of thousands of single women traveling abroad in search of “legitimate” positions. Economic deprivation in the underdeveloped, under-industrialized Polish territories created a pool of needy females, many of them recent arrivals from the impoverished countryside to the swelling cities.52 Indeed, the pattern of young women – both Jewish and Christian – traveling abroad on their own, often with the help of intermediaries, was increasingly prevalent in the early years of the twentieth century, part of a much larger movement of people out of eastern Europe.53 Yet many ports of entry, including Ellis Island in North America, forbade single unaccompanied women from disembarking without a male family member or female chaperone. This prohibition created an opportunity for Jewish factors who offered their services to young, single women. Migration facilitators often engaged in elaborate charades at the border to convince authorities they were related to the women who accompanied them, a scenario that raised the suspicions of border guards and contributed to the hysteria surrounding white slavery tales. Desperate to earn a living themselves and often existing at the margins of the East European economy, Jewish agents frequently engaged in the business of transporting women to foreign brothels. Just as often, however, the “suspicious” gentlemen accompanying lone women were “merely” smuggling contraband goods. Occasionally they were even themselves victims of shady deals as young women implied they were eager to work in the sex trade only to turn against their benefactors once they were safely across the border. Related to the Jewish position as migration agents was the longstanding phenomenon of Jewish “jobbers,” who functioned as intermediaries in linking poor clients up with employment opportunities. A wide array of international connections helped legitimize the Jewish function as employment brokers for 51 Trafficking in Women, Vol. 2, 134–35. 52 Ewa Morawska, “Labor Migrations of Poles in the Atlantic World Economy, 1880–1914,” in Comparative Studies in Society and History  31, no. 2 (1989): 237–72; and Annemarie Steidl, Engelbert Stockhammer, and Hermann Zeitlhofer, “Relations among Internal, Continental, and Transatlantic Migration in Late Imperial Austria,” Social Science History 31, no. 1 (2007): 61–92. 53 On the relative percentage of female migrants out of Europe in the nineteenth century, see Donna Gabaccia, “Women of the Mass Migrations: From Minority to Majority, 1820– 1930,” in European Migrants: Global and Local Perspectives, ed. Dirk Hoerder and Leslie Page Moch (Boston, 1996), 90–111.

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foreign companies. The commitment could be as simple as an offer of work in a nearby town as in the case of Golda Reinerman, who became involved with a group of migration facilitators when one approached her at the Sosnowiec railway station in upper Silesia, offering her a position as a barkeep in nearby Będzin.54 Emilja Rosentretter met her contact in Katowice, where he promised her and her friend waitress jobs in Buenos Aires. Similarly, Blima Znaderówna was working long hours as a domestic for a butcher’s family when she met a migration agent, who offered her a position as a cashier if she traveled with him to “Stambul.” She fell for his promises and departed for Constantinople. Feiga Kupferman was a fourteen-year-old orphan when the wife of a trafficker approached her promising good and honest work if she went to America. Her sojourn there would allow her to accumulate enough wealth to return to her native land before long, she was told. But instead of being transported to America, Kupferman, like many of these women, was swept up in the Mediterranean traffic to Constantinople.55 Personal ambition and a desperate desire to better their material circumstances led each of them to trust migration agents. The Jewish employment agent was easily confused with the Jewish procurer of brothel women and no doubt was sometimes the same person. These overlapping functions – jobber and pimp – helped facilitate trust among migrants seeking a livelihood in a new city. Ritual Marriage as a Migration Scheme The participation of Jews in so-called “ritual marriages” was a muchromanticized practice in East European Jewish culture, often employed to help transfer young women out of the region under the radar of imperial authorities.56 The pattern of establishing marital unions based on a religious ceremony alone, bypassing all civil procedures, was designed to avoid the payment of expensive marriage taxes.57 These marriages were adapted further 54 Posner, Nad otchlania, 19–20. 55 “Handlarze dziewcząt,” Gazeta Narodowa, October 22, 1892, 2. 56 ChaeRan Y. Freeze offers a detailed examination of this institution in Jewish Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2002), 81–82. Freeze notes that there were virtually no restrictions on marriage in many Jewish communities in the Russian Empire. 57 The institution of ritual marriage in Austria dates to a 1773 imperial order that forbade Jews “under penalty of expropriation of property and … corporal punishment to enter into the covenant of marriage  … without a license from the government and without paying the set tax in advance.” These new regulations, designed to slow the growth of Jewish families, prompted a pattern of performing religious ceremonies without the

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among poor families who lacked dowries and often did not have access to a rabbi. All that was required was the permission of the bride’s father and two adult witnesses; no state license or fee need be filed. Contemporary white slavery accounts stress the prevalence of such marriages as a method of seducing innocent girls from Orthodox Jewish homes. Handsome and elegantly dressed bachelors would court the daughter of a destitute family and ask the father for her hand in marriage, insisting there was no time to wait for the rabbi because the groom had urgent business abroad. The marriages remained unregistered with civil authorities and were not valid once the couple relocated to a foreign country. Trafficking depictions stress the resort to ritual marriage as a frequent method for entrapping young women. One of Paul Kinsie’s trafficking contacts in Warsaw explained the ease with which poor Jewish families agreed to arranged marriages with wealthy foreigners. “You see where we live,” observed Chaim Leiser. “I am known as a shotshun (marriage broker or match-maker). If I go to a family and tell them … that I got a rich schid duch (husband) for their daughter, they are glad to get him. You meet the girl, court her and take her to your home in South America.”58 As one testimony published in the Polish press recounted, “in order to capture girls more easily … the kaftans… . trick them into marrying millionaire Americans, or the kaftans themselves marry their victims in Europe, acting as though they are American millionaires. After the wedding they travel to America, where they sell their wives.” One such culprit was said to be “sitting in prison in Buenos-Aires,” having married in this fashion an astounding 35 times.59 The frequency of false marriages – also called “wild” marriages in legal parlance – in the pre-World War I Jewish community is legion.60 A significant minority of male migration agents took advantage of this administrative loophole to locate fresh young “brides” and transport abroad for nefarious purposes. Bertha Pappenheim became aware of this problem in her 1903 travels through Galicia, writing about it in some detail.61 The institution offered several advantages to the family, saving them money, eliminating bureaucratic delays, and bypassing unnecessary exposure to imperial authorities. Marion Kaplan accompanying civil document to avoid paying the marriage tax. Israel Bartal, The Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772–1881, trans. Chaya Naor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 72. 58 Trafficking in Women, Vol. 2, 135–36. 59 “Handel dziewczęti,” Przyjaciel sług, nr. 4 (1902), 59–61. 60 John Meyerowicz was described as living in a “wild marriage” with Liza Berger during his 1901 court case for trafficking. Posner, Nad otchłania, 6. 61 Bertha Pappenheim and Sara Rabinowitch, Zür Lage der Jüdischen Bevolkerung in Galizien (Frankfurt, 1904), 47 ff.

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acknowledges that a minority of girls may have actually been kidnapped. Yet “most,” she argues, “were semi-willing victims whose desperate desire to emigrate caused them to accept dubious job or marriage offers hastily.”62 More likely, young prospective migrants were promised work in a factory, a place to live and free passage if they agreed to travel with a certain agent.63 The public panic associated with fears of young Jewish women disappearing was compounded by the very real phenomenon of Orthodox brides in Austrian Galicia running away from home on the eve of their weddings to avoid marriage to traditional Hasidic males.64 Ritual marriage to a migration facilitator no doubt minimized awkwardness at border crossings, where young women traveling with unrelated older males were often singled out for special questioning. Ruth Rosen points out that in order to “secure entry into foreign countries, women were often declared to be wives or relatives of the procurer who accompanied them.”65 To help convince customs officials that women were actually related migrant agents took great pains to teach them how to answer questions likely to be asked on the border. Regardless of whether the marriage was “ritual” or completely fabricated, false marriages were used as a tool of migration agents to ease the transfer of women across international boundaries. Importantly, recent work emphasizing ritual marriage as more of a migration route than a ruse challenges these assumptions about trickery and deception. Scholars such as Mir Yarfitz have demonstrated that those who agreed to such unions were often fully aware of their consequences and knowingly employed them as strategies to migrate abroad, making ritual marriage yet another strategy in which migration agents and female migrants willingly collaborated.66 The Dark Jewish Hero An understanding of the legal and economic restrictions that characterized life back home for Jewish agents and their desperate clientele helps explain 62 Kaplan, “Prostitution, Morality Crusades and Feminism,” 620. 63 “Handel dziewczęti galicyjskiemi,” Przyjaciel sług, nr. 4 (1902), 59–61. 64 Rachel Manekin documents over 300 such runaways from Orthodox Jewish communities on the eve of World War I. They found protection in the Felician Sisters Convent in Cracow, where some eventually converted to Catholicism. Rachel Manekin, The Rebellion of the Daughters: Jewish Women Runaways in Habsburg Galicia (Princeton University Press, 2020). 65 Rosen, Lost Sisterhood, 119. 66 Mir Yarfitz, “Marriage as Ruse or Migration Route: Jewish Women’s Mobility and Sex Trafficking to Argentina, 1890s-1930s,” Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary e-Journal 17, no. 1 (2020): 1–35.

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the position migration “fixers” came to occupy. In fact, the malevolent Jewish Macher was not the only or even the primary characterization of those who facilitated the illicit migration of young women. Rather, the Yiddish-speaking middleman was also a beloved character in much fin de siècle literature and is often revealed as a complex persona in memoirs and police depositions from young women returning from abroad. In Meilech Schiff’s memoir of early twentieth-century Boryslaw, for example, we meet three brothel owners, each with multiple ties to the community. Zishe Leipundig’s son was a successful financier, while his main competitor, Alte Yasinitzer, had a child working as a barber. The third, Hersch Koch, ran an upscale establishment frequented by pious Jews. Koch resembled a middle class businessman and was well respected in the community. Out on the streets, Schiff recalls several Jewish pimps, one also employed in the post office, another as a butcher. Schiff’s access to this underworld was partly through his work as a horse taxi driver, which allowed him to peer through the open doors of bordellos as he picked up girls to meet their clients. But such figures were familiar to everyone in the neighborhood, where locals “lived amongst pimps and gangsters” and interacted with them in their daily routines.67 For Schiff, bawdy houses and kept women peppered the landscape of Lost Boryslaw as a normal part of Galician urban life. Procurers and pimps could be upstanding community members while also maintaining their houses of ill repute. In short, their activities were woven into the fiber of prewar East European towns, reflecting a spectrum of overlapping occupations. An examination of such accounts offers a challenge to the portrayals in the contemporary press of the relationship established between traffickers and their clients, suggesting that the latter’s status within his community may have been greater than newspaper and courtroom accounts imply and that locals may have been more generally aware of trafficking activities than is often assumed. Contemporary Yiddish writers, for example, often embraced the figure of the wealthy but corrupt Jewish trafficker, turning him into a charismatic, if tragic, protagonist.68 One of the most colorful characters in Yiddish literature is Sholem Aleichem’s “Man from Buenos Aires,” the elegantly attired, 67 68

Meilech Schiff, Lost Boryslaw: Memories of a Galician Youth (New York: Vantage Press, 1977), 66–75. See, for example, Sholem Aleichem, “The Man from Buenos Aires,” in Tevye the Dairyman and The Railroad Stories (New York, 1987); and Sholem Asch, God of Vengeance (1907). For more on this representation, see Mir Yarfitz, “Caftens, Kurvehs, and Stille Chuppahs: Jewish Sex Workers and their Opponents in Buenos Aires, 1890–1930,” (paper presented at UCLA Center for Argentina, Chile and the Southern Cone Interdisciplinary workshop, April 7, 2009).

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cigar-smoking traveller who has risen from great poverty to enormous wealth in Buenos Aires. Aleichem’s readership no-doubt understood the man’s elliptical depiction of his trade. “I’m a kind of middleman, what you might call a jobber,” he explains wryly. “That is, I provide a commodity that everyone knows about but no one ever talks about.”69 As with other renderings of gangster types in Jewish literature, the man from Buenos Aires embodies a rags-to-riches story, the object of admiration or at least curiosity on the part of the narrator. Everything about him is tantalizing. He is “vivacious,” “faultlessly neat,” dressed in “gold studs, a rich tie with a beautiful pin in it, a new stylish blue suit … well-polished shoes,” and “a heavy but artistic gold ring on his finger, set with a single diamond which sparkled with a thousand colors of the sunlight,” all sartorial elements that were far out of reach to the average Yiddish reader. The man from Buenos Aires might be a braggart, but Aleichem’s narrator appears to admire his accomplishments, a perspective that provides a clue to the status of such individuals in the Jewish community itself. Like other characters in Yiddish fiction, such as Yekel, the brothel keeper in God of Vengeance, or Max, the international trafficker in Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Scum, he is drawn as a complex character, part protagonist in a morality tale, part wealthy buffoon. Similarly, Max in Scum is torn by grief for his dead son and regret for his earlier business dealings and is headed home to visit the graves of his parents in Roszków to make amends. Yet he cannot resist lingering in Warsaw’s Krochmalna Street, with its sleazy streetwalkers, two-bit thieves, and exotic fortune-tellers. Although he has vowed to give up the trade in women, he nonetheless finds himself pulled back into it. Like Yekel, in God of Vengeance, Max longs to dally just a little longer in the trade. “Let me make a little more money,” and then I will “get out of the business altogether,” Yekel promises even as he is commissioning a Holy Scroll for his household.70 These characters reveal a deeper tension within Jewish communities between the duplicitous measures to which they must sometimes turn to eke out a living and their equally fervent desire to maintain the moral standards of their community. Part of the popularity of these works stems from their titillating descriptions of the interiors of seedy brothels and spicy interactions between pimps and prostitutes. At the same time, the characters are painted in larger than life colors and are depicted as important individuals on the Jewish street. They donate to charity, visit their parents’ graves, and seek to maintain pious homes. 69 Shalom Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman and The Railroad Stories, 171; Antony Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, Vol. II, 1881–1914 (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010), 375. 70 God of Vengeance, 31.

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The man from Buenos Aires, en route to the family cemetery in Mitau, brags that he gives to “synagogues, hospitals, immigration societies, and benefits… . I even shell out for Palestine.”71 Yekel and his wife Sarah share their food with the neighborhood rabble. Far from being ostracized for their professional activities, Jewish brothel keepers and procurers are presented as wealthy benefactors whose success contributes to the wellbeing of the neighborhood. This overall sense of familiarity is striking when looking at Jewish sources. Like Schiff’s detailed account about the Jewish street, the reader gets the sense that procurers and traffickers did not exist in a separate moral universe from the pious and the pure. As Julia Laite reminds us, traffickers could function as estate agents or landlords, shipping or employment agents, waiters or mechanics. They existed in a liminal position between licit and illicit practices, sometimes engaging in the sex industry part-time, seasonally, or on a short-term basis, much as the women they managed dipped into and out of the prostitution trade.72 Like the brothel keeper in God of Vengeance, who kept his innocent family above ground and his business in the basement, it was simply not possible to keep “everything down below” away from one’s otherwise observant private life. Yekel tries to treat his business as “quite as legitimate as any other” and the girls in his house wonder, “what’s wrong about our trade?” It’s simply “our way of earning a living.”73 The tensions revealed here between moral purity and corruption, piety and promiscuity, help highlight the desperate measures to which most East European Jews were driven for survival in this period. Conclusions: Migration as an Exit Strategy Single young women left home by the thousands during the great labor migrations of the turn of the twentieth century. The hardships and poverty of East European Jewish life drove Jewish women abroad in even higher numbers than their Christian neighbors. Some of them were no doubt duped into travelling to foreign brothels through the clever tactics of brokers and agents. Others utilized the same migration agents to obtain “legitimate” work in more economically prosperous surroundings. Many of these women turned to traffickers, jobbers, or migration agents as powerful and even respected figures in Jewish 71 72 73

“Man from Buenos Aires,” 174. Laite, “Traffickers and Pimps,” 244, 253. Sholem Asch, The God of Vengeance, translated by Isaac Goldberg (New York: Forgotten Books, 2012), 17, 53–54.

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communities; others married a seemingly wealthy benefactor as a means of crossing international borders and beginning a better life abroad. Their willingness to trust representatives of the Jewish underworld did not make these colorful characters any less trustworthy than government officials or tax collectors. Rather, Jewish and non-Jewish agents alike were forced to turn to illegal schemes to cross frontiers and establish new lives elsewhere. The process of violating imperial restriction, forging documents, bribing officials or working several livelihoods simultaneously were survival strategies on which Jewish residents of all types relied. They were practices devised by an impoverished population forced to circumvent increasingly restrictive migration regimes that cast migration brokers as ruthless traffickers. In many respects, it was these changed regulations themselves that constructed the illegal status of the smuggler and the trafficker. Many of the women who found themselves working in overseas brothels were no doubt deceived at some stage during their journey abroad, as were “legitimate” labor migrants. Yet police documents suggest that few of them were forcibly taken from their homes and most looked forward to their adventures beyond native soil. Just as Sholem Aleichem’s character spontaneously joined “a group of poor emigrants who were about to embark for a faraway place called Buenos Aires” even though he “didn’t know a damn thing about it,” so too did thousands of émigrés think more about escaping their destitute circumstances than about the details of what awaited them abroad.74 The agents with whom they cooperated to navigate the border crossings were worldly individuals who were perhaps familiar to them through other interactions or recommended by those who had gone before. Ambitious young women who longed for life beyond their impoverished communities were easily convinced by the attractive promises of migration agents. Most simply sought a way out of their current conditions and trafficking agents offered an exit strategy. Traffickers did not always coerce their clients. Rather, migration brokers developed relationships with emigrants, their families, and their local communities before leaving Europe, such that the process of crossing international borders involved reciprocal benefits and shared risks for everyone in the migration chain. Those who facilitated transnational relocation performed a vital function in the economy of travel even as their position was increasingly vilified through popular culture and the work of state agencies. If we are to gain a fuller picture of the lives and fortunes of poor female migrants, including those who turned to sex work after relocating, we need to recognize the agent (both Jewish and Christian) as an extension of a broader transnational community 74

Singer, “The Man from Buenos Aires,” 169–70.

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rather than as an interloper. Despite contemporary efforts to write them out of the story, agents, traffickers, brokers, and other facilitators remained very much at the center of all forms of human movement in this period, suggesting a connection between sex migration and “free” labor migration that is worthy of further examination.

Prostitution in Croatia 1918–1941: From a Tolerated Occurrence to a Criminal Act Stipica Grgić In 1918, most of the territory of today’s Croatia became a part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, renamed in 1929 as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Until the Second World War, the state of the South Slavs was in a serious internal crisis. The slow effects of industrialization, urbanization, and unsettled national and socio-economic relations hindered the development of the country where three quarters of citizens still lived off agriculture, a good deal of them barely surviving. Ordinary citizens desired more civic, political and economic rights. This clashed with the concept of strong centralized and patriarchal state, in which all important decisions on the country’s development were made on the highest level and – in a paternalistic manner – for the benefit of the citizens, not with them.1 In such a framework of transition from pre-modern to modern society, we will look at prostitution in Croatia. Prostitution is one of those phenomena that says a lot about relationships in a particular society from a number of aspects. It is therefore interesting to see how, as a result of socio-economic changes from 1918 to 1941, the attitude of authorities and general public the towards prostitution changed on several occasions, leading to the ban of prostitution in 1934. This article will argue that although the position of legal and illegal prostitutes in the society was bad, the prohibition of prostitution was instituted as a health measure instituted by the paternalistic Yugoslav regime that was trying to control and protect its own citizens. Until recent decades, scientific and popular literature printed in Croatia/ Yugoslavia dealing with prostitution explained the subject as a self-explanatory and inevitable part of society, although always on its margins.2 Interest in this topic has grown considerably in the last decade or so, but nevertheless, only few authors have dealt with the history of this phenomenon, mostly mentioning it in occasional references. I would like to single out an excellent booklet 1 Christian Axboe Nielsen, Making Yugoslavs: Identity in King Aleksandar’s Yugoslavia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 73; Ivan Rogić, Tehnika i samostalnost: Okvir za sliku treće hrvatske modernizacije (Zagreb: Hrvatska sveučilišna naklada, 2000), 402–412. 2 Eg. Tomislav Marković, Prostitucija (Skripta iz socijalne patologije) (Zagreb: Sveučilište u Zagrebu, 1965).

© Brill Schöningh, 2023 | doi:10.30965/9783657790470_006

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by Tomislav Zorko, entitled Prostitution in Zagreb During the First Half of the Twentieth Century,3 which, along with other books and articles,4 have provided me with a good foundation for this research. This paper is based on various published and unpublished materials from the first half of the twentieth century, such as monographs, newspaper headlines and documents belonging to different authorities.5 It is hard not to see the discrepancies between the various municipal regulations of prostitution, state laws and other sources that mention the everyday humdrum of prostitution. Although I have used statements from other actors linked with prostitution, a good deal of this paper is based on the testimonies of prostitutes themselves, given to doctors, journalists, police or judicial authorities of the time. Although all primary sources are embedded in specific contexts and mind-sets of the time, they are still key to understanding the attitude of the public towards prostitution, how it was legally and medically regulated, but most of all, the status and views of prostitutes in their own profession. All documented examples of ‘selling one’s body’ for money, goods or services that I was able to find only mention women as prostitutes. Although I acknowledge the fact that there are many forms of prostitution, men in general are mentioned almost exclusively as authorities or customers in books and documents of the era. I was also unable to find any information on, for instance, transgender people in this context. Perceptions of the Prostitution – Legal Context and Public Attitudes The first records of prostitution in the territory of present-day Croatia appear in the Middle Ages. Despite the powerful influence of religion on the society until the end of the early modern period, prostitution was nonetheless apparent. In fact, in Croatia, as well as the rest of Europe, for a long time “prostitution had been the ‘open secret’ supplement to marriage.”6 The transformation 3 Tomislav Zorko, Prostitucija u Zagrebu u prvoj polovini 20. stoljeća (Zagreb: Biakova, 2013). 4 Nancy  M.  Wingfield, The World of Prostitution in Late Imperial Austria (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017); Stefano Petrungaro, “The Medical Debate about Prostitution and Venereal Diseases in Yugoslavia (1918–1941),” Social History of Medicine 32, 1 (2019): 121–142; Svetlana Stefanović, “’Ženski pokret’ o problemu braka, slobodne ljubavi, seksualnog vaspitanja, prostitucije i kontrole rađanja,” Godišnjak za društvenu istoriju 5, 1–3 (1998): 66–83. 5 Unfortunately, the archives of the police authorities in Croatia during that period are not preserved. Only a few individuals from the position of a customer had written about the brothel experiences they had in their youth, while we have no knowledge of any prostitutes’ diaries. 6 Dagmar Herzog, Sexuality in Europe: A Twentieth-Century History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 7.

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towards a modern society commenced slowly in Croatia from 1850s, characterised by the unhurried development of cities and a greater mobility of people and goods.7 During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, lawmakers and public began to question the various occurrences on the margins of society.8 At the fin de siècle, prostitution was a tolerated occurrence in Croatia, as well as in most of Europe. The Austrian Criminal Code of 1852 in fact allowed prostitution, although only in the cities. In villages, due to the rural and traditional lifestyle, a lack of supply and demand, and better police controls, prostitution was not such a widespread phenomenon. Since it was most often linked with urban centres, the law stated that each municipal government should regulate the issue of “fornication” independently. In principle, they could allow it or ban it. More often than not, the city authorities opted to better organise it through their police services. As for prostitutes themselves, the criminal law gave only a brief declaration that each harlot causing a large public scandal, or who continued in her vocation despite knowing she was infected with an STD, should be punished with a prison sentence from one to three months. The law had somewhat more severe punishments for married prostitutes and it also penalised husbands and family members who forced their wives into prostitution.9 Even the successor of the aforementioned Austrian law, the Criminal Code of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1929), included jail sentences and fines only for cases of paedophilia and procurement of prostitutes, and punished those who were consciously spreading STDs. In the prostitutes’ case, only those who endangered public safety were brought to justice, such as causing public scandals through acts of prostitution. Together with other so-called “leisurely vocations,” such as vagabonding, begging or gambling, the law treated prostitution more as an aggravating circumstance upon committing a more serious crime than a crime in itself.10

7 8 9 10

Rogić, Tehnika i samostalnost, 344. Herzog, Sexuality, 7; Teodor Cvetkov, Socijalni karakter prostitucije (Zagreb: Hrvatska pučka seljačka tiskara, 1908), 5. § 132–133, 509–515. Stjepan Kranjčić (ed.), Kazneni zakon o zločinstvih, prestupcih i prekršajih od 27. svibnja 1852. s naknadnimi zakoni i naredbami, (Zagreb: Kugli i Deutsch, 1890), 63–64, 202–203. § 52, 158, 256, 278, 280–287. Stevan M. Breberina, Ivan K. Ilić (eds.), Krivični zakonik za Kraljevinu Jugoslaviju od 27. januara 1929. (Zagreb: s.n., 1934), 55–56, 147, 207–208, 217–220. Compare: Kamilo Farkaš and Ivo Stančić-Rokotov, Priručnik za zdravstvenu obuku organa javne sigurnosti (Zagreb: Vlastita naklada, 1937), 117–121 and Marković, Prostitucija, 40.

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In the period after 1910, with slow modernization and increasingly literate population, prostitution became a topic of public interest for various actors. Physicians and intellectuals started following world trends in openly discussing sexually transmitted diseases.11 Some individuals went so far as to claim that prostitution helped women achieve economic independence and, therefore, emancipation. Others, who believed themselves to be more objective, believed the blame should be shared between the sexes. This was overly simplistic but in accordance with the spirit of fin de siècle liberalism, which they thought they represented. They concluded that “Prostitution was created by both the male and the female sides; men did it through their desires, such as lust for physical pleasures, and women mostly due to their desire for leisurely lives and laziness.”12 On the other side, there were the moralists who formed various, often informal groups. The majority of the population identified as Roman Catholics, and the intellectuals that, broadly speaking, co-operated with the top of the church hierarchy in Croatia in early twentieth century through Croatian Catholic Movement13 generally condemned liberalism, and prostitution in particular. Interestingly, they were followed by various female movements, most notably the Women’s Movement,14 who were rather puritan in their beliefs, claiming that it was the responsibility of men to control their concupiscence.15 Both groups sought a stricter approach from the authorities on the matter of prostitution, which led towards its final ban. They agreed that prostitution was about abusing women, that the whole act showed disrespect towards the concepts of love and procreation of humankind, and that it also included many sexually transmitted diseases that “put the young generations in jeopardy of sexual degeneration.” Furthermore, prostitution was “a death blow to all morals, [because it comes] in combination with various crimes, such as theft, murder etc.”16 Therefore, the moralists suggested that families should make more effort 11

On these issues in Europe see: Sex, sin and suffering: Venereal disease and European society since 1870, eds. Roger Davidson and Lesley A. Hall (London and New York: Routledge, 2001); Mary Spongberg, Feminizing Venereal Disease: The Body of the Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century Medical Discourse (London: Macmillan, 1997). 12 Mališa V. Urošević, “Suzbijanje prostitucije u vezi Zak. o suzbijanju polnih bolesti,” Policija 22, 17–18 (1935): 887. 13 Jure Krišto, Hrvatski katolički pokret 1903–1945. (Zagreb: Glas koncila, 2004). 14 See: Stefanović, “Ženski pokret,” 66–83 for how the feminist press wrote about the issue. 15 Herzog, Sexuality, 9. Still, some authors in the 1920s blamed Croatian women for “not showing any interest in this socially important matter [of prostitution], neither as individuals nor in their humanitarian associations.” In “7. sastanak dermato-venerološke sekcije,” Liječnički vjesnik 44, 9 (1922): 219. 16 Cvetkov, Socijalni karakter, 22.

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to protect their children against such practices, and that the authorities should introduce reforms that would change the society’s view on prostitution.17 Among other things, they insisted on more powerful oversight of “pernicious literature,” censorship of films and theatre performances – whose ideas “poison the young audience” – a ban on “the dance craze” and, above all, just like today, they demanded a revision of the education system.18 In these respects, they laid a special emphasis on the devastating flaws of urban life, the frivolity of bourgeoisie life and the destitution of the working class. Although there were no special medical studies in Croatia until 1918, some doctors also joined the debate on prostitution and STDs. At the very turn of the century, they finally managed to produce a system whereby physicians could register all patients suffering from a sexually transmitted disease with the Land Government for Croatia and Slavonia, who would pay for their treatment. Earlier, in 1895, the Land Government ordered the obligatory regular medical supervision of all prostitutes.19 The aim was to try to cap the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, which will turn out to be a Sisyphean task. Further efforts were made in the line of education. In 1905, the Croatian Physicians Association advised the Land Government to issue A Warning Notice Against Venereal Diseases intended for men. Since 1907, a similar warning notice, based on the examples of the German texts of the time, had been circulated among young women, warning against the dangers of infections and unwanted pregnancy arising from engaging in extramarital sexual intercourse.20 These and other subsequent warning notices were primarily distributed to male students attending the University of Zagreb, who were considered to have been an atrisk group, since they spent their evenings after classes with young ladies of questionable morals. The students, freed from secondary school repression and parental supervision, and with limited access to younger women of a suitable social class, turned to prostitutes which was in their society a more or less tolerated occurrence.21 Perhaps the most indicative information regarding the issue of male students paying for sex was given by Slavko Wodwařka, President of the Croatian Academic Support Association, an organisation that 17 Trgovina bijelim robljem (Zagreb: ‘Hrvatski kršćanski radnički savez’ u Zagrebu, 1913), 1. 18 I. Snopić, Javni moral i javne kuće (Split: Hrvatska knjižara, 1923), 10–11. 19 Vladimir Katičić (ed.), Sbirka zakona i naredaba tičućih se zdravstva i zdravstvene službe I (Zagreb: Zdravstveni odsjek kr. zemaljske vlade, 1905), 455–459. 20 Tomislav Zorko, Prostitucija u Zagrebu u prvoj polovini 20. stoljeća (Zagreb: Biakova, 2013), 19–20; Vladimir Katičić (ed.), Sbirka zakona i naredaba tičućih se zdravstva i zdravstvene službe supplement II (Zagreb: Zdravstveni odsjek kr. zemaljske vlade, 1907) 40–43. 21 Tihana Luetić, Studenti Sveučilišta u Zagrebu (1874–1914): Društveni život, svakodnevica, kultura, politika (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2012), 288, 291.

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looked after the more needy students. At the beginning of the twentieth century, he publicly declared that as many as 98 percent of the members of that association, who sought financial aid for disease treatment, were infected with a sexually transmitted disease.22 Despite the efforts made by the healthcare and education, the number of people suffering from sexually transmitted diseases began to increase at the start of the twentieth century. Treatment costs were quite high, and often had to be borne by the state due to the poverty of the sick. The First World War did nothing to reduce the numbers of the population infected. In 1915, the Government issued an order for each soldier on leave to undergo a physical examination.23 Although some (again) blamed prostitutes for raising the number of the people infected with STDs, there was also attitude among the ordinary soldiers that life was to be enjoyed today because no one knew who would “succumb to an enemy bullet tomorrow.”24 The soldiers were not only looking for fun in the city, but they also often became infected with STDs on purpose. Numerous recruits purposefully smeared infected secretions on their intimate parts, in hope they would be sent to hospital instead of the front.25 Brothels Between the Regulation and Reality from 1918 to 1934 Although the Austro-Hungarian empire was dissolved in 1918 and monarchist Yugoslavia formed, basic state laws for prostitution changed little in the next decade or so. As previously mentioned, according to the Criminal Law of 1852, each city municipality in Croatia had the right to regulate the issue of “fornication” independently. Many city governments in Croatia and Slavonia, starting with Zagreb in 1899, then Križevci, Slavonski Brod, Bjelovar, Koprivnica, Osijek, and others, issued special regulations which systematised the issue of prostitution in brothels.26 During the first decades of the twentieth century, despite an ever more obvious appearance of illegal – that is, undisclosed – prostitution, 22 Luetić, Studenti, 289. 23 Zorko, Prostitucija, 22. 24 Filip Hameršak, Tamna strana Marsa: Hrvatska autobiografija i Prvi svjetski rat (Zagreb: Naklada Ljevak, 2013), 578. 25 “The medicine of salvation was to become infected with one of the two diseases: to give oneself a trachoma, which was fairly difficult […], or to opt for the safer option, to become infected with gonorrhoea. The members of the Croatian Home Guard would smear one another with infected mucus and hide their illness, until the infection got so severe that the soldier was unable to move at all due to the swellings caused by it.” Josip Horvat, Živjeti u Hrvatskoj: Zapisci iz nepovrata 1900–1941 (Zagreb: Liber, 1984), 57. 26 Zorko, Prostitucija, 34–35.

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the city authorities attempted to supervise the supply and demand of the service. By handing out special permits for brothel owners, they believed they could reduce the outbreaks of STDs but also prevent registered prostitutes’ working outside of the legal framework. All of this was supposed to have been realised primarily through the regulation of the ‘houses of ill-repute,’ as brothels were referred to at the time. Every legal brothel had to have these city regulations displayed in a visible place in order to highlight the rights and obligations of the customers and the workers.27 Although municipal authorities kept their rights to control prostitution in the metropolitan area, the Land Government issued a concise Instruction on composing a ‘Book of Regulations for Brothels’ in 1911 to achieve a uniformity of approach for regulating brothels, which will be further referred to as ‘the regulations,’ as they were adopted by many cities at the start of the twentieth century without modification. They treated brothels as “public places of entertainment.”28 The regulations illustrated what an ideal brothel should look like. Because of the discretion of the job, and only with few written traces available, it is difficult to say if the city authorities, owners and prostitutes in brothels, as well as customers, kept to the letter of the regulations. The owner of one such brothel could only be a woman older than thirty, who had already obtained a concession for starting the business from the local police. In this respect, she was running a business – she earned her money through “procuring her employees to fornicate.”29 In reality, a husband or lover was more commonly running the business along with a madam, or in her name. The owner also had to register how many prostitutes her “house of ill repute” would employ based on the issued concession, which defined the tax benefits for the state and the city. For instance, immediately after the unification into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, one of the Zagreb brothels in Kožarska Street had to pay 139 700 krones in taxes, 8 950 krones in municipal surtax and disability tax which amounted to 29 500 krones.30 These were hefty sums. In accordance with the regulations, brothels had to be located next to one another in separate streets, far away from curious but virtuous audiences, but also away from institutions such as churches, schools and ‘public health centres,’ so as not to cause offence. In practice, brothels were actually located near 27

Sergej Filipović, “Reguliranje prostitucije u Osijeku na prijelazu 19. u 20. stoljeće: Pravilnik o uređenju i nadziranju prostitucije iz 1896. i Pravilnik za bludilišta iz 1911.”, Scrinia Slavonica 14, 1 (2014): 155. 28 Vladimir Katičić (ed.), Sbirka zakona i naredaba supplement V (Zagreb: Zdravstveni odsjek kr. zemaljske vlade, 1912) 51–59. 29 “7. sastanak dermato-venerološke sekcije,” Liječnički vjesnik 44, 9 (1922): 219. 30 Zorko, Prostitucija, 35.

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city centres. Zagreb, for instance, was for a long time known for its brothels in Kožarska Street, and before that in Tkalčićeva Street, within a minute’s walking distance from the main square. The women employed there were mostly “Hungarian, so the clever and witty dwellers of Zagreb named this street ‘the Hungarian seaside’, due to Hungarian aspirations regarding the Croatian Adriatic Sea.”31 In essence, the brothels’ exteriors were not supposed to have differed from the other structures in its vicinity, except that their windows had to have nontransparent glazing. The facade had to display a red light as a clear indicator of what was taking place inside, but also as the only permissible advert for the given business. Usually, after the entrance to the brothel there was a salon, which the customers described as “a very comfortable and lavishly furnished room, all decorated with red velvet and brocade,” with numerous mirrors everywhere. This was the kind of setting in which the customers socialised and met the prostitutes, with whom, after they reached an agreement, they spent time alone in one of the similarly furnished smaller rooms. Although the regulations forbade loud music and serving alcoholic beverages, in reality, at the beginning of the twentieth century, salons commonly had a pianist playing “sappy waltzes,” while all beverages except for spirits were in plentiful supply, such as coffee, all kinds of wine and sparkling wine.32 The number of brothels varied from one urban centre to another and were mostly connected to the number of inhabitants and to how developed the city was. In 1918, Zagreb had six brothels altogether.33 At about the same time, Osijek had four brothels with fifty women,34 whereas the brothels in Sarajevo in the same period had 136 prostitutes.35 The four ‘houses of ill-repute’ in Split in Pretorijanska Street, at their peak in 1923, employed eighty-six prostitutes.36 Brothels were commonly compared to taverns, coffee houses, cabarets and variétés, which often secretly offered unregistered and illegal sexual services. What differentiated brothels from other similar structures was their working hours. Coffee houses, and especially cabarets and variétés, could be open only with approved operation programs, with visible price lists, a large drinks selection and strictly without special rooms for “entertainment.” The working 31 32 33 34 35 36

Zvonimir Rogoz, Mojih prvih 100 godina (Zagreb: Grafički zavod Hrvatske, 1986), 48. Rogoz, Mojih prvih, 48–50. Zorko, Prostitucija, 36. Filipović, “Reguliranje prostitucije,” 154–155. Jelena Belović-Bernadzikowska, Bijelo roblje (Koprivnica: Nakladom knjižare Vinka Vošickog, 1923), 43. Zdravka Jelaska Marijan, Grad i ljudi: Split 1918.-1941 (Zagreb: Hrvatski institut za povijest, 2009), 425.

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hours were set from morning until midnight. The female employees of such businesses were not allowed to live in the building in which they worked, and they were not allowed to socialise or sit with customers while at work.37 In contrast, the employees of brothels almost always lived in the building where they offered their services, which was usually open for business from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. or even 5 a.m.38 Brothels could not accept drunk persons, women younger than seventeen, and young men under the age of sixteen, and later eighteen.39 As for the customers, they were all men, and, according to the regulations, prostitutes could refuse those men who exhibited visible signs of an STD infection or any other major disease – although we can’t tell how this worked in practice. Money was not an issue to most customers, since the service was relatively cheap, albeit dependant on the prestige of the brothel, the reputation of the woman that provided the service herself, and on their final agreement concerning the price if negotiation was allowed. Despite all bans and public judgement, it was normal even for secondary school pupils to go to brothels, not least because it was possible that their female peers worked there as entertainers. Lavoslav Kraus, later a physician from Osijek, wrote that after finishing their high school graduation in 1914, he and his colleagues went to a brothel, “which was a patriarchal custom upon celebrating the matura [graduation] and surely the most concrete sign of acquired and affirmed ‘maturity.’”40 The level of hygiene in brothels was simply impressive. For example, according to the regulations, prostitutes had to wash their intimate parts before intercourse, as well as frequently wash out their mouth with lukewarm water. However, according to health instructions, the hygiene of the rest of the body was reduced to washing their bodies with soap in lukewarm water at least three times a week.41 As for general protection from STDs, the interwar period physicians in Croatia, and also worldwide, advised three methods:42 The first was, of course, abstinence. Still, they understood that simply insisting on abstinence from sexual intercourse was, as they said themselves, “the voice of one crying in the 37 38 39 40 41 42

Belović-Bernadzikowska, Bijelo roblje, 113. Filipović, “Reguliranje prostitucije,” 151. Zorko, Prostitucija, 36–40. Lavoslav Kraus, Susreti i sudbine: Sjećanja iz jednog aktivnog života (Osijek: Glas Slavonije, 1973), 68–69. Mario Kevo, “Pravilnik za bludilišta u gradu Brodu na Savi,” Scrinia Slavonica 4, 1 (2004): 540–541. Herzog, Sexuality, 8–9.

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wilderness.” Therefore, they recommended condoms and prophylaxis, that is, washing one’s intimate parts immediately after intercourse with various chemical agents, which were undoubtably popular considering the numerous adverts in newspapers.43 Due to their professional interest, prostitutes were among the first people in society to accept new ways of combating STDs, including new medications, protection options and education. This was also the case in the interwar period in Croatia. The Brothel Employees A prostitute’s position in a brothel from 1911 to 1934 was not especially glamorous. They were truly tied to the brothels in which they lived at the time. At most, they swapped one brothel for another. The aforementioned 1911 regulations demanded that brothel owners should “have before their eyes the socially subordinate and difficult position of the prostitutes,” and that they should, therefore, treat their workers humanely.44 Most importantly, the owners had to look after their workers’ health – that is, pay for hospital treatments and not force them to work when they were ill. The regulations stated that a madam should generously allow the women “to go out for a walk at least twice a week for 2–3 hours.”45 The prostitutes could even attend Mass if wearing decent clothes, but not theatres, public performances, concerts, dances, restaurants, and similar places. Living conditions in many brothels were miserable, and the women were very often physically and financially mistreated. Prostitutes most commonly slept in special dormitories, which due to being poorly furnished and overcrowded (up to ten or twenty women in one room), were often referred to by their inhabitants as ‘the barracks.’ The madam’s business occupied the largest and best parts of the building. The madam also took the great deal of their earnings, ostensibly to cover the cost of rent, food, healthcare, clean laundry etc. The rest of their hard-earned money, which was often less than one quarter of the price of the service, was supposed to cover the prostitute’s clothes, jewellery and make-up, which were the basic tools for attracting customers.46 Sources show that such working conditions sometimes led to physical conflicts, and even attempts of murder or suicide both inside and outside the 43 44 45 46

Farkaš and Stančić-Rokotov, Priručnik, 56–57. Zorko, Prostitucija, 37. Zorko, Prostitucija, 38. Zorko, Prostitucija, 37–47, 51–52; Jelaska Marijan, Split, 425.

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brothels, among the customers, jealous men and their wives, but also among other desperate prostitutes.47 Women were not allowed to work in brothels prior to registration with the police as so-called “tolerated prostitutes.” Police authorities were supposed to examine their medical records, then enter each woman’s personal information into the official registry and provide them with a list of their rights and obligations. These registries are a true font of information, telling us a lot about personal and social circumstances of the vocation. For example, Ema W. – “Emi” in 1924, told the police officer that registered her as a prostitute that she was left homeless in Wrocław in 1919. As a former waitress, born in the territory now known as the Czech Republic, she roamed the streets, jobless, until she was arrested by the Wrocław police under the suspicion of fornication and was logged in the prostitute registry against her will. After that, already branded as a prostitute, she decided to become one after all because “this kind of work [could] bring her good profit.”48 Before acquiring the necessary licence for entering a brothel, a woman also had to go through a medical examination.49 The first, and also all other regular weekly and emergency check-ups, made sure that brothels did not employ virgins and, more importantly, women infected with STDs. After all healthand police-related examinations, the prostitute would receive a special card with a photograph issued by the police, usually their so-called ‘moral’ or ‘social’ department. This was used to register medical examination results, that is, possible infections the young lady might have contracted, as well as her police (behavioural) records.50 According to the testimonies that prostitutes gave to doctors, journalists or police officers, most of them ended up in brothels through illegal procurers, although some joined entirely willingly. Although procurement of young women was strictly punishable by law and considered as kidnapping in the Criminal Law of 1852, it did not prevent many men and women from seducing women by promising them a better job and better earnings if they, for instance, went to another city with them, far away from their family and acquaintances – only to turn them into the hands of brothel owners once they got there. It was rare that they accepted this job opportunity openly as a good 47

Mario Kevo, “Bludni život Broda na Savi pred Prvi svjetski rat,” Kolo: Časopis Matice Hrvatske 13, 4 (2003): 402; Wingfield, The World of Prostitution, 30, 145. 48 Register 169–3665 (Ema W. – “Emi”). Branko Lazarević’s private collection. I would like to thank Branko Lazarević, a former employee of the Croatian Ministry of the Interior on accessing the relevant materials. 49 Kevo, “Pravilnik za bludilišta,” 535–536; Sbirka zakona supplement V, 58–60. 50 Zorko, Prostitucija, 53; Kevo, “Bludni život”, 398.

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source of income. The procurers were often also the mediators in exchanges of prostitutes between different brothels.51 Obviously, it was in each madam’s best interest to change the roster of her establishment every few months. At the beginning of the twentieth century, all the brothels in Zagreb together were allowed to employ sixty-eight prostitutes. However, the number of prostitutes who would have worked in these places on a yearly basis, due to their high mobility, varied between 150 to almost 230.52 It often happened that brothels employed young women in their teenage years, most commonly aged between sixteen and twenty-one. After the age of twenty-four, very few women entered this business. In 1930, there were still prostitutes aged fourteen, thirteen, and even eleven,53 probably due the presence of paedophilia, which has not been talked or written about, but also the fear of STDs, leading to the alleged customer ideal of “‘innocent’ girls aged 12–14.”54 There were almost no prostitutes aged over thirty-five in brothels, but apparently this was not as a result of becoming “too old” for the business. According to the ethnologist, feminist and writer Jelica Belović-Bernadzikowska (1870– 1946) this was rather because of all the illnesses, encirclement of violence, and frequent episodes of personal depression. As a result “It was not possible to live to older age in that terrible profession.”55 Just like today, prostitutes often took stage names in order to protect their true identity and origin. Apparently “Hungarian girls” were the most common among the prostitutes in Croatian brothels at the beginning of the twentieth century. This often meant that they were originally from the former Hungarian part of the Monarchy, that is, Hungary, but also possibly present-day Slovakia, Romania etc. At the beginning of the twentieth century, in a form of ethnic stereotyping, “The common belief was apparently that Hungarian girls were passionate, that they could sing and dance well, which is everything the customers were after.”56 They were followed by women from present day Croatia, Austria, Germany, Serbia, Slovenia, and others. Croatian women more commonly went 51 Zorko, Prostitucija, 42; For more information on this phenomenon see: Josip Šilović, Trgovina bijelim robljem: Pučka sveučilišna predavanja 29 i 30 januara i 1 i 2 februara 1932 (Zagreb: Tisak Zaklade tiskare Narodnih novina, 1932). It is interesting to notice that on a number of occasions the courts confirmed that the brothels’ owners were not committing the crime of pimping against the women “7. sastanak dermato-venerološke sekcije,” 218. 52 Zorko, Prostitucija, 42. 53 Bogoljub Konstantinović, Prostitucija i društvo (Beograd: Knjiž. Franje Baha, 1930), 26. 54 Belović-Bernadzikowska, Bijelo roblje, 109. 55 Belović-Bernadzikowska, Bijelo roblje, 43–44.; Saša Dmitrović, “Šporki stari grad,” Sušačka revija 44, 1 (2003): 81. 56 Dmitrović, “Šporki stari grad,” 81.

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to work as prostitutes in cities far away from their birth-towns, family, friends and acquaintances.57 In 1930, a physician called Bogoljub Konstantinović carried out a small survey in a number of brothels in Kingdom of Yugoslavia. His data indicates that as many as 121 prostitutes, out of 373 examined altogether, originally came from artisan families. Then, disproportionate to their representation within the state population as a whole, came the daughters of peasants and farmers, factory workers and, to a much lesser extent, tradesmen and army personnel. In fact, before entering into prostitution, most of the women worked in other jobs, for instance, as maids or waitresses.58 In general, prostitutes were better educated than the average woman in Croatian society at the beginning of the twentieth century. Most of them were literate and good part of them had also obtained secondary education. On the other hand, a large number of them had only one or no living parents or were born out of wedlock.59 Until recently, research has usually only given weight to socio-economic factors as reasons for engaging in prostitution, that is, bad family situations, lower economic background, the poor educational structure, abuse, alcohol dependency etc., in combination with moral factors, meaning insensitivity to wider set of social norms. This has meant that other factors have been overlooked. By interviewing prostitutes, especially in the last several decades, scholars have come to realise that many of them indeed entered their business for money, but that they continued doing the job due to the autonomy and flexibility this type of work offers.60 However, during the interwar period, out of the 373 prostitutes who took part in the 1930 survey, as many as 197 admitted that they began prostitution due to their poor economic situation. Others said they started out of their own thoughtlessness and guilelessness, or fear (56), then discord in the family (45), and that they were drawn into the business after being deceived or raped (45). Only 28 claimed that the main reason was unrequited love, while 2 women said they accepted the job to feed their children.61

57 Zorko, Prostitucija, 39.; Konstantinović, Prostitucija, 28; This was the case in the other cities within the Monarchy at the very beginning of the twentieth century, see Wingfield, The World of Prostitution, 115–117. 58 Konstantinović, Prostitucija, 36. 59 Konstantinović, Prostitucija, 26.; Zorko, Prostitucija, 39. 60 Melissa Hope Ditmore (ed.), Encyclopedia of prostitution and sex work vol. 1 (London: Greenwood Press, 2006), XXVIII. 61 Konstantinović, Prostitucija, 36; The police mentioned similar reasons, see Urošević, “Suzbijanje prostitucije u vezi Zak. o suzbijanju polnih bolesti,” Policija 22, 17–18 (1935): 887.

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Street Prostitution – “Tolerated Prostitution”? All attempts to limit prostitution to brothels, not only due to moral reasons but also to prevent the spreading of STDs, failed. Therefore, some cities decided to start shutting down brothels in the 1920s. However, this did not mean that prostitution was declared illegal. It was still tolerated as a ‘necessary evil.’ The Zagreb city police permitted free street prostitution – women were allowed to work for themselves, independently of brothels, with mandatory registration and medical examinations twice a week.62 Although there was no consensus among physicians in Yugoslavia after 1918 about the regulation of prostitution, many of them working in Croatia agreed with this decision, and rightfully “considered the brothel a shameful and anachronistic institution.”63 One of the Zagreb police principals, Josip Vragović, later stated that the police’s main motive in allowing this state of affairs was in the fact that “The prostitutes’ position and their relationship with the concessionaire of a brothel [was] the most horrible and most shameful exploitation of the human body.”64 After the restructuring of the Zagreb Police in 1922, the focus was not only on criminal and political offences, but also on so-called ‘social crimes.’ As a basis for reform, authorities took the model of German cities, who by that time had special “social sections” in their police.65 These sections dealt with crimes such as prostitution, vagabonding, beggary and petty thievery. With the 1922 Provision on the Supervision of Prostitution, the Zagreb police banned the activity of all brothels in the city, but also tried to ensure that prostitutes had the freedom to work for themselves, provided they were properly registered and given identity cards as tolerated prostitutes.66 Not all cities followed such regulation. In some place, brothels continued operating until the definite ban on prostitution in the entire country. For instance, Split allowed freely registered prostitution “on the streets,” but brothels also stayed open until the 1930s.67 Belgrade city authorities followed Zagreb in allowing the free registration of 62 63 64

“7. sastanak dermato-venerološke sekcije,” 218. Petrungaro, “The Medical Debate,” 133. Josip Vragović, “Referat o upravi policije/ranije redarstvenom ravnateljstvu/ u Zagrebu,” Croatian State Archives (CSA), fund signature 1561 (Ministry of the Interior of the Socialist Republic of Croatia), 010.3.7, 169. 65 Lutz D.H. Sauerteig, “‘The Fatherland is in Danger, Save the Fatherland!’: Venereal Disease, Sexuality and Gender in Imperial and Weimar Germany,” Sex, sin and suffering: Venereal disease and European society since 1870, eds. Roger Davidson and Lesley A. Hall (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 76. 66 Zorko, Prostitucija, 54–55. 67 Jelaska Marijan, Split, 424–425.

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street prostitution, although they only banned brothels in 1931.68 The decision to shut down brothels in Zagreb and other cities truly gave prostitutes their autonomy at work and improved their financial status. The registry procedure for street prostitution was similar to that for entering a brothel. Women, at least eighteen years of age, had to submit their personal documents and undergo the prescribed medical examination. They had to know their rights and obligations, among which the most important were regular medical examinations. At any given moment, the prostitute could stop working and ask to be removed from the registry. In contrast with earlier times, there was one major novelty – a mandatory savings account was introduced for all prostitutes, which enabled them to have some money saved for later years, once they left the “business.”69 If the so-called tolerated prostitute stuck to the rules, and did not cause any scandals by police standards, then she could go about her business freely at night in the neighbourhood that she registered as her workplace environment, away from the most important religious and educational institutions.70 To begin with, the majority of the prostitutes continued living in their old accommodation, the brothels, where their former owners rented them rooms. But things changed in Zagreb from 1928. In March of 1928, a customer tried to rob and murder Ivka M., a prostitute from Kožarska Street. The perpetrator admitted to the crime and explained that he noticed that “All prostitutes had quite a bit of money, and that the easiest way to get to them would be in a brothel. Therefore, he obtained a razor blade in order to slit the throat of one of the girls while spending time with her, and take her money afterwards.”71 Although his attempt failed, the Zagreb Police brought an urgent decision to shut down the former brothels and evacuate the prostitutes living there due to constant complaints by the nearby residents of Kožarska Street. From mid1928, under the threat of being exiled from Zagreb, prostitutes had to find some other accommodation and register with the police at a new address.72 After leaving Kožarska Street, the tolerated prostitutes moved to other streets in the city centre, which have remained known to customers until this day.73 Some, however, returned to Kožarska, which was a poor street, infamous

68 69 70 71 72 73

“Jedna nova uredba Uprave grada Beograda,” Vreme, November 11, 1931, 7. Zorko, Prostitucija, 60. Zorko, Prostitucija, 55–56. “R. B. priznaje da je pokušao izvesti grabežno umorstvo,” Večer, March 14, 1928, 2. “Raseljavanje toleriranih djevojaka iz Kožarske ulice,” Večer, March 12, 1928, 2. Above all these were Amruševa, Boškovićeva, Palmotićeva, Petrinjska and other streets, while the police was forcing prostitutes away from the well-known and busier streets in

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at the time for alcoholism and prostitution, without street lighting or tarmac road, because it was in the close vicinity of the main city square.74 In the case of a violation of the new regulations, often some kind of publicorder crime, the penalty for prostitutes ranged from a reprimand to a jail sentence or exile from the city and a revoked licence. Most of them offered their services at night and discreetly, although moralists publicly complained about their choice of clothing, vocabulary and tones of voice they used while publicly bargaining over the price of their services. Furthermore, many people claiming to be ordinary citizens in newspaper articles stated that they were disgusted by the fact that many prostitutes lived with their lovers, who were at the same time apparently their pimps.75 Men who claimed themselves to be of ‘higher moral standards’ complained that such girls lured them into sinful behaviour, and more virtuous women protested that sometimes various men mistook them for prostitutes while walking.76 The position of ‘tolerated prostitutes’ shows all characteristics of social marginalisation. Many prostitutes complained that they could not move freely outside of the neighbourhood where they worked, and that the whole of society, mostly police officers, physicians, women in general, and other prostitutes, treated them as enemies, or at least as second-class citizens. Despite good earnings, after a while many women wanted to distance themselves from prostitution, both privately and regarding work. A woman could be erased from the list of tolerated prostitutes at the police only if she proved she was not healthy enough to work any longer, if she was leaving the city for good, or if she decided to do some other, more virtuous job. Nevertheless, in the last case, she had to prove that she had found another way to provide for herself and that she “was behaving virtuously over the previous three months.”77 Despite all their attempts, many were unable to find a more acceptable job, such as becoming a seamstress, maid or sales assistant. During the interwar period, there were homes for “fallen women” and some Catholic and women city, such as Ilica and Jurišićeva. Zorko, Prostitucija, 56–57; “Broj tajnih prostitutki koje šire zarazne bolesti iznosi u Zagrebu preko pet hiljada,” Večer, August 6, 1936, 4. 74 Compare: “Orgije i nepodopštine u Kožarskoj ulici,” Večer, October  3, 1928, 3 and “U Kožarskoj ulici,” Večer, December 14, 1928, 5. 75 Zorko, Prostitucija, 59. The former director of the Zagreb Police, Josip Vragović, emphasised that the “residents of the streets in which prostitution takes place complained [not] due to this hypocritical morals but with good reason, since Zagreb was at the time still quite a small city and the life of prostitutes had a bad influence on the social environment,” Vragović, “Report,” CSA, f. 1561, 010.3.7, 169.010.3.7, 169. 76 “Broj tajnih prostitutki koje šire zarazne bolesti,” 4. 77 Filipović, “Reguliranje prostitucije,” 146.

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associations that tried to help find such women a new job. Nonetheless, contemporaries believed there were simply not enough of such institutions.78 Although prostitutes had many problems with the law, many young women registered as prostitutes at the police. One of the main reasons for registering was, as they claimed, their finances. The average monthly earnings of a prostitute amounted to around 8 000 dinars, which was a large sum of money. Nevertheless, STDs remained a health risk; in 1922, forty-seven out of eightyfour tolerated prostitutes in Zagreb were suffering from an STD, demonstrating the failure of contemporary policies to prevent the spread of such diseases.79 Clandestine Prostitution and Placing All Prostitution Outside of Law in 1934 Besides tolerated prostitution, there were also the occasional or unprofessional prostitutes, women who worked as prostitutes only once or occasionally in order to supplement their household budgets. This was illegal, along with the more widespread professional clandestine prostitution. These secret prostitutes operated on the other side of law, but for centuries they co-existed with their legal counterparts. For many prostitutes and their pimps, it was easier not to worry about sometimes-expensive medical examinations and police supervision, especially since, with the lower cost of their services, they could therefore compete with their “tolerated” colleagues. During the interwar period, the government and city authorities attempted to establish stricter control over the ever-present clandestine prostitution to prevent the spread of STDs. In this, they followed the trend of more developed European countries that, since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, had been trying to solve the STD problem. As prostitution was considered to be the main vector for spreading such diseases, and many associated it with the physical and moral degeneration of the nation, new laws were considered. Their main intent was to somehow reorganize and control prostitution or to finally ban it.80 In the 1920s, the Zagreb municipal authorities claimed that during the First World War “A specific [that is. secret, unregistered, private] kind of prostitution spread in the city, which affected the until now healthy and spared layer of the 78 Belović-Bernadzikowska, Bijelo roblje, 115. 79 Zorko, Prostitucija, 61; Šilović, Trgovina bijelim robljem, 106–107. 80 For example, see Spongberg, Feminizing Venereal Disease; Sauerteig, “‘The Fatherland is in Danger’,” 76–92.

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population.”81 Therefore, more intense efforts were made on producing new, faster and more successful prevention methods against STDs, which included educational efforts directed against prostitution and promiscuity in general. In 1919, the Ban (Governor) of Croatia and Slavonia ordered the establishment of the Land Committee for Combating STDs, and in 1921, the first clinic for STDs was opened in Petrinjska Street in Zagreb.82 In the years to come, the Ministry of National Health made the mandatory treatment of STDs and tuberculosis a legal requirement, falling into the category of social diseases, especially in cities with a population of over 10 000 inhabitants. Hospital capacities were, unfortunately, inadequate, so the sick were often sent home for treatment or to other hospitals, usually located on the periphery of the city.83 To the great dissatisfaction of the owners and staff of guest-houses, taverns, pubs, inns and other similar places in December of 1922, the Ministry of National Health decided to introduce a mandatory medical examination for all female staff working in public houses.84 In truth, various young women who worked in similar establishments, as waitresses, bartenders, singers, dancers or entertainers of any kind, were often suspected of “propagating whoredom.” The authorities often rightfully suspected that younger women of poor economic status were only employed there on paper, and that they were, in fact, working as secret prostitutes. Some women were legally employed in these places, but also worked as unofficial prostitutes on the same premises, something the owners knew about and who received a percentage of their earnings. Even at the beginning of the 1920s, the authorities noticed that despite of all the efforts in education, hygiene, social and medical services, as well as all the regulations over the previous decades, combating the spread of STDs had become a Sisyphean task. The rise in the number of people suffering from venereal diseases in Croatia was partially due to the poor economic and social condition of the Croatian society, since seventy-five percent of population still survived (barely) on agriculture, and more increasingly, due to the Great Depression. This had a severe social and economic effect on Croatia in the 1930s and caused a rise in the number of young women who turned to the world’s oldest profession, having given up hope of finding the ‘respectable’ job in the city that they had dreamed of, after leaving the impoverished countryside. Furthermore, many young women who had already been working in the 81 Hameršak, Tamna strana, 458. 82 The clinic was open for women in the morning and for men in the afternoon. It was intended mostly for the unemployed, officers, pupils and students, see Zorko, Prostitucija, 25. 83 “2. sastanak dermato-venerološke sekcije,” Liječnički vjesnik 57, 10 (1935): 451. 84 Zorko, Prostitucija, 28.

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city lost their jobs due to the crisis. Since they had no other means of supporting themselves, and sometimes their families, clandestine prostitution was something they did to survive. According to Draga Plasaj’s (M.D.) estimates from 1933, the number of unregistered prostitutes grew to 10–20 times larger than the number of registered ones, which meant that in Zagreb alone there were 1000–2000 prostitutes. Although it is unclear what data is this estimate based on, only a very small number of them underwent expensive and time-consuming treatment, so the number of people infected with STDs grew dramatically over time.85 This alarming data forced the government into further action. Taking a long-term perspective, we can see that all the healthcare and educational preventive and repressive measures undertaken by the government from the end of the nineteenth century had little success, leading to a subsequent ban on prostitution. It seems that serious consideration for such a solution began circulating in 1926, and the provisional text of a law to regulate the spread of infectious diseases was drafted in 1927. After the Yugoslav government ratified the League of Nations’ Convention banning the trafficking of women and children in 1929, which effectively banned brothels,86 many believed that it was only a matter of time before prostitution was outlawed altogether within the territory of the South Slavic monarchy. In 1929, King Aleksander Karađorđević suspended the constitution, banned parliament and political parties, and proclaimed his Sixth of January dictatorship. Over the next few years, his paternalist regime tried to resolve the socioeconomic, national and political crises in Yugoslavia. A large number of new laws were introduced and, in the environment of the ‘one state, one nation, one king’ dictatorship, the regime tried to control crucial aspects of the everyday lives of ordinary citizens, in a country that was still largely underdeveloped.87 One of the most important aspects was, of course, the national health. The autocratic regime now openly marked prostitution as a problem. A law was drafted in 1933 that, without public debate, became the Law on the Prevention of Sexually Transmitted Diseases on March 28, 1934.88 Its enforcement began on July 1 of the same year.89 85 Zorko, Prostitucija, 65. 86 More about the debate behind this Convention and its intentions in: Magaly Rodríguez García, “The League of Nations and the Moral Recruitment of Women,” International Review of Social History 57, 20, 97–128. 87 More on the Sixth of January dictatorship in: Nielsen, Making Yugoslavs. 88 Petrungaro, “The Medical Debate,” 138–139. 89 Jelaska Marijan, Split, 426; “12. sastanak dermato-venerološke sekcije,” Liječnički vjesnik 57, 4 (1935): 186.

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The text of this law clearly shows that, for the state, the health implications of prostitution were more important than the moral ones, although the latter did play some part in its censure. “Beginning with the premise that sexual purity is the first condition for proper morality,” the reforms were presented as “required by social morality and the hygiene of the race.”90 The law also closely followed the lines of other venereal disease legislation already adopted in Germany and the Scandinavian countries. Furthermore, the regime emphasized that their young country (Yugoslavia) should demonstrate its ideals to the more developed European countries that had already ratified the League of Nations Convention and banned prostitution. “Such statements show how the law and the entire socio-medical approach which supported it were also invested with political and cultural symbolic meanings. These meanings were utilised to gain a better position for the country in the hierarchy of modern, civilised states, as well as for distinguishing it from the other south-east European countries.”91 The following diseases were listed as sexually transmitted: “syphilis, gonorrhoea and soft chancre (ulcus molle) in all their forms and phases.” Treatment became mandatory and free of charge for everyone who could not afford it, and even more efforts were planned in the realm of education, especially among young people, soldiers and similar groups.92 The law intended to punish future spouses who entered a marital union knowing they were infected with an STD without disclosing their status and ordered a mandatory medical examination of grooms before they got married. However, this last provision was revoked only a year later.93 Breaking the law could cost the perpetrator up to six months in prison or a fine up to five thousand dinars, in the case that harsher fines, e.g. for human trafficking, did not apply. The legislation on the prevention of STDs failed to be followed with other laws when it came to its enforcement. It was relatively vague in certain segments, leading to a lack of hospital beds and additional medicines needed to start reducing the number of sick people. Besides, legal experts cautioned that the Criminal Law of 1929 and the 1934 Law on the Prevention of Sexually Transmitted Diseases used different definitions of prostitution; the first 90 91 92 93

Petrungaro, “The Medical Debate,” 140. Petrungaro, “The Medical Debate,” 127, 141. Compare: “Zakon o suzbijanju polnih bolesti” and “Pravilnik o izvršenju Zakona o suzbijanju polnih bolesti,” Zakon o suzbijanju polnih bolesti (Sarajevo: Državna štamparija, 1934). The provision was not popular, mostly because medical examinations had to be paid for. Besides, it was only men who were being examined. Therefore, §9 of the law was simply withdrawn a year later. Zorko, Prostitucija, 30–31.

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defined it as the “public execution of fornication,” which would imply public scandal, while the second one simply equated it with “sexual intercourse with various people for money or other means of equal value.”94 While doctors were trying to draw attention to the matter of the execution of this law, or, more precisely, the impossibility to implement some of its articles,95 the government began to work on shutting down brothels and arresting the ‘ill-reputed ladies’ from 1934. Some journalists wondered what would happen to “those girls” and what kind of life they would have after these actions. They further concluded that the law would not eradicate prostitution, which would continue as long as there were customers out there. They also wondered if number of people infected with STDs would really decline once prostitution turned entirely clandestine and was therefore unregulated, without frequent compulsory medical examinations for registered prostitutes.96 Once prostitution was banned, most foreign prostitutes, such as Hungarians and Austrians, left Zagreb from fear of persecution.97 Others found other jobs (working as waitresses, for instance), some got married, and the rest still continued to work as prostitutes in secret.98 After passing the law on preventing sexually transmitted diseases, the police tried to use both the old and the new methods to combat all prostitution, reinforcing earlier methods of raiding night bars, houses, and flats suspected of being meeting points for prostitutes and/or unofficial brothels.99 There were restaurants and coffee houses in the city that acted as hubs of secret prostitution. Business was carried out in special closed off booths with upholstered benches, and the women had to give the bar’s owner most of their earnings.100 Later, spaces where prostitution could be illicitly conducted became more common. “High-class escort girls” could be found at hotels, even some that had good reputation.101 Clandestine prostitution was at the time also taking place in various infamous bars and taverns on the outskirts of Zagreb, such 94

§14 of the Law on combating sexually transmitted diseases. Vladimir Timoškin, “Kaznena naredjenja zakona o suzbijanju spolnih bolesti,” Mjesečnik: Glasilo pravničkoga društva 61 (1935): 3. 95 For example, see “Izvanredna mjesečna skupština Zbora liječnika,” Liječnički vjesnik 57, 6 (1935): 265–266; “2. sastanak dermato-venerološke sekcije,” Liječnički vjesnik 57, 10 (1935): 451. 96 “Novi zakon o suzbijanju spolnih bolesti,” 5; “Današnjim je danom prostitucija u Zagrebu službeno ukinuta,” Večer, 1 October, 1934, 5; Urošević, “Suzbijanje prostitucije,” 888. 97 “Broj tajnih prostitutki koje šire,” 4. 98 “Današnjim je danom prostitucija,” 5. 99 “Poslije kavane ‘Sport’ – privatna kuća ‘Pod zidom’,” Večer, 8 March, 1929, 5. 100 “Poslije kavane ‘Sport’,” 5. 101 Marković, Prostitucija (Skripta), 40.

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as the district of Kustošija, which was not a metropolitan area of nearby City of Zagreb at the time, so therefore the city police had no jurisdiction there.102 Combating STDs, and therefore prostitution, continued with different levels of success. In the first five months of 1940, the Zagreb police carried out thirty-six large raids in various places across the city and arrested 349 prostitutes.103 Usually the prostitutes caught during raids gave quite imaginative explanations of why they were found there during the raid; the excuses ranged from business meetings, meeting relatives, purchasing something, looking for honest work, and so on. For example, one women arrested during a raid in the 1930s explained that she was in the bar because “She was very, very thirsty and had just craved a bit of wine, since she had not had any for a long time.”104 The women who were found in illegal brothels were often taken to the police station and were forced to undergo medical examination. If they were infected with an STD, which was used as evidence for proving they were prostitutes, they would have to be kept in hospital for treatment. On release, they were often either fined by the police or instantly exiled from the city.105 Neither fines nor prison sentences yielded the desired results in combating prostitution. After paying the fine or serving the prison sentence, prostitutes often went back to their jobs. If they had to stand trial, it was difficult for the prosecution to determine their real identity. At the same time, many were not held in pre-trial detention, which resulted in suspects failing to appear at the court proceedings.106 Prison sentences or public expulsions from the city were also ineffective. Those exiled or released from jail would return to the city a few days later, continuing with their business. In the first half of the 1930s, there were “ladies of ill repute” who were punished for vagabonding and prostitution up to seventy times.107 Of course, constantly being arrested and holding a criminal record carried a strong social stigma, which was indisputably one of the reasons why so many women returned to prostitution, having been rejected by their families and local communities. Barica J., an embittered reconvalescent Zagreb prostitute with a family home in the vicinity of Zabok said in 1938: “It is not our fault, we are banished from our homes and in Zagreb we are being locked up. It would be for the best if they would just kill us all, so we 102 Zorko, Prostitucija, 77–78. 103 Zorko, Prostitucija, 79. 104 Šilović, Trgovina bijelim robljem, 86. 105 Letter from the Split district Department of Public Health to Banovina of Croatia, April 24, 1940. CSA, fund signature 165 (Banovina of Croatia – Department of Public Health), box 70, VII–15000. 106 “Broj tajnih prostitutki koje šire,” 4. 107 Šilović, Trgovina bijelim robljem, 87.

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don’t have to live like this any longer.”108 The author of the newspaper article where Barica’s sentence was published at the time agreed with this statement, saying that prison fines and exile in fact drove women back to prostitution. His belief was that many citizens thought “There should be sanctuaries for such girls, especially those who are not yet eighteen and could be given a chance to learn a trade of some kind. This, however, requires financial means, which our government cannot afford, and without money we cannot even begin to think that the prostitution problem can be solved.”109 In 1940, the Zagreb daily newspaper Večer attempted to start a widespread discussion on the problems of prostitution, including the input of medical experts, social services, police, courts of law, and other similar institutions. Some people believed that, in accordance with the old ways, prostitution should be decriminalised in some manner, mostly through organising shared accommodation for ‘tolerated prostitutes,’ so that the police and public health authorities could easily keep such women under surveillance for the public good. Other experts opposed this idea, believing that nothing could be achieved by legalising prostitution once again or reopening any kind of brothels, where owners would inevitably abuse their employees.110 The majority agreed with the premise that the problem would not be resolved by allowing the prostitutes back on the streets, even with medical supervision.111 Everyone agreed, though, that there should be more severe punishments for secret prostitution, which would remain illegal in case of decriminalisation, and that the firm hand of the law should be used against trafficking and pimping.112 However, all the legal norms, and even the enhanced agility of the police in catching the perpetrators, almost futile in the face of the bad socio-economic situation from the beginning. By mid-1936, it was reported that “Zagreb has over five thousand women and girls for who prostitution was the only occupation.”113 It is difficult to say to what extent this assessment is true, as it would mean that – if we compared this number to the census at the time – over five percent of female population in Zagreb worked as prostitutes. The number of clandestine prostitutes in Split was also quite large in 1930s, although apparently in decline after the end of the First World War.114 108 “Povorka žena i djevojaka pod sumnjom da se bave nemoralom na socijalnom odsjeku redarstva,” Večer, September 16, 1938, 4. 109 “Povorka žena i djevojaka,” 4. 110 Mališa V. Urošević, “Treba li obnoviti ukinute javne radnje?” Policija 23, 5–6 (1936): 290. 111 “Redarstvo je pohvatalo na stotine ‘onih gospodja’,” Večer, July 6, 1940, 4. 112 “Predlozi za rješenje jednog važnog socijalnog pitanja,” Večer, July 8, 1940, 3. 113 “Broj tajnih prostitutki koje šire,” 4. 114 Jelaska Marijan, Split, 425.

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Banning prostitution obviously did not yield the desired results in Croatia. In 1940, the National Health Department of Banovina Hrvatska office in Split noted that the number of people suffering from STDs had in fact increased in the previous years. They reported that there was an urgent need for free medical care and medicines, which would help the poor the most, and concluding with the request: “If only we could manage to suppress at least partially this evil which ruins mostly our youth in their best years, which is why I am honoured to request a loan from this department […] for the needed medicines which the state would distribute to clinics or to venerology specialists free of charge.” They knew these means existed because Banovina Hrvatska had a budget of 180 000 dinars for the years 1940/1941 to be spent “on the prevention and testing of endemic syphilis and other venereal diseases.”115 Nevertheless, it was but a drop in the ocean. All the healthcare and police efforts show that even though prostitution was banned in 1934, the threat of STDs was not eradicated from Croatian society until the end of the interwar period. Conclusion At the beginning of the twentieth century, prostitution was a part of urban daily life in Croatia, although there were many groups and individuals, primarily moralists of Catholic background, feminist movements, and medical workers who publicly believed that prostitution should be legally banned. Prostitution was something that one could find near city centres, mostly in brothels located in dark alleys. These places employed numerous young women who were physically abused by various human traffickers, pimps and brothel owners. Prostitution was regulated by several state laws and, more importantly, municipal rules that were supposed to offer some kind of protection for both prostitutes and their clients. However, after the First World War, the number of people infected with STDs increased and all attempts to control prostitution and associated diseases failed. Looking at the poor social position of the prostitute, the attitude of authorities and general public towards prostitution changed, leading to some cities closing brothels in 1920s. Prostitutes were now offered a chance to do their work freed from the abuse of the brothel’s owner with mandatory medical examinations under police supervision. Despite new treatment methods and regulations, the number of people infected with STDs rose in the early 1930s. The additional socio-economic 115 Letter from the Split district Department of Public Health to the Banovina of Croatia – July 6, 1940. CSA, fund signature 165, box 30, III-28979/1940.

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crisis in Croatian society after the Great Depression, especially in the cities, combined with the new paternalist efforts of the Sixth of January dictatorship regime in its attempt to control, among other things, the health of the nation, led to the ban on prostitution in 1934. This was executed through the Law on the Prevention of Sexually Transmitted Diseases. This law shows that the government was motivated to act more by the health implications of prostitution than morality. Although the authorities tried to eradicate prostitution as much as they could in order to protect the “social morality and the hygiene of the race,” during the next decade, secret (unregistered) prostitution – which had existed in parallel with lawful prostitution until 1934 – now became an even greater presence in everyday city life, secretly taking place in numerous cafés, taverns, hotels and private flats. Finally, by turning prostitution into an illegal activity, the number of prostitutes and sexually transmitted diseases only grew until the end of the interwar period.

Homosexual Male Prostitution in Early Twentieth Century Hungary Judit Takács In one of the first books fully devoted to discussing the topic of prostitution in Hungary, prostitution is defined as a regular job-like practice of women engaging in sexual activity with men in exchange for payment.1 The author, Emil Schreiber, a legal expert and high ranking police adviser,2 lists the prostitutes’ public accessibility (as opposed to being a mistress or a secret lover of someone) and limited choice of clients (it is the client who can choose, not the prostitute) among other defining factors, while also emphasising that prostitution has nothing to do with same-sex desire, especially with paid sexual services provided for men with ‘unnatural’ sexual inclinations, as these are dealt with by the Penal Codes in many countries, including Hungary. This account clearly illustrates the highly gendered character of the interpretational framework of prostitution in early twentieth century Hungarian legal and public health discourses, where it was seen as a salient form of nonnormative promiscuous female sexuality – as opposed to normative reproductive sexuality within a monogamous marriage based family, sanctioned by the church and the state – that had to be strictly controlled and regulated by the relevant (mainly local municipal) authorities. The contemporary scientific understanding of sex work pictured female sex workers as potentially pathological populations whose clients were at risk of contracting contagious – especially venereal – diseases. In the context of infectious disease, there was increasing emphasis on diagnosis and prevention not only in the medical but also in the social sense, and thus several social causes of prostitution were identified, such as urbanization, demographic features of urban life, housing shortage, modernization of family life, alcoholism, wars, military way of life etc. At the same time, there was much less direct evidence and awareness about more covert and clandestine forms of engagement in sexual activities for payment conducted by male (or trans) actors.3 The toleration- and regulation-based 1 Emil Schreiber, A prostitúció (Budapest: Patria, 1917). 2 Schreiber, A prostitúció, 4–5. 3 For a comprehensive overview of the modern forms of homosexual prostitution and male sex work, see: Kerwin Kaye, “Male Prostitution in the Twentieth Century,” Journal of

© Brill Schöningh, 2023 | doi:10.30965/9783657790470_007

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early twentieth century approach to prostitution changed into a state-socialist prohibition in 1950 when brothels had to be closed down, and prostitutes were no longer seen as service providers but as criminals.4 In 1955, Hungary ratified the New York Convention of 1950 (The Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others),5 the first international treaty that placed prostitution into a gender neutral context, at least in its title, as opposed to the preceding international conventions of 1933 (International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women of Full Age)6 and 1921 (International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children).7 During the state-socialist period, prostitution and related activities, such as soliciting in a public place, pimping, or managing a brothel, remained illegal, while homosexual acts between consenting adults became decriminalized relatively early (in comparison with other European, and especially state-socialist countries) in 1961.8 Modern homosexual male prostitution as a recognizable pattern of behaviour is associated with the emergence of homosexuality as a specific sexual category and subject to study.9 It can be argued that sexual activities for payment conducted by male actors could be recognized as a specific (i.e. homosexual) form of prostitution or sex work only from the last decades of the nineteenth century, after the terms homosexual and homosexuality – as well as

4 5 6 7 8

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Homosexuality, 46:1–2 (2004) and Victor Minichiello and John Scott, eds., Male Sex Work and Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014). Lenke Fehér, “Bűnözés és prostitúció,” in Szerepváltozások. Jelentés a nők és férfiak helyzetéről, eds. K. Lévai and Gy I. Tóth (Budapest: TÁRKI – Munkaügyi Minisztérium, Egyenlő Esélyek Titkársága, 1997). “Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others (1950),” United Nations, accessed August  14, 2019, https://treaties. un.org/doc/Treaties/1951/07/19510725%2010-37%20PM/Ch_VII_11_a_bp.pdf. “International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women of Full Age (1933),” United Nations, accessed August  14, 2019 https://treaties.un.org/doc/Treaties/ 1933/10/19331011%2006-00%20AM/Ch_VII_5p.pdf. “International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children (1921),” United Nations, accessed August  14, 2019 https://ec.europa.eu/anti-trafficking/legislationand-case-law-international-legislation-united-nations/1921-international-convention_en. Judit Takács, Roman Kuhar and Tamás  P.Tóth, “Unnatural Fornication Cases under State-Socialism: A Hungarian–Slovenian Comparative Social-Historical Approach,” Journal of Homosexuality 64, 14 (2017): 1943–1960. Judit Takács and Tamás P.Tóth “Liberating Pathologization? The Historical Background of the 1961 Decriminalization of Homosexuality in Hungary,” Hungarian Historical Review 10, 2 (2021): 267–300. Jeffrey Weeks, “Inverts, Perverts, and Mary-Annes: Male Prostitution and the Regulation of Homosexuality in England in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” Journal of Homosexuality 6, 1–2 (1981): 113–134.

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heterosexual and heterosexuality – were coined by Károly Kertbeny10 in 1868–69.11 The introduction of this new terminology recognized hetero- and homosexual desire as “entirely distinct forms of eroticism,”12 while previously: it was commonly presumed that “normal” men had sex with other men out of sexual excess (rather than sexual difference), and that same-sex contact between men would take place “naturally” if no women were immediately available. […] Indeed, many of those who campaigned against female prostitution, both in the eighteenth century and the early twentieth, sought only to regulate the trade rather than to eliminate it, fearing that if men did not have easy access to women, they would turn to each other.13

Involvement in male prostitution could bring specific forms of identity threats, especially sexual orientation and gender related, to those who offered and those who received these sexual services. Can participation in sexual activities among men say anything about one’s identity, if there is no necessary connection between homosexual behaviour and identity? If “true homosexuals” can be defined by their innate sexual desire for men, as was often assumed in the studies of early sexologists such as Krafft-Ebing,14 would the desire for a submissive or subversive heterosexual man or another true homosexual make any difference? In order to avoid these issues, the practice-based category MSM, i.e. men having sex with men, was introduced, especially in HIV/AIDS prevention intervention research, in the second half of the twentieth century. Regarding historical sources about prostitution, American historian Timothy Gilfoyle contrasts the advantageous situation of European historians with that of their American colleagues in his article on “Prostitutes in the Archives”: 10

Károly Kertbeny was born as Karl Maria Benkert in Vienna in 1824 “as a son of Hungarian parents” (Károly Kertbeny, Öneletrajz (töredék) – Autobiographiai jegyzetek (unpublished: 1856), 120 (Budapest: National Széchényi Library, OSZK Kézirattár [Manuscript Archive] OctGerm 302/120–125)); his mother tongue was German but he declared himself Hungarian: “I was born in Vienna, yet I am not a Viennese, but rightfully Hungarian” (Károly Kertbeny, Kertbeny ismeretlenhez (1880) (Budapest: National Szechenyi Library, OSZK Levelestár [Letter Archive]) and in 1847 he officially changed his name to Kertbeny. In Hungarian literary history he is recorded as a not very significant translator and writer but in LGBTIQ+ history he is remembered for his inventiveness in sexual terminology and for the theoretical case he made for homosexual emancipation. 11 Judit Takács, “The Double Life of Kertbeny,” in Past and Present of Radical Sexual Politics, ed. G. Hekma (Amsterdam: UvA – Mosse Foundation, 2004), 51–62. 12 Kaye, “Male Prostitution,” 4. 13 Kaye, “Male Prostitution”, 4. 14 Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia sexualis. A visszás nemi érzések különös figyelembe vételével (Budapest: Singer és Wolfner, 1894).

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Judit Takács Prostitution in Europe was a sexual activity whose boundaries were frequently controlled and defined by the state. Intermittent periods of legalization and regulation produced a unique and considerable body of government records. Specifically, data from the files of police forces and law enforcement agencies enabled European historians to examine the employment history, family background, marital status, and medical history of prostitutes. American historians had no such benefit in their search for new sources.15

There are, indeed, many kinds of such sources available in Hungary too. These regular sources include court records with evidence about the existence of these social phenomena; medical records and expert discourses where diseased prostitutes often appear as public health threats; police registers; (legislation-related) parliamentary debates; documents about activities of different bodies of social control and investigations (at a social and/or individual level); and media representations. However, it should be noted that data from state agencies and social institutions most probably reflect their own functioning mechanisms more realistically than those of prostitution. There are also unique sources such as memoirs, private notes, letters, and lately, specific research projects, oral histories etc.16 This chapter focuses on the interpretation of homosexual male prostitution in early twentieth century Hungary and in particular, how this issue was depicted in legal and medical expert discourses and in the printed media. Since there was no specific law against male homosexual prostitution, as same-sex activity between men was altogether criminalized in Hungary between 1878 and 1961, I will first discuss the history of legal developments relevant to the criminalization of homosexuality. The empirical basis of this work includes sources that I studied in the course of the Social History of Homosexuality in twentieth Century Hungary before 1990 research project, such as published documents and a thematic database of the homosexuality related articles published between 1910 and 1939 in the most widely circulated Hungarian daily paper, Az Est [The Evening].

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Timothy Gilfoyle, “Prostitutes in the Archives: Problems and Possibilities in Documenting the History of Sexuality,” The American Archivist 57, 3 (1994): 518. For example, in the first Hungarian sociological study on sexual values and lifestyles of young workers and students that was conducted in the early 1970s both “the homosexual” and “the prostitute” – along with the virgin, the ‘half-virgin,’ the unwed single mother, the womanizer and the masturbator – were presented as standard forms of Hungarian sexual types, representing “typical” and “widespread” forms of sexual relationships in Hungary. See: Sándor Heleszta and János Rudas, Munkásfiatalok és egyetemisták szexualitása (Budapest: MTA Szociológiai Kutató Intézetének Kiadványai, 1978), 41.

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Criminalization of Homosexuality It would be pointless to look for homosexuality in the criminal codes that have ever been in force in Hungary: this term does not appear anywhere. Since the second half of the nineteenth century, homosexual practices were punished under the heading of “unnatural fornication” – literally, “perversion against nature” (természet elleni fajtalanság) – in the chapter on crimes and offences against sexual morality in Article  V of the Criminal Code of 1878,17 the first Hungarian language criminal code of the Hungarian Kingdom, drafted by Károly Csemegi, a State Secretary at the Ministry of the Interior.18 Here, paragraphs 241 and 242 distinguish between the offences of unnatural fornication committed between men or between a person and an animal, and the more severely punished crime of unnatural fornication involving violence or threat of violence.19 The most important antecedent of the Csemegi Code of 1878 is the work of Tivadar Pauler (who served as Minister of Justice between 1872 and 1875) on criminal law studies, which was first published in 1864, just a few years before the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. Here in paragraphs 396–400, unnatural fornication, i.e. “crimen sodomiae” or the crime of sodomy, is defined as “sexual intercourse contrary to the natural order” that should be punished because of its “gross violation of moral sentiment, irrational ignorance of the natural order, demeaning of human dignity, and the withering and harmful effects on one’s intellectual properties and physical health.”20 Pauler’s approach reflects a potential Austrian influence in terms of the offender’s gender as, according to the Austrian penal code, sodomy could be committed not only by men but also by women (the “Tribadie” provision of the Austrian penal code was introduced in 1852 and remained in effect until 1971).21 Pauler 17 18

Magyar Törvénytár 1877–1878. évi Törvényczikkek. (Budapest: Franklin Társulat, 1896). Károly Csemegi (1826–1899) was State Secretary of Justice of the Government of Kálmán Tisza; the Criminal Code of 1878 is often referred to as the Csemegi Code. 19 See the original Hungarian version: 241.§ .: Férfiak között véghezvitt fajtalanság, ugyszintén embernek állattal elkövetett fajtalansága: a természet elleni fajtalanság vétségét képezi, és egy évig terjedő fogházzal büntetendő. 242.§ .: a természet elleni fajtalanság büntettét képezi, és öt évig terjedhető börtönnel büntetendő: ha az férfiak között, erőszakkal vagy fenyegetéssel követtetett el” (Magyar Törvénytár, 1896). 20 Tivadar Pauler, Büntetőjogtan. II. kötet: Anyagi büntetőjog különös része. Alaki jog (Pest: Kiadja Pfeifer Ferdinánd, 1870), 121. 21 The term Tribadie is a reference to female homosexuality: it was used in a legal text in 1887, when the Austrian Supreme Court confirmed the criminality of female homosexuality or “Tribadie” and traced back the legal tradition of the criminalization of female homosexuality in Austria to the first criminal code of the entire Holy Roman Empire from

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distinguishes between three main forms of unnatural fornication: it was defined not only as sexual intercourse conducted with an animal or with a same-sex partner, but also as sexual intercourse conducted with a different-sex partner in an unnatural way;22 at the same time, “serious violations of morality and prudency” within family life were considered as only petty offences.23 The Csemegi Code, which remained in effect for more than eighty years, differed in two major points from the legal text proposed by Pauler: its prohibition of unnatural fornication affected neither different-sex partners nor same-sex female partners. However, the precise scope of what exactly constituted unnatural fornication was hard to determine, as shown in the penal code interpretations written by Károly Illés Edvi, a skilled prosecutor who took part in the writing of the Csemegi Code. In his view, “in a broad sense, it refers to the unnatural satisfaction of any kind of sexual lust” including: self-contamination and the use of inanimate objects  … these cases, however, have been ignored even by the old legal doctrine and legislation that distinguished three main forms of what could be interpreted as sodomy in a strict sense: sexual intercourse conducted with a) an animal … b) a person of the same sex … and c) a person of different sex in an unnatural manner. The case under b) included various unnatural activities that can be conducted among women (lesbian love), too. The present law completely ignores the latter case, which also divided the opinion of the old criminalists, and renders unnatural fornication between different sex partners punishable only as far as it was covered by § 23324 [of the Penal Code on sexual assault].25

It seems that, even a quarter of a century later, several points remained contentious regarding the exact scope of unnatural fornication. Pál Angyal, a criminal lawyer and one of the leading figures of the Hungarian Lawyers’ Society in the early twentieth century, outlined the desirable changes to be introduced in the future criminal policy in his work on crimes against sexual morality as follows: the early 16th century. See: Johann Kirchknopf, “§ 129 I b) Fornication against nature, this is with persons of the same-sex”: The practices of criminal prosecution of male and female homosexuality in Austria in the course of the 20th century, Presentation at the “Sex and Sexuality in East-Central Europe, Past and Present” conference at Central European University, Budapest, October 16–17, 2016. 22 In addition, there is reference to sexual intercourse with a corpse as “quasi sodomia.” See: Pauler, Büntetőjogtan. II, 122. 23 Pauler, Büntetőjogtan. II, 126. 24 See the original Hungarian version: 233. § a szemérem elleni erőszakról – “a ki valamely nőszemélyen erőszakkal, vagy fenyegetéssel […] házasságon kivül fajtalanságot követ el” (Magyar Törvénytár, 1896). 25 Illés Károly Edvi, A magyar büntetőtörvénykönyv magyarázata vol. II (Budapest: Révai testvérek, 1909), 294–295.

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de lege feranda […] 1. onanism should remain unpunished, 2. punishment of fornication between men should be sustained […] 3. unnatural fornication between women should be criminalized 4. punishment of bestiality should be sustained only because it is morally undesirable to delete an existing ban […] 5. necrophilia [should be punished] only in the case of causing scandal (possibly under the heading of desecrating a corpse or crime against religion) 6. criminalizing unnatural fornication conducted between different sex persons is unreasonable (with the exception of the cases covered by 233 § of the Criminal Code) because these acts quite often precede or follow normal intercourse […] but fornication conducted by a woman with an adolescent boy should be punished […] 7. seduction to commit homosexual acts or offering these services, however, should be rendered punishable.26

It is striking to see the double standard in Angyal’s argument applied to nonreproductive sexual practices in terms of the fornicators’ gender composition: if these were conducted by same-sex partners, they were seen as having the potential to cause social harm. At the same time, non-reproductive sexual practices conducted by different-sex partners were depicted as belonging to a broader repertoire of sexual activities or sexual play (such as foreplay) that, at worst, could be interpreted at an interpersonal level as morally wrong. This is why Angyal would have preferred to introduce the criminalization of same-sex “fornication” between women besides maintaining the prohibition of samesex “fornication” between men, while avoiding the criminalization of fornication between different-sex partners. It should also be noted that criminalization of consensual sexual practices, especially between adult men, has been a contested issue in Central Europe since at least the second half of the nineteenth century. In the 1860s, the German writer and jurist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs argued for decriminalization in a biologically essentializing manner in his essays on the riddle of “man-manly” love.27 In his view, urnings, i.e. men-loving men, characterized by a certain degree of “femininity of the soul,” make up a third sex;28 thus adult men having a consensual relationship with each other should not be persecuted for acting upon their nature-given innate drive. At the same time, Károly Kertbeny, the Austrian-Hungarian writer and author of political pamphlets against “Paragraph 143 of the Prussian Penal Code of 14 April 1851 and Its Reaffirmation as Paragraph 152 in the Proposed Penal Code for the North German Federation,” 26 Pál Angyal, A szemérem elleni bűntettek és vétségek (Budapest: Attila Nyomda Részvénytársaság, 1937), 78. 27 Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Forschungen über das Räthsel der mann-männlichen Liebe, ed. Hubert Kennedy (Berlin: Verlag Rosa Winkel, 1994). 28 Hubert Kennedy, Ulrichs. The Life and Works of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Pioneer of the modern gay movement (Boston: Alyson, 1988), 63.

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put forward a classic liberal argument focusing on the principle of a modern state not intervening in the intimate lives of citizens instead of emphasizing biological innateness.29 In an 1868 letter to Ulrichs, Kerbeny points out that: [to] prove innateness […] is a dangerous double-edged weapon. Let this riddle of nature be very interesting from the anthropological point of view. Legislation is not concerned whether this inclination is innate or not, legislation is only interested in the personal and social dangers associated with it. […] Therefore, we would not win anything by proving innateness beyond a shadow of doubt. Instead we should convince our opponents – with precisely the same legal notions used by them – that they do not have anything at all to do with this inclination, be it innate or intentional, since the state does not have the right to intervene in anything that occurs between two consenting persons older than fourteen, which does not affect the public sphere, nor the rights of a third party.30

At the very end of the nineteenth century, arguments for decriminalization also surfaced in Hungary. For instance, a Hungarian lawyer challenged the article on unnatural fornication by pointing out that it was nonsense to outlaw acts that cannot be prevented and that take place mostly in publicly concealed ways, including “the act of consensual sodomy conducted by adults in secrecy that makes the act inherently unpreventable.”31 In the early years of the twentieth century, Hungarian abolitionist lawyers were of the opinion that unnatural fornication should not be rendered punishable by law because it was increasingly seen not so much as a legal, but a medical, issue. Instead of legal expert involvement, abolitionists argued for shifting the social responsibility to medical experts, as only physicians would be able to distinguish between one demonstrating the symptoms of an inborn mental illness or just exercising moral excess. For instance, in 1905 an abolitionist lawyer argued for “deleting pederasty from all modern penal codes” on the basis of the “fully elucidated medical notions about pederasty deriving from a degenerate mental disposition” and the recognition that “punishment does not contribute to the improvement of the pederasts’ condition: they cannot resist their inclination no matter how long they would be imprisoned … [consequently] deterrence is out of the question.”32 33 Applying a ‘cure instead of imprisonment’ framework involved prescribing social isolation that in practice meant 29

Karl Maria Kertbeny, Schriften zur Homosexualitatsforschung, ed. Manfred Herzer (Berlin: Verlag Rosa Winkel, 2000), 6. 30 Károly Kertbeny, quoted in Judit Takács, The Double Life of Kertbeny, 31. 31 András Eördögh, “A büntetőtörvény 241,” Ügyvédek lapja 38: 4–6. 32 Péter Reich, “A természet elleni fajtalanság büntethetőségéről,” A jog 24, 12 (1905): 90. 33 It should be noted that Reich used Ulrichs’ urning-terminology in his text, where he refers to urnings as being characterised by (gender) inversion and thus from their perspective

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being locked into specialized medical or mental institutions⁠ – an increasingly popular view across Europe (see, for instance, the case of Oscar Wilde34). It is not difficult to see that the abolitionist arguments were far from recognizing individual rights and liberties or reflecting the social acceptability of relationships based on same-sex attraction. Rather, their main point was that letting these forms of behaviour and relationships – which were typically conducted secretively due to the stigmatising social environment – remain concealed minimized the chances of social exposure, while the criminalization these cases could easily attract more widespread attention, for instance, by media representations focusing on the ‘scandalous’ details of suspects’ lives. However, paragraph 241 of the Penal Code of 1878 nonetheless remained in operation for a long time: it was not until 1961, during the early Kádár era – named after János Kádár, the General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party between 1956 and 1988 – when the unnatural fornication clause was finally changed. When homosexual activity between consenting adult men became decriminalized in 1961, different ages of consent were set for heterosexual and homosexual relationships and this remained the case until 2002 when, following the judgment of the Constitutional Court, an equal age of consent (age of fourteen) for all was introduced. While the age of consent for heterosexual relationships remained fourteen in 1961, the age of consent for homosexual relationships was set at the age of twenty in 1961 and at eighteen between 1978 and 2002.35 Additionally, the circle of potential perpetrators and victims also changed in 1961: gender equality was introduced regarding ‘unnatural fornication,’ for which men and women could now be prosecuted equally, but bestiality was no longer penalized. Furthermore, there was a special clause introduced on “perversion against nature conducted in a scandalous manner,” for which one could be sentenced to up to three years’ imprisonment.36 Thus, between 1961 and 2002, the age of consent and the public scandal clauses provided opportunities for state authorities to keep (alleged) homosexual practices under close control. driven by their feminine inclination homosexuality might seem to be a natural state of affairs (Reich, “A természet,” 90). 34 Dominic Janes, “Oscar Wilde, Sodomy, and Mental Illness in Late Victorian England,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 23(1) (2014). 35 Takács, Judit. “Disciplining gender and (homo)sexuality in state socialist Hungary in the 1970s,” European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 22 (1) (2015): 161–175. 36 Országgyűlési irományok [(Parliamentary documents)](1961) – Az Országgyűlés 1961. december 15-i ülése, Országgyűlési Könyvtár. http://library.hungaricana.hu/hu/view/ OGYK_KN-1958_01/.

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Tracing Homosexual Male Prostitution in Expert Discourses 1926 saw one of the first works offering consideration on the then-modern aspects of the ‘homosexual problem’ appear in Budapest.37 This “mass phenomenon,” occurring suddenly after the end of the First World War, was described by the author as the “burning issue of the modern era” that was not to be ignored in Hungary.3839 Pál argues that this was a knee-jerk reaction against the exaggerated maleness of the war, making the male world overfeminized and the female world over-masculinized, with women striving for the new boyish image (1920s flapper style) given that the look of boys was in fact the true ideal of men.40 The fast spread of homosexual life, characterized as a “great homosexual tide flooding Budapest,” was portrayed as an unavoidable by-product of the urbanization propelling Budapest into the status of a world metropolis.41 Pál reckoned that there were more than 10,000 urnings42 in Budapest in the 1920s who met each other in several places, particularly bath houses and sauna-like steam baths, as well as at a number of other inner city spots that have remained well-frequented cruising places for several decades, such as the Kálvin and Erzsébet Squares, the right bank of the Danube near the Margaret bridge, and the Emke corner. Pál states that homosexuals could “exit an introverted passive sexuality” to discover an active extroverted sexuality in Budapest and other larger cities, as opposed to life in villages. The urban environment offered the “immense ease” of blending into a city of a million inhabitants, guarding against the risk of blackmail. Because of a housing shortage, it was not unusual that two men would live together: rooms to let were often advertised “for two gentlemen,” providing cover for the cohabitation of same-sex partners. Moreover, most work was performed in exclusively single-sex settings; therefore, the world of work was ripe for homosexualization, all the more so as class and financial factors could often inhibit access to different-sex partners.43 37 György Pál, A homoszexuális probléma modern megvilágításban (Budapest: Mai Henrik és Fia Orvosi Könyvkiadó, 1927). 38 It cannot be established whether the author, Dr György Pál, was a legal or a medical expert, but we may assume that he had a medical background since the book was published by a medical publishing house. 39 Pál, A homoszexuális probléma, iii. 40 Pál, A homoszexuális probléma, 77–78. 41 Pál, A homoszexuális probléma, 60. 42 Urning is the term coined by the German jurist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs after Plato’s Symposium describing men of a supposed transitional third gender who love other men. 43 Pál, A homoszexuális probléma, 65.

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Journalists and police officers cooperated to produce a two-volume work on Modern Criminality, published in 1929, that included an entire chapter on homosexuality, or rather, its cure and punishment.4445 The authors used Krafft-Ebing’s etiology, making a distinction between acquired and inherent types of homosexuality and highlighted that, at the start of their homosexual careers, “People with acquired homosexuality do not yet have that unbelievable and unexplainable skill with which they are able to recognise each other” – this being one of the first Hungarian references to the phenomenon colloquially known as ‘gaydar.’46 The authors conclude that therefore these men would sometimes mistakenly try to proposition “normal men,” who would “naturally repulse” such advances and might even report them to the police. “These unsuccessful attempts bring them to those well-known places, where the pathologically inclined ones and especially their scum” congregate to find sexual partners: bath houses, parks and public conveniences, where they are also “prey” for male prostitutes and extortionists.47 Men with inborn homosexuality are divided into active “urnings” and passive effeminate homosexuals who can cohabit like a married couple, but “Their family life can only last for up to two or three years” because the authors consider them incapable of remaining faithful.48 The authors state that the proportion of homosexuals was 0.5 percent of the population before the war, but that it went up to 1 percent because of the long periods that prisoners of war had spent in internment. Modern large cities were thought to have a higher rate: Budapest had a male population of 438,456 in 1925, while the estimate of homosexual men was greater than 5000, or more than 1 percent.49 A statistical register of 2000 homosexual men resident in Budapest, “whose homosexuality is undeniable,” is also included in Modern Criminality with data on age, marital status, occupation and criminal record, if any.50 By marital status, 76 percent of the men were single, 18 percent married, 3 percent widower, and 3 percent divorced. Regarding the occupational statistics, the authors voice their view that among the 2000 examined men there were exceptionally high numbers of those doing “feminine work,” such as cooks, confectioners, tailors, bakers, valets, or nurses; as well as those who 44 Gyula Turcsányi (ed.), A modern bűnözés (Budapest: Rozsnyai Károly Kiadása, 1929). 45 Alcoholism, Drugs and Prostitution were treated in other chapters under the same heading. 46 Turcsányi, A modern bűnözés, 121. 47 Turcsányi, A modern bűnözés, 121. 48 Turcsányi, A modern bűnözés, 129. 49 Turcsányi, A modern bűnözés, 133. 50 Turcsányi, A modern bűnözés, 134.

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dealt with men in their jobs, such as barbers, men’s tailors, waiters, bank clerks, masseurs, footmen, shop assistants specialised in gentlemen’s wear, teachers in boys’ schools and music teachers with male pupils. They also refer to the concordant view of medical experts specialised in sexual pathologies that “sitting workers tend to have a greater libido,” and they also tended to commit most sexual crimes; thus it should not be a surprise that there were many homosexuals among those who sat while working: out of the 2000 homosexual men, there were 70 shoemakers, 138 tailors, and 254 civil servants.51 The authors also assert that no such data had been assembled previously, so the “increasing proportion of homosexuals since the war cannot be exactly determined.”52 Although there is no mention of the means of data collection, it is reasonable to assume that it came from police files: in a study published in 1933, this dataset is referred to as “Statistics published by police superintendent József Vogl covering the period of 1926–1929.”53 It is stated that 345 men among the 2000 under examination had a previous criminal record, with an additional few hundred cases pending prosecution, yet the authors claim that “Even though perversion against nature was committed by all of them, there were only a few who were convicted on this basis,” since prosecutions alleging perversion against nature were rare.54 The authors believed that homosexuals only reported on one another out of revenge, only rarely propositioned ‘normal’ men because they could sense who to approach, and that even if they should try to proposition a ‘normal’ man then that would not have lead anywhere – so such an act would legally only be an attempt at perversion against nature, an offence that was extremely rarely prosecuted, resulting in very few actual convictions. According to the authors, there are several less serious crimes that homosexuals tended to commit, including theft and fraud, while crimes causing bodily harm were rarer among them. They also emphasize, in a presumptuous manner, that most homosexuals had a workless, inactive, slothful lifestyle, and generally had many feminine characteristics. Moreover, none of the 2000 homosexual cases involved prostitutes. The police maintained separate records on homosexual prostitution: the names of more than four hundred men had found their way into these files, including 281 recidivists. The authors warn of the supposed harm of homosexual prostitution: “Today there are homosexual prostitutes in all big cities, who are 51 Turcsányi, A modern bűnözés, 138–140. 52 Turcsányi, A modern bűnözés, 138. 53 Jenő Szántó, “A homosexualitásról, különös tekintettel a budapesti viszonyokra II,” Bőrgyógyászati, Urologiai és Venerologiai Szemle 1933/3: 43. 54 Turcsányi, A modern bűnözés, 142.

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involved in much more criminality and cause much more trouble than their female colleagues. Male prostitution is secretive, uncontrollable and thus specifically in need of prosecution.”55 A detailed study on homosexual male prostitution in Hungary, authored by Jenő Szántó, a practising doctor of the Royal Hungarian Public Health Institute, was published in 1933. The data source was a secret police file dated 1932 with a record of 1695 male homosexual prostitutes.56 The men in this file were mainly aged between 18 and 30 years, but there were also 64 boys under 18 years of age. The author states that the actual number of juveniles on the file should be much higher, but “for philanthropic reasons they (the police) try to defer the registration of juvenile homosexuals until they see no hope that they can improve by leaving this lifestyle behind.”57 The definition of (male) prostitution used in Szántó’s study was broader than that used in the courts at the time: making one’s body available for the lust of others for financial gain, or social advantage, or both. However, it is worth noting that in the contemporary social context, homosexual activities “clash with the dominant moral views, being despised and detested by heterosexuals, persecuted by the state, proscribed by religious rules and punishable by the law,” so social advantage appears to mean actually having a same-sex sexual partner.58 The study distinguishes two main types of male prostitutes. “Honest” homosexual prostitutes were really homosexual men, who shared a same-sex desire with their clients, and whose relationship could be characterised as “the economically stronger party supporting the economically weaker one.”59 According to the author, these men had a greater chance to return to respectable society than female prostitutes: male prostitutes too old to carry out this work could be provided for by their friends and former clients, and still have civil career options open to them, while most female prostitutes did not have this chance. The second type of male prostitute was that of the “Striehjunge,” boys looking for profit, whose main income was not from actual prostitution, but from blackmail. Homosexual prostitution was associated with specific places: bars and cafés, popular clubs, the promenades on the banks of the Danube in the inner city, as well as bath houses and busy public toilets.

55 56 57 58 59

Turcsányi, A modern bűnözés, 143. Jenő Szántó, “A homosexualis férfiprostitutio kérdése,” Népegészségügy 1933/20–21: 7. Szántó, “A homosexualis,” 9. Szántó, “A homosexualis,” 3. Szántó, “A homosexualis,” 3.

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According to Szántó, there were tell-tale signs of professional prostitutes, including the way they dressed (according to the latest fashion but overdoing it). They wore make-up and liked thinning their eyebrows, glazed and combed or dyed their hair, wore a lot of jewellery, rings and bracelets, preferred silk or rayon underwear and often wore women’s clothing at private parties or costume balls.60 Szántó published another study on homosexuality in Budapest in the Review of Dermatology, Urology and Venereology in the same year, including a list of 3425 homosexual men, obtained through unspecified “special data collection.”61 This list, similar to the previous one,62 contained information on the age, marital status, occupation, and criminal record of the persons; a new element of the 1932 list was information on religious affiliation. It can be surmised, however, that the data were gleaned from police files, since the author states that the number of known homosexuals had almost doubled since 1929 when police superintendent József Vogl published his report based on the data of 2000 homosexual men in Budapest. Prostitution and Blackmail According to Szántó, who, via his studies of homosexuality in the 1930s, also became one of the main experts of homosexual prostitution in Budapest, the community of homosexuals was accompanied by a “black shadow of homosexual prostitutes who are not even homosexual, but just people who would do anything for money.”63 In his view, homosexual prostitution was more likely to derive from economic deprivation than female prostitution: as soon as those men could get a “more decent opportunity to make money,” they would turn away from this job, as they perceived “homosexual acts as inappropriate and disgusting.”64 Szántó emphasized that, for male prostitutes, homosexual prostitution was just a means of blackmail: they earned more from blackmail than from selling sex,65, and they could maintain this business because they could be sure that most of their clients would not report them to the police: 60 Szántó, “A homosexualis,” 6. 61 Jenő Szántó, “A homosexualitásról, különös tekintettel a budapesti viszonyokra I and II,” Bőrgyógyászati, Urologiai és Venerologiai Szemle 1933/2 and 3. 62 Turcsányi, A modern bűnözés. 63 Szántó, “A homosexualitásról II,” 42. 64 Szántó, “A homosexualitásról II,” 42. 65 Szántó, “A homosexualitásról I,” 5.

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The victims [i.e. the clients of homosexual prostitutes] are more likely to pay than to turn to the police because they fear that proceedings might be initiated against them under section 241 [on unnatural fornication] or even if that would not happen, they want to avoid seeing their name in a tabloid news item as this kind of press likes to present scandals with great pleasure and even larger headlines. Men of high social standing or those who try to look after their family name are the most suitable targets for the extortionists.66

Szántó distinguishes three main types of blackmailers targeting homosexuals: The most common form of blackmail was when the prostitute threatened to report the homosexual man to the police⁠ – this could be a successful strategy, especially if the victim had a certain social standing and a well-known family background. For another type of blackmail, conducting homosexual acts were not even necessary: the prostitute would get close to his victim in a public place and then blackmail him by threat of a scandal. The third one was the “demon type”: the demon, after noticing that someone had fallen for him, kept hesitating, while trying to get as much money and favours as possible from his victim.67 Examination of thirty volumes of Az Est (published between April 16, 1910 and November 17, 1939), a Hungarian daily with the highest circulation among Hungarian popular press products at that time, finds 138 homosexuality-related articles, including thirty-nine articles on homosexuality related crimes. Of these thirty-nine articles, reporting on crimes committed either by homosexual offenders, against homosexual victims, or both, the four published crime stories that focused on engagement in sexual activities for payment can well illustrate Szántó’s claims about the “black shadow” character of homosexual prostitution.68 The most detailed story of the four articles report on the court hearing of István Liszkai, a young actor, charged with robbery turned murder: “Last year Liszkai murdered Adolf Szilasi, an older man of uncertain occupation by stabbing him with a dagger, and took his valuables. The young offender got into touch with the victim by establishing an unnatural sexual relationship with him.”69 The article provides a close-up of the accused, presenting him in a sympathetic manner: “He wears a bad quality, sleek, soaked light grey summer suit with a thin, cheap tie. If he was really involved in the trade of male prostitution, this poor one could not fare so well.”70 Then there is detailed discussion 66 67 68 69 70

Szántó, “A homosexualis,” 5. Szántó, “A homosexualis,” 6. Szántó, “A homosexualitásról II,” 42. “Liszkai István a bíróság előtt. Megrontója gyilkosa,” Az Est (144), October 1, 1910, 3. “Liszkai István,” Az Est, 3.

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of the problematic situation of young male prostitutes in an urban setting, as the background of the case: There is a conspicuously high number of young men coming to Budapest for immoral decay. They are all sons of simple, good-natured honest people from the countryside. Liszkai’s father is a village clerk and landowner. The boy comes to the capital to study, gets a taste of these dreary and boring pleasures, which are easily accessible to a young man in the capital, but which – similarly to smoking – cannot be given up despite all their grizzle and bitter aftertaste. Liszkai is one of those very weak young men who almost unconsciously got himself into the darkest pits of sin. However, in his case there is an additional point to take into consideration. There are a large number of people in Budapest who are captives of unnatural love. Similar to normal sex life, prostitution also plays a large part in their sex life. There are unlucky, poor young men who are made by poverty, frivolousness and temptation to become unnatural sex devices to be used by the wealthy.71

The article goes on by saying that the control of this “other type of prostitution,” similarly to “normal prostitution,” is enforced by the police according to regulations: unnatural fornication was punishable by law, but the law did not seem to them to be powerful enough to suppress such strong drives of unnatural deviations. Thus, the police preferred to keep them, their meeting places and well-known prostitutes under surveillance in order to take care of them. The article’s author repeatedly compares “normal” and “unnatural” forms of prostitution by expressing normalizing views on heterosexual prostitution: Just like in the case of normal prostitution, with a few shining exceptions, a large mass of unfortunate ones live in exploitation, stomped in body and spirit, living in poverty, dirt and wretchedness. We know of a few examples when a former male prostitute can get on well by becoming a millionaire or landing a respectable job. But there are numerous unfortunate ones who are found on the streets at sunset, with rundown elegance, powdered face … as a derelict at the lowest level of desperate immorality spree. We believe that if the existence of such prostitution is unavoidable, the police should pay attention not only to prevent blackmail of the wealthy clients but they should also try to prevent the over-exploitation of the even more unfortunate male prostitutes. Just like in the case of “normal prostitution”, there are also pimps who make profit of male bodies. The victim was one of them who worked as a procurer on behalf of his wealthy peers also devoted to unnatural attraction: he picked up unwary needy young men in cafés, paid them a bit and then transferred them to his peers. The police probably are aware of this business, but this case can serve 71

“Liszkai István,” Az Est, 3.

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as a reminder that such activities should be prosecuted, and not to be tolerated by the police.72

Thus, by shifting the focus of the article from the specific murder case to the broader issue of male prostitution, the author of the article could present the defendant as if he were the real victim: It seems that the young man was only at the beginning of his sad career. He hasn’t become completely benumbed yet; he hasn’t yet submerged in the suffocating steam of prostitution. He is an intelligent and smart boy. He had to be aware during every moment of the outrage caused by the greatest human shame happening to him for a small amount of money. This desperation must have been part of the psychological reasons leading him to commit his sordid crime.73

This argument – also reflected in the article’s subtitle – implied that the young actor murdered the other man because he had sexually corrupted him, evoking the idea of some sort of ‘homosexual panic’ motive caused by a homosexual man’s unwanted sexual advances towards him.74 Even though there is no information provided on the young actor’s sexual orientation or identity in the report, the author describes his humiliating situation in such a way that ending it, even by eliminating the corrupting force, seems to be perhaps the only desirable solution. The author also suggests that the police should pay 72 “Liszkai István,” Az Est, 3. 73 “Liszkai István,” Az Est, 3. 74 The concept of homosexual panic was introduced only ten years after the publication of this article, by Edward Kempf, an American psychiatrist (see: Christina Pei-Lin Chen, “Provocation’s Privileged Desire: The Provocation Doctrine, ‘Homosexual Panic,’ and the Non-Violent Unwanted Sexual Advance Defense,” Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy 10, 195 (2000)). Kempf’s work on The Psychopathology of the Acute Homosexual Panic was first published in 1920, and the term referred to a state of sudden “feverish panic or agitated furor, amounting sometimes to temporary manic insanity, which breaks out when a repressed homosexual finds himself in a situation in which he can no longer pretend to be unaware of the threat of homosexual temptations” (Henry Chuang and Donald Addington, “Homosexual Panic: A Review of its Concept,” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 33 (1988): 613). The revival of the homosexual panic concept could be witnessed several decades later in “homosexual panic defence” cases typically in the United States: in this context the term homosexual panic “was used to promote the idea that a latent homosexual – and manifest ‘homophobe’ – can be so upset by a homosexual’s advances to him that he becomes temporarily insane, in which state he may kill the homosexual” (Cynthia Lee, “The Gay Panic Defence,” University of California, Davis Law Review 42 (2008): 475–6), while the more recent term gay panic “has been deployed to refer to the alleged loss of self-control provoked in a heterosexual man by a gay man’s unwanted sexual advance” (Lee, “Gay Panic Defence,” 476).

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more attention to striking the right balance between protecting higher-status homosexual men from blackmail and limiting the exploitation of male prostitutes, implying that the interest of the latter group was not being represented in the right proportion. The other three male homosexual prostitution-related articles published in Az Est include a news item about a pimp who procured male prostitutes for queer male customers in a bigger city close to Lake Balaton, suggesting that these services were sought after not only in the capital city but that there was a countrywide demand for them.75 In another article, published twenty years later, male prostitutes appear among the typical underworld figures of the night life of Budapest in a report about a police raid.76 Finally, the protagonist of the fourth article was Miklós Balog, a young working class man of Budapest aged twenty-one who – very much like the “demon type” blackmailer of Szántó’s categorization – bewitched László Friedmann, a twenty-nine year old tradesman, father of two, originally living in the countryside, so much that Friedmann left his family, moved in with Balog, and spent all of his money on the young man.77 However, when the money ran out, Balog started to blackmail Friedmann, who decided to kill his lover and then commit suicide. While he did not succeed in murdering Balog, he did commit suicide, after which Balog was brought to justice for loitering and committing the offense defined by paragraph 241 of the Penal Code, i.e. unnatural fornication. According to the report, Balog tried to defend himself by saying, “It is not my fault that he fell in love with me and committed suicide because of me, while shrugging his shoulders.”78 He was also sentenced to one month’s imprisonment (the maximum sentence was up to one year imprisonment) and he was also going to be deported from and banned from re-entering Budapest. However, it can be assumed that this punishment did not serve as a deterrent to potential offenders, who usually received lighter treatment, such as the case of one pimp in 1912, who was released soon after being arrested and questioned.79 These four pieces of media representations of homosexual male prostitution can certainly be seen as examples of the “press commodification of queer scandals” based on the popular demand for “respectable pornography, which provided lurid details of sexual abnormality decontaminated 75 “A nagykereskedő bűne,” Az Est (69), March 20, 1912, 7. 76 “Jenő Komlós: Évzáró razzia a pesti alvilágban,” Az Est (291), December 28, 1932, 11. 77 “Egy hónapra ítélték a legényt, aki miatt Friedmann László kereskedő megölte magát,” Az Est (57), March 10, 1933, 4. 78 “Friedmann László,” Az Est, 4. 79 “A nagykereskedő bűne,” Az Est, 7.

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for their consumption through the inclusion of details of legal process and punishment.”80 At the same time, they illustrate different ways of approaching the actors of homosexual male prostitution or sexual services provided for men by men. In some contexts, the male prostitute appears as a sexually exploited victim, and as a “fallen innocent” whose situation can be interpreted as a “warning to those who would stray outside of the normative family,”81 while in other contexts the prostitutes are pictured as active agents of their fate who can and do have (other) choices.

80 81

Justin Bengry, “Queer Profits: Homosexual Scandal and the Origins of Legal Reform in Britain,” in Queer 1950s: Rethinking Sexuality in the Postwar Years, eds. Heike Bauer and Matt Cook (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 168. Kaye, “Male Prostitution,” 51.

The Sander Family: Prostitution, Pimping, and Justice in the Late Weimar Republic Stefan Wünsch “I firmly deny that I am guilty of pimping […] I am homosexually inclined and have little sexual intercourse with my wife” – Anton Sander in his police interrogation on February 23, 1931, regarding the accusation that he forced his wife into prostitution.1

Introduction The female impersonator (Damenimitator) Anton Sander’s first contact with the Weimar judicial system, the interrogation quoted above, took place against the backdrop of early 1930s Berlin. Due to the length of the legal proceedings, which also delayed the eventual verdict from the Leipzig Reichsgericht, this criminal trial makes it possible to gain a precise view of a family history that in itself represented something of the ‘exceptional normal.’ The father and husband, Anton Sander, was a dancer and female impersonator in Berlin nightclubs and described himself in court as a homosexual transvestite. His wife and the mother of their son, Lissy Sander, financed a considerable part of the family income through prostitution in Friedrichstraße and Potsdamer Platz. These family relationships, exposed in detail during the court proceedings, disrupted the moral code of the court: the defendant, in his defence, invoked his transvestitism and his wife’s right to sexual satisfaction, confronting the prosecution with constructions of gender that challenged their standardized ideas of female and male identity. * This essay presents an excerpt from the empirical section of my Magisterarbeit (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2005): “Die Sanders – oder was ist Familie. Eine mikrohistorische Studie zum Begriff der bürgerlichen Familie” (The Sanders – or, what is a family. A microhistorical study of the concept of the bourgeouis family). 1 Trial of Anton Sander, from the files of the Attorney General of the Berlin Regional Courtcriminal proceedings 1919–1933, Landesarchiv Berlin, A Rep. 358–01 n. 2666, vol. 1, folio 12f. Since this file is repeatedly analyzed in this article, I will use the following abbreviations for the source and refer to the archival numbering of the individual file sheets: LAB A Rep. 358– 01 n. 2666, vol. 1, folio 13 = Sander 1/13 or LAB A Rep. 358–01 n. 2666, vol. 3, folio 2 reverse = Sander 3/2R.

© Brill Schöningh, 2023 | doi:10.30965/9783657790470_008

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Ideas about gender, and the uses of those ideas, are the subject of my argument, as gender was the central element in judicial processes that attempted to determine what prostitution (as employment or crime) was. I use the by now almost classical microhistorical method of analyzing a court case, which allows proximity to the subject matter as I investigate two competing positions on prostitution and its meaning.2 This interaction demonstrates a hegemonic gender image (in this case represented by the law) being confronted by a counter-proposal, allowing us to understand the working-out of this historical conflict in detail. A further advantage of this method is that it examines the legitimation strategies of a single prostitute in a concrete individual case in detail, removing the phenomenon from abstract and external explanations of its causes.3 Background and Characters Anton and Lissy Sander married in Hamburg on September 1, 1926 and were the biological parents of a four-year-old son. Anton had been born in Bingen am Rhein on June 29, 1903, and met Lissy in Hamburg in a cabaret in 1926.4 Of his first twenty-three years, the documentary record reveals only that he was sentenced to a month in prison for fraud by the Schöffengericht (lay assessor’s court) in Hannover on September 8, 1922.5 In Hamburg, he was employed as a female impersonator in the Rote Mühle (“Red Windmill” cabaret).6 According to his own statements he moved to Berlin in 1926 or 1927 and worked there in the Internationale Diele (“Internationale Hall”) restaurant on Köthenerstraße selling cigars and cigarettes. Later he danced in the Nationalhof restaurant 2 On microhistory, see: Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History,” in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings  4, eds. H. Eiland and M.  W.  Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2003), 289–400; Winfried Schulze (ed.), Sozialgeschichte, Alltagsgeschichte, Mikro-Geschichte. Eine Diskussion (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1994); Jürgen Schlumbohm (ed.), Mikrogeschichte, Makrogeschichte. Komplementär oder inkommensurabel? (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1998). 3 On the use of court documents to gain historical knowledge, see: Winfried Schulze (ed.): Ego-Dokumente. Annäherung an den Menschen in der Geschichte (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1996); Carlo Ginzburg, Der Käse und die Würmer. Die Welt eines Müllers um 1600 (Berlin: Wagenbach, 2002). 4 Sander  1/12. His father Wilhelm Hermann Sander was a port police officer and lived in Duisburg during the investigation period. His mother Marie-Magdalene Sander, née Klein, had already died. 5 Sander 1/12 and 1/0. 6 Sander 1/13.

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on Bülowstraße. For three years, according to his police interrogation in 1931, he was “active in the Mikado as a ‘female entertainer’ (Stimmungsmacherin) and ‘female dancer’ (Tänzerin).”7 Lissy Sander was born October  27, 1905 in Hamburg, where she worked as a clerk in a newspaper office and then in a caba­ret before joining her husband in Berlin in the middle of 1929.8 At the age of twenty-eight, Anton had exhibited a high degree of local mobility, while Lissy had stayed put in Hamburg until marrying and becoming pregnant. There are no official records of her professional activity in Berlin. Important information on the family’s life can be obtained from transcribed trial testimony. Given that the people who testified came from the Sanders’ social environment, they suggest the contours of the family’s social network. Four witnesses appeared in the trial. Mrs. Günter and Mrs. Broska lived together with the Sander family near Hallesches Tor (in Johanniterstraße  1) as subtenants. Mr. Mennerich and Mr. Stüben were acquaintances of Anton Sander, and were also said to have transvestite inclinations and involvement in the criminal milieu of Berlin’s demi-monde.9 The testimonies show that Lissy Sander prostituted herself, that Anton Sander engaged in homosexuality, transvestitism, and (or so it was hinted) prostitution.10 In this way, they made their income. Since Anton siphoned off money to feed his drug addiction, Lissy paid for most of the family’s expenses (and for Anton’s feminine attire) with income from her own sex work. These clothes – more precisely, a pair of women’s shoes costing 18 Reichs­ mark – represented the corpus delicti that brought the Sander family under the gaze of the judiciary (and thus, the contemporary historian). Because of a payment arrears for this pair of shoes, Anton Sander and Mr. Stüben, who had sold him the shoes, quarrelled. Sander then made the serious mistake of refusing 7

8 9

10

Sander 1/13. Notably, in this excerpt Sander uses the female-gendered versions of nouns to describe himself. Literature on transvestite pubs in Berlin during the Weimar period, such as the “Mikado”, is sparse. However, it is worth mentioning Eugen Szatmari, Was nicht im Baedeker steht – Berlin, (Leipzig: Connewitzer, 1997); Mel Gordon, Voluptuous Panic. The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin (LA, CA: Feral House, 2008). Sander  1/13. Nothing is known about the period of her employment. On the social meaning of the job of ‘clerk,’ see Ute Frevert, Frauen-Geschichte. Zwischen Bürgerlicher Verbesserung und Neuer Weiblichkeit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986), 173–174. Charlotte Günter, born 24.4.1903 in Berlin, profession: “woodworker.” Sander 1/8R. Herta Broska, born 4.3.1895 in Stettin, occupation: “Accountant.” Sander 1/11. Walter Mennerich, born 5.2.1902 in Hannover, profession: “Traveling Salesman.” Sander  1/4R. Christian Stüben, born 6.11.1898 in Neumünster, occupation: “Hotel porter.” Sander 1/5Rf. For the accusations against Mr. Mennerich and Mr. Stüben see Sander 1/30. However, Anton Sander was neither registered as a transvestite nor as a prostitute by the police, nor was his wife, as a note in the file reveals. Sander 1/4.

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to pay out the full amount. Mr. Stüben immediately wrote a notification letter to the police with his roommate Mr. Mennerich, in which they accused Anton of stealing a diamond ring shaped like a snake and, in order to add weight to their complaint, accused him of forcing his wife into prostitution. This letter led state institutions to open the investigation that produced the present case file.11 Interaction With the Court Based on the notification letter, the court12 formulated the following indictment against Anton Sander. The main accusation was the charge of pimping his wife Lissy according to the German Criminal Code (StGB) §181a Section 2, a charge carrying a prison sentence of at least one year if convicted.13 Due to an early confession, the charge of theft fell into the background of the court case, which increasingly focused on finding evidence of pimping. Anton Sander consistently denied the charge of pimping, resulting in two applications for changes of judgement and a ten-month delay in sentencing. His intransigence is extraordinary in comparison to his rapid admission of misconduct regarding the theft of the diamond ring. While it can be presumed that the high sentence he would have expected for a pimping conviction due to a previous criminal record (see § 246 StGB) influenced his decision to admit to theft but resist the charge of pimping, the arguments made by the defence nevertheless reveal more fundamental problematics that are addressed in this case. Female Sexuality In a police interview held on February 2, 1931, Anton Sander denied the accusation that his wife was a prostitute: “I firmly deny that I am guilty of pimping.”14 11 Sander 1/2. 12 The term “the court” should not be understood as a specific location within the state’s monopolistic use of force, but rather as the place where the text of the law is put into action, with the individual personalities of the judges and prosecutors withdrawing. The uniform robes of state officials symbolize this transformation. This transformation accommodates critical research: for example, allowing us to view institutions such as the bourgeois family and hegemonic masculinity and femininity as ideal types actively codified within the law, rather than as mixed forms in everyday life. 13 Reinhard Frank (ed.), Das Strafgesetzbuch für das Deutsche Reich nebst dem Einführungsgesetz (Tübingen: Mohr, 1931). 14 Sander 1/12f.

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His reasoning for acquittal: “I am a homosexual and have little sexual intercourse with my wife. It is possible that my wife will take a man to bed with her to find some sexual satisfaction. But it’s out of the question that she receives money from those men and has to hand it over to me.”15 It is remarkable both that Anton Sander admitted he knew his wife had sexual contact with other men and that he granted her a right to sexual satisfaction, admitting he could not fulfill it because of his homosexual disposition. He defied normative images of masculinity by publicly admitting his inability to sexually satisfy his wife. She, too, appearing as a witness at the second court hearing, explained to the court that her sexual contact with other men (and occasional acceptance of payment for that contact) was solely due to her husband’s inability to sexually satisfy her.16 At the first court hearing, Lissy Sander used her right, as a wife, to refuse to testify against her husband. Her silence cannot be interpreted as passivity; on the contrary, it reveals an affirmative activity – she deliberately withdrew from the judicial process. In this respect, her silence should also not be seen as the ‘self-discipline’ Regina Schulte has ascribed to unregistered prostitutes.17 Sabine Kienitz has written about the silence of women in court on sexual matters, stating that women were not forced to “express themselves concretely about their sexual activities, since talking about sexuality was socially and culturally coded.” She speaks here of a “‘discursification’ of sex,” which allowed historical subjects to “remain silent while speaking.”18 This is also confirmed in the present case: During the entire trial, the family sexuality of Anton Sander was never discussed, even though it would have been elementary for a conviction. The two synchronous arguments of Anton and Lissy Sander were rejected by the court. In explaining the reasoning for its verdict, the court saw in the evidence of “sexual contact with strange men” and the occasional receipt of money for that contact a clear indication of prostitution, which, given that “at least parts of his livelihood” were financed by that money, was enough to convict Anton.19 However, the second criminal offense under § 181a StGB, the use of “violence or threat to exercise the lewd trade” could not be proven.20 15 Sander 1/13. 16 Sander 1/74R. 17 Sander 1/10. Regina Schulte, Sperrbezirke. Tugendhaftigkeit und Prostitution in der bürgerlichen Welt (Frankfurt am Main: Syndikat, 1979), 182. 18 Sabine Kienitz, Sexualität, Macht und Moral. Prostitution und Geschlechterbeziehungen Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts in Württemberg. Ein Beitrag zur Mentalitätsgeschichte (Berlin: Akademie, 1995), 228. 19 Sander 1/74R. 20 Sander 1/36R.

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The repeated attempt of the defence to cite Lissy’s right to sexual satisfaction in the appeal to the Leipzig Reichsgericht failed, and was swiftly dismissed by the court.21 The court proceedings reveal an actively-argued defence during the trial’s various stages. It must, of course, be assumed that Anton and Lissy sought to coordinate their statements while refuting the accusations; coordination is also evidenced by their lively correspondence and many visits during pre-trial detention.22 Nonetheless, the content of Lissy’s defence argument is extraordinary, since it focuses on the claim of a right to female sexual satisfaction. The reference to Lissy Sander having had sexual intercourse with other men of her own free will could be understood as an evasive maneuver to escape state discipline. On the other hand, the argument that this contact was sought to pursue Lissy’s individual sexual satisfaction refers to an understanding of an autonomous female sexuality, an understanding located between the lines of Anton and Lissy’s defence. It suggests a worldview in which women have the right of self-determination over their own bodies. This reference to the self-determination of female sexuality can be traced back to the various sexual reform movements in the Weimar Republic.23 However, these reforms represented only superficial sexual emancipation, as Ute Frevert aptly notes: The release and re-normalization of sexuality [according to these movements] should not only benefit the individual, but above all the family. The actual goal of the physicians, social welfare workers, socialists, communists, and women’s movements who advocated a liberalization of the sexual code in the Weimar Republic was to make marriage more attractive as a generally desirable form of life and to reform it erotically.24

Against the background of such an assessment, the present case is extraordinary: the Sanders’ argumentation did not relate to marriage and family, but to individual sexuality. 21 Sander 1/87. 22 The file contains a “speaking note” by Lissy Sander, who visited her husband on April 12 and April 23, 1931. It also includes the envelopes of letters Anton Sander wrote to his wife on February 25, April 20 and 28, and May 7, 1931 and of Lissy’s replies on March 21, April 17 and 24, and May 18 of the same year. The letters are not included. 23 See Kristine von Soden, “Sexualreform – Sexualpolitik. Die neue Sexualmoral,”  in Die wilden Zwanziger. Weimar und die Welt 1919–33 (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowolt, 1988), 181– 194; Ilona Stölken, “‘Komm, laß uns den Geburtenrückgang pflegen!’ Die neue Sexualmoral der Weimarer Republik,” in Sexualmoral und Zeitgeist im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, eds. A. Bagel-Bohlan and M. Salewski (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 1990), 83–105. 24 Frevert, Frauen-Geschichte, 187–188.

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The court disregarded the idea of active femininity and self-determined female sexuality, concentrating solely on the evidence of economic components of Lissy Sander’s behavior in line with popular images of female passivity. This also explains why there was no law directly against prostitution in the penal code, since the woman was always discursively considered a passive victim.25 The only law by which women could be directly convicted for prostitution activities was § 361 Abs. 6 StGB.26 It can therefore be concluded that the defence and the prosecution talked at cross-purposes when presenting two disparate views of female sexuality: one view which saw prostitution as a social threat that had to be sanctioned because it negated gender roles, and another which, based on the understanding of a right of self-determination over one’s own body, regarded prostitution as offering the possibility to convert sexual capital into economic capital.27 Other judicial statements confirm the existence of such an understanding of prostitution in the social milieu of the Sander family. Lissy Sander’s cover story – that she had only taken money in order to convince her fellow housemate, Mrs. Günter, that she wasn’t cheating on her husband – suggests that, in her social world, adultery was considered a more serious offense than prostitution. This was because prostitution was considered a gainful activity.28 The following description of prostitution used by the witnesses also serves as evidence for this understanding: “lying on the street,” “I have seen her repeatedly walking on Friedrichstraße and Unter den Linden,” “my wife walks the line,” “one could assume that the woman would go for a stroll.”29 These descriptions betray a relative ease in discussing the subject, since dialect was used even in the courtroom. The wording also describes the prostitutes as taking action, rather than moralizing or casting them as passive victims. Since 25 See Rebekka Habermas, “Geschlechtergeschichte und ‘anthropology of gender’. Geschichte einer Begegnung,” in Historische Anthropologie 1 (1993): 485–509. 26 Archive files concerning the “Frauengefängnis (“Women’s Prison”) Barnimstraße 1918– 1945” show that the sentence was very low. The sentences ranged from one to four weeks. LAB A Rep. 365. 27 See also Kienitz, Sexualität, Macht und Moral, 310. In relation to temporary prostitution in times of crisis and as an alternative to proletarianization, see Judith  R.  Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian society. Women, class, and the state (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 31; Kienitz, Sexualität, Macht und Moral, 84. 28 Sander 1/74. 29 The quoted statements occur in the order they were quoted in Sander  1/2, Sander  1/5, Sander 1/33, Sander 1/33R. The German original is as follows: “[…] auf der Straße liegen!,” “Ich habe sie wiederholt in der Friedrichstr. und Unter den Linden laufen gesehen,” “meine Frau geht Strichen,” and “Man könnte annehmen, daß die Frau auf den Bummel ginge.”

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Mrs. Günter also used the phrase “goes to the cleaners,” these statements cannot simply be written off as patriarchal male fantasies.30 Mrs. Broska and Mrs. Günter also illustrate the tendency of women not to reject prostitution: although they knew what Lissy Sander did for work, neither one expressed an objection to her activities or to her frequent absences from her child when interrogated.31 Lissy Sander’s prostitution was therefore not the source of any moral opprobrium within her social world. Rather, it was regarded as an economic necessity that secured her livelihood, especially in the times of economic crisis during the late years of the Weimar Republic. The statements made by the Sanders also show that female sexuality was understood as an economic resource or sexual capital that allowed women to have self-determination over their own bodies.32 Gender Trouble, or: What Is a Man? The right to a self-determined female sexuality was related to Anton Sander’s “transsexuality or homosexuality” in his affidavit, which he argued forced

30 On common sexual and social values among residents of poor residential areas, see Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society, 199, as well as the sociological definitions of “close-knit” and “loose-knit” by Elizabeth Bott in Elizabeth Bott, Family and Social Network. Roles, Norms, and External Relationships in Ordinary Urban Families (London: Tavistock Press, 1971). 31 On the other hand, bourgeois authors like Willy Pröger, who sympathized with prostitutes, always condemned them if they were mothers. Willy Pröger (alias Weka), Stätten der Berliner Prostitution: von den Elends-Absteigequartieren am Schlesischen Bahnhof und Alexanderplatz zur Luxus-Prostitution der Friedrichstrasse und des Kurfürstendamms: eine Reportage (Berlin: Auffenberg, 1930), 31. This can be traced back to the split of the bourgeois image of women, which Klaus Theweleit theorised and for which only the “pure mother” or the “proletarian whore” existed. Klaus Theweleit, Männerphantasien. Frauen, Fluten, Körper, Geschichte, 1 (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Roter Stern, 1977), 89–90. 32 At this point, however, I would like to point out emphatically that the understanding of prostitution brought out in this case cannot be applied to all forms of prostitution, especially not to forms of industrialized prostitution, which eliminate all forms of selfdetermination through their mechanisms of oppression and coercion. On the other hand, I wanted to show that there is not only “forced prostitution” – as the Christian campaign of the Diakonie is currently trying to suggest with the slogan “Zwangstprostitution” – but also that people engaged in prostitution engage in self-reflection and exercise agency, as interviews conducted with prostitutes make clear. See Kate Millet, The Prostitution Papers (St. Albans: Paladin, 1975); Laurie Shrage, “Should Feminists Oppose Prostitution?,” in Ethics 99 (1989): 347–361.

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his wife to seek other sexual partners.33 His sexual preferences thus formed another basis of the defence, which sought a direct discussion of the text of the law, insisting on an exact interpretation of §181a StGB and thus addressing the gendering of the statute. According to the statute, “A male person who, by exploiting his immoral gain, wholly or partially earns a living from a female person who commits fornication on a professional basis, […]” had acted illegally. The text of the law thus stipulated that a pimp could only be a male person and a person prostituting herself could only be a woman, which is why male prostitution was always convicted according to  § 175 StGB, the statute concerning homosexuality. Anton Sander based part of his defence on this gendering of the law: Since he did not see himself as male, he could not be accused of a male-only crime such as pimping. The court, on the other hand, was not in a position to think beyond its own gender discourse.34 It adhered to the gender binary and sought out evidence for Sander’s integration into that system – in other words, evidence of his masculinity. It found the evidence it sought in his fertility: The court also examined the question of whether the accused, in view of his homosexual disposition and his public appearance in women’s clothing, can be regarded as a ‘male person’ in the sense of the law. According to his own statements, however, the accused is capable of sexual intercourse with women; he also describes himself as the father of the child born in his marriage. Therefore, the court has no reason to to deny his masculinity in this case.35

This shows that the court did not try to accept Anton Sander’s peculiarity and to reconcile it with the text of the law, but rather to dismiss his apparently abnormal appearance and to reintegrate it into its gender norms.

33

The case file does not contain a precise definition of Anton Sander’s sexuality or, to use a modern term, gender identity. Often the term homosexuality served as a general term to mean both transvestism and transsexuality. The files also reveal a gap in knowledge: in Anton Sander’s social environment the general form “homosexuality” is used, while the lawyer uses the term “transvestite.” In my opinion, this marks a turning point: the word was in circulation but not being used correctly by contemporary standards. For a contemporary definition of transsexuality, see: Erwin J. Haeberle, “Transsexualität,” in Im falschen Körper. Alles über Transsexualität, eds. B. Kampard and W. Schiffels (Zürich: Kreuz, 1991), 12–16. 34 On the significance of binary sexuality for the social order in bourgeois society, see Pierre Bourdieu, “Die männliche Herrschaft,” in Ein alltägliches Spiel. Geschlechterkonstruktionen in der sozialen Praxis, eds. I. Dölling and B. Krais (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977), 161–162. 35 Sander 1/36R.

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On the basis of this judicial assessment of sexuality, in a letter dated April 24, 1931, Anton Sander asked his lawyer Dr. Meyer to inform the public prosecutor’s office that: Accused SANDER should be be examined by an expert physician. The accused is not to be regarded as ‘male’ in the sense of the law; he only wears women’s clothing, appears as a woman, is active as a dancer. The whole being and the psyche of the accused clearly proves that the accused not only has a feminine touch, but that the basic characteristic of his being is a feminine one.36

With this request, medicine entered the trial as a field which could provide expert testimony on sexuality; this, the defence hoped, would positively influence the judgement of the court. However, it turned out that the medical certificate issued by the official physician Dr. med. C.  Evers, in a very succinct manner, merely that attested Anton Sander had what was known to his contemporaries as a “konträre Sexualempfindung” (contrary sexual feeling) and that he therefore needed a separate judicial assessment. The medical officer explained: S. [Sander] experiences a reversal of sexual sensation in such a way that his instinct is directed towards individuals belonging to the same sex, with a simultaneous reluctance to relate to the other sex (“konträre Sexualempfindung”). What is striking is the dominant influence that this factor exerts on the shaping of his whole life (he engages predominantly in female activity and while wearing women’s clothing). This peculiarity of this activity, which is to be regarded as a permanent condition, is only to be evaluated as a way of expressing degeneration. The forensic acknowledgement of the legally-relevant actions of such a contrasexual person is subject to the criteria set out for the evaluation of degenerate persons in general.37

The writings of the sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld demonstrate that such a certificate hardly met the scientific standards of the time concerning the connection between homosexuality and transvestism: Like most authors before and after him, [Krafft-Ebing] saw [transvestism] only as a variant of homosexuality, whereas today we can say with certainty that there are both homosexuals who are not transvestites and transvestites who have no homosexual inclinations whatsoever and who only feel sexually attracted to the

36 Sander 1/54. 37 Sander 1/68f.

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opposite sex. Transvestism is therefore an independently occurring condition that must be considered separately from other sexual anomalies.38

Despite the certificate, the court maintained that Anton Sander was a male person within the meaning of the law. Although it noted the “same-sex disposition” of the accused in the judgement of May 20, 1931, it once again referred to Sander’s fertility and anatomy as proof of his masculinity. It said: The court is convinced that the defendant was the pimp of his wife. The accused, despite his same-sex predisposition, is a male person in the sense of the law; he is externally formed like a man, has normal male sexual organs and has been able to exercise sexual intercourse with women. He describes himself as the producer of the son born by his wife.39

The medical certificate was ignored by the court, since the mere reference to a “konträre Sexualempfindung” did not provide any options for action. As a result, discursively speaking, the medical authority was granted only an advisory function and not equality with the court. The reason for this might be found in the then-newness of the disciplines of sexual science and psychology, whose findings had not yet extended beyond the general cataloguing of sexual forms.40 In summary, the interaction between the judge and Anton Sander shows that in this trial a problem was addressed that brought legal norms into a state of definitional emergency. For by insisting that the criminal law handle Sander as a transsexual person, the defence revealed a void in the text of the law which the court tried to close. The court’s attention was therefore focused solely on finding evidence of Anton Sander’s masculinity, in order to negate his transvestitism and thus avoid the confrontation with transsexuality. In this context, reference should be made to the “category crisis” thematized by Marjorie

38 Magnus Hirschfeld, Geschlechtsverirrungen (Flensburg: Stephenson, 1993), 143. On Hirschfeld and transsexuality, see Rainer Herrn, Schnittmuster des Geschlechts. Transvestitismus und Transsexualität in der frühen Sexualwissenschaft (Gießen: Psychosozial-Verlag, 2005). 39 Sander 1/74R. 40 See Erwin J. Haeberle, Anfänge der Sexualwissenschaft (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1983); Herrn, Schnittmuster des Geschlechts.

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Garber,41 which the transvestite evokes, since “he” calls all binarisms into question, and in so doing destabilizes them.42 In the case of Anton Sander, whether this was an intentional or accidental product of attempting to escape state sanction must remain the object of speculation. However, this interaction reveals two specific, but opposing understandings of gender. On the one hand, the defence presented an active female sexualiy and denied the gender binary. In doing so, it took a stance that turned hegemonic ideas of gender on their head and and revealed the helplessness of the court, which could sustain its authority only by ignoring theses arguments. On the other hand, this court situation shows that the law, as it was formulated, could not move beyond its inherently gendered nature and that it was dependent on the development of new institutions, such as medicine, to provide a broader range for intervention. Playing With Norms The regular criminal proceedings in the Anton Sander case have shown that two opposing views of sexuality – that of Sander and that of the court – could not converge. Now that this case had passed through all legal proceedings and Anton Sander had finally been sentenced to one year and a day in prison, his lawyer appealed for a pardon. In this appeal, the previous attitude towards state institutions was abandoned and a more accommodating rhetoric used. For the first time, the side of the now-convicted Sander made arguments that deployed a socially-standardized family image, which had never been discussed by the defence during the court hearings.43 This change is interesting: it makes clear that the accused were able of playing with social norms and 41

See Marjorie Garber, Verhüllte Interessen. Transvestismus und kulturelle Angst (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1993), 31; Judith Butler, Das Unbehagen der Geschlechter (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991). 42 Hilge Landweer, who does not see this fundamental critique formulated in transvestitism and transsexuality as they always “presuppose and confirm the two core categories of gender (woman/man)” is critical of this argument. See Hilge Landweer, “Jenseits des Geschlechts? Zum Phänomen der theoretischen und politischen Fehleinschätzung von Travestie und Transsexualität,” in Geschlechterverhältnisse und Politik, ed. K.  Pühl (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994), 140. 43 The following selection must be made from the wealth of literature on the bourgeois ideal of the family: Edward Shorter, Die Geburt der modernen Familie (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1977); Jacques Donzelot, Die Ordnung der Familie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980); Andreas Gestrich, Jens-Uwe Krause and Michael Mitterauer (eds.), Geschichte der Familie (Stuttgart: Kröner, 2003).

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using their knowledge of what was acceptable to their advantage. This rhetoric documents knowledge of the norms that could be used to interact with state institutions to obtain mercy. Lissy Sander’s commitment, as well as the efforts of Sander’s second lawyer Dr. Weimann, for a pardon demonstrate this shift.44 On October 29, 1931, Dr. Weimann applied for a pardon, in which he interpreted Anton Sander’s poor social background and his sexuality as a cause for his sinking into a criminal milieu.45 In his letter, he continually refers to the bourgeois family norm for the first time in the trial, emphasizing the description of the family trinity of Anton, wife, and child, and arguing that punishment should aim to restore this harmony. The reference to Anton Sander’s son, which is noteworthy here in that it stands for a shift in argumentation, since the child was not brought up by the defence during the entire trial, and instead was only used by the prosecution as proof of Anton Sander’s fertility and thus his masculinity. Nevertheless, the application was rejected on November 23, 1931.46 On December  17, 1931, a warrant was issued against Anton Sander, which set his date of incarceration to begin on December 29.47 His lawyer then wrote two letters to the Ministry of Justice on December 24 with the request that he “temporarily refrain from coercive measures and at least wait for the public holidays to be over.”48 In the second letter, he also calls on the public prosecutor’s office to suspend the execution of the sentence for the time being, since the applicant “bears suicidal thoughts.”49 In these two letters, Dr. Weimann once again deliberately uses connotations of the bourgeois family. On the one hand, he refers directly to the Christmas holidays, which since the nineteenth century had developed into a festival focusing on the nuclear family,50 and on the other hand, he mentions the suicidal thoughts of Anton Sander, the father of the child and thus of the founder and head of the family.51 However, the 44 The aforementioned lawyer Dr. Meyer stopped representing Sander due to lack of payment. Sander 1/70R. 45 Sander 1/96. 46 Sander 3/2. 47 Sander 1/105. 48 Sander 3/6. 49 Sander 3/8. 50 See Ingeborg Weber-Kellerman, Die deutsche Familie. Versuch einer Sozialgeschichte (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974), 223. 51 See also Philippe Ariès, who in his iconographic analysis shows how from the sixteenthth century onwards the role of Joseph in the representation of the Holy Family changed from that of a colourless person to that of the head of the family. Philippe Ariès, Geschichte der Kindheit (Munich: Hanser, 1985), 497–498. On the role of suicide in homosexuals and transsexuals as a threat to assert self-interest, see Magnus Hirschfeld, Berlins

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Attorney General did not take this into account and adhered to the date first set.52 Now that there were no further legal possibilities for the lawyer Dr. Weimann to persue, Lissy Sander applied herself directly to plead for Anton’s pardon. On April 5, 1932, she submitted a handwritten letter to the representative for petitions for mercy to the Prussian Ministry of Justice, requesting a pardon for her husband.53 She introduces her letter with some general information on her husband’s proceedings and begins her request: “The punishment was just, the atonement was hard. He repented of what he had done. It was a salutary teaching for him!” There follows references to their son who “constantly asks for his father” and to her “73-year-old parents” to whom she “soon is no longer able to conceal my husband’s stay.” She then refers to an emergency in her financial situation, which has forced her to give her son over to the care of her parents in Hamburg. To restore her family, she says, her husband would need to be released early from prison, for then: “My husband could be with me and earn money.” So that this would not be taken as a mere empty phrase, she attached to her request a letter from the operator of the Mikado restaurant, confirming that Anton Sander would be welcome to work there at any time.54 Lissy Sander closes her letter with a series of gestures of humility: I pray with all my heart for my man who has gone astray. Have they nevertheless the goodness of heart and let please, please mercy pass for right. […] Let us be satisfied and happy again, get back into order, return to orderly life. On my knees I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart, dear Plenipotentiary, when I have my husband with my child and with me again.55

This submissive attitude that Lissy Sander adopts towards the addressee of the letter reveals how central the image of the bourgeois family is in her request. The desire to have her husband with her and with her son is offered as the only possibility to become “satisfied and happy again” and to “return to orderly life.” Lissy Sander represents herself as a caring mother who tries to keep her family together. On the basis of an assessment by the prison director, who did not

52 53 54 55

Drittes Geschlecht, ed. M. Herzer (Berlin: Verlag Rosa Winkel, 1991); Herrn, Schnittmuster des Geschlechts. Sander 3/6. Sander 3/14. Sander 3/15. Sander 3/15.

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see any “serious remorse for his reprehensible offence”56 in Anton Sander, the Commissioner for Clemency rejected Lissy Sander’s request on April 30, 1932.57 On May 20, 1932, she wrote a last handwritten letter to the Commissioner and once again asked for mercy for her husband.58 This letter, however, is far more demanding than the previous one; this time the reason was: “Since after his release he has a possibility of earning a living, as can be seen from the previous request, i.e. he will not be a burden to the state, I ask you, dear Lord, for your kind mercy.” She drops her line of argumentation based on bourgeois family ideology since its emphasis in the previous letter had not achieved any success; this again illustrates her deliberate deployment of norms.59 Lissy Sander now refers to the pressure of unemployment which weighed on state institutions and was still increasing in the middle of 1932.60 That her husband would have a potentially secure income demonstrates a certain feeling of superiority on her part regarding state institutions; since these, as was increasingly discussed in contemporary media, found themselves confronted with an empty treasuries and rising demands for social benefits. For this reason, Lissy Sander also suggests that her husband “will not be a burden on the state,” whereby her perception of a distance between the state and her own social location resulting from contrariety comes to bear. Her request was again rejected on June 8, 1932, and so Anton Sander remained in Tegel for another four months until the end of his regular detention.61 Conclusion The case of Anton Sander shows that concepts of “prostitution” and “pimping” were based on a specific epistemology of sexuality. The actions of the court 56 Sander 3/19. 57 Sander 3/20. 58 Sander 3/21. This letter was written only a few days after Mother’s Day, which had become generally accepted since 1930 as a family celebration under the name “Ehrentag der deutschen Mutter” (Day Honoring the German Mother) and was celebrated on the second Sunday in May. See Frevert, Frauen-Geschichte, 191. 59 Sabine Kienitz, too, demonstrates in her study that the accused frequently appealed to bourgeois moral concepts during court hearings. She does not believe, however, that these values were internalized, but that they were “consciously and situationally functionalized.” Kienitz, Sexualität, Macht und Moral, 296. She also speaks of the ability to use the instruments of power against rulers, Kienitz, Sexualität, Macht und Moral, 320, 60. 60 See Berthold Grzywatz, Arbeit und Bevölkerung im Berlin der Weimarer Republik. Eine historisch-statistische Untersuchung (Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1988). 61 Sander 1/123.

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can be taken as an example of this, which on the basis of a bourgeois binary gender code understood the behavior of Anton and Lissy Sander as a criminal offence, since it violated the exclusive intimacy of the idealized bourgeois family. Such a rigid understanding of the family (and thus, of sex) meant the court could only argue thusly: a wife would only give up her passive, family-oriented nature to pursue prostitution due to external compulsion. That compulsion could only come from the person to whom she was solely devoted: her husband. That Anton Sander had “partially financed his life” from the earnings of his wife satisfied the court that he was guilty of pimping, since in the eyes of the court he bore sole responsibility for the conduct of his wife. This case’s unique significance comes from the contrary gender image that the Sanders came to represent and forced the court to reckon with. Their consistent insistence on Sander’s transvestite predisposition and on the existence of a right to female sexual satisfaction forced the court to prove the commercial component of Lissy’s sexual contacts, as well as Anton’s masculinity, in order to bring the unruly pair back into the bourgeois gender discourse. This superficial standardization of the Sander family, however, conceals the emergency the court found itself in, since its knowledge of sexuality, and consequently its legitimacy to punish, was called into question. In this historical struggle for knowledge, the court could only assert itself through the tactic of temporary ignorance. It was only through the integration of new knowledge about gender and sexuality that it was able to consolidate its position. Accordingly, the positions of the Sander family are more than a mere defensive attitude, since they also reveal possible legitimation strategies for people engaged in prostitution, strategies located outside bourgeois gender discourses and within which the body has a totally different meaning. This was made clear by Lissy’s ‘playing with norms’; her expressed bourgeois values were not internalized but merely functionalized for her own interests, dropped immediately when the appeals were unsuccessful. The understanding of the subjective side of prostitution always requires the understanding of lower-middle-class culture, since from a bourgeois point of view women are always (discursively, at least) victims and male prostitutes a mere irritation. The eventual fate of Anton and Lissy Sander, and their son, is unknown. With sheet 125, the last page of the file 1.Kup.M.  28/31 (129.31), which documents Anton’s release from Tegel prison on October 4, 1932, at 18:50PM, their historical trace is, for the time being, lost. Translated by Ben Miller

Outside the “Volksgemeinschaft”? On Prostitutes and Pimps Under National Socialism Mirjam Schnorr Introduction The National Socialist Volksgemeinschaft was comprised of ‘desirable,’ generally meaning ‘Aryan,’ ‘genetically flawless,’ loyal, and hardworking members, to the exclusion of ideologically ‘undesirable’ individuals, such as ‘foreigners,’ ‘asocials,’ and ‘others,’ specifically ‘enemies.’1 The definitions of these elements considered detrimental to rule were mutable and thus could be applied to various groups at different points between 1933 and 1945.2 Beyond the emergent mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, the ‘community’ also based itself upon the constitution and exclusive tolerance of ‘normal’ heterosexuality geared towards male primacy, reproduction, and offspring.3 All forms of 1 This article is the English version of the following publication: Mirjam Schnorr, “Jenseits der ‘Volksgemeinschaft’? Von Prostituierten und Zuhältern,” in Geschlechterbeziehungen und “Volksgemeinschaft,” eds. Klaus Latzel et  al. (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2018), 109–132. For the topic of the National Socialist Volksgemeinschaft, see Rolf Pohl, “Das Konstrukt ‘Volksgemeinschaft’ als Mittel zur Erzeugung von Massenloyalität im Nationalsozialismus,” in “Volksgemeinschaft”: Mythos, wirkungsmächtige soziale Verheißung oder soziale Realität im “Dritten Reich”? Zwischenbilanz einer kontroversen Debatte, ed. Detlef SchmiechenAckermann (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2012), 69–74; Richard Bessel, “Eine ‘Volksgemeinschaft’ der Gewalt,” in Schmiechen-Ackermann, “Volksgemeinschaft”: Mythos, wirkungsmächtige soziale Verheißung oder soziale Realität 357–360; Jeremy Noakes, “Social Outcasts in the Third Reich,” in Life in the Third Reich, ed. Richard Bessel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 83–96. When the term Volksgemeinschaft is translated henceforth, I use the term ‘community’. 2 At the beginning of the National Socialist persecution of ‘community aliens’ (Gemeinschaftsfremde) or ‘asocials,’ the focus was primarily on welfare recipients or even male ‘criminals,’ followed by other new groups such as ‘gypsies,’ ‘asocial extended families’ or female ‘welfare returnees’ (Fürsorgezöglinge), see Patrick Wagner, “‘Vernichtung der Berufsverbrecher’. Die vorbeugende Verbrechensbekämpfung der Kriminalpolizei bis 1937,” in Die nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager. Entwicklung und Struktur, Vol.  1, eds. Ulrich Herbert et al. (Göttingen: Wallstein, 1998), 97; Wolfgang Ayaß, “‘Asoziale’ im Nationalsozialismus. Überblick über die Breite der Maßnahmen gegen soziale Außenseiter und die hieran beteiligten Stellen,” in “minderwertig” und “asozial”. Stationen der Verfolgung gesellschaftlicher Außenseiter, eds. Thomas Lutz et al. (Zurich: Chronos, 2005), 53–54. 3 E.g., Gudrun Hauer, “Der NS-Staat – ein zwangsheterosexuelles/heteronormatives Konstrukt,” in Homosexuelle im Nationalsozialismus. Neue Forschungsperspektiven von lesbischen,

© Brill Schöningh, 2023 | doi:10.30965/9783657790470_009

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sexuality that deviated from this model, including conduct judged as prostitution, which did not serve reproductive purposes, were stigmatised, persecuted, and ‘eliminated.’ In this essay, I first aim to put prostitutes and pimps in the context of the persecution of ‘asocials’ during the National Socialist period and thereby address a collective of people who were excluded from the ‘community.’ I will then pursue the question of to what extent the groups of prostitutes and pimps functioned in explicit opposition to the concepts of the men and women of the Volksgemeinschaft within the National Socialist worldview, and how these antitypes were constructed. Subsequently, this article problematises whether prostitutes and pimps were in fact sharply separated from the Volksgemeinschaft and in opposition to the Nazi images of men and women. Is it possible that the authorities’ view of these groups and of the relationships between prostitutes and pimps, who were able to enter into partnerships or marriages, instead illustrate ‘reflections’ on the Volksgemeinschaft? This essay examines whether parallels regarding gender relations existed between members of the milieu in question,4 i.e. prostitutes and pimps, and those women and men who belonged within the Volksgemeinschaft. I will first focus on the state authorities’ dealings with prostitutes and pimps, and then on interactions between these groups. Prostitution in this text refers to the commercial practice of sex with mostly male customers, the ‘clients’ (Freier), in return for money or other privileges, and is predominantly practiced by women.5 Pimping constitutes an element inherent in the system of prostitution and cannot therefore be ignored when looking at the history of the prostitution trade. On the one hand, pimps monitor and promote prostitution, and at the same time, also exploit prostitutes, even while maintaining personal relationships with them. Pimps use the women’s earnings to make their own living.6 In this article, I deliberately consider prostitutes and pimps together. This stems from a pragmatic approach to the sources; without taking pimps into schwulen, bi-, trans- und intersexuellen Menschen 1933 bis 1945, ed. Michael Schwartz (Munich: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2014), 27–33. 4 The term ‘milieu’ is subsequently used as a research term. It refers to the entire environment and sphere of life of prostitutes and pimps. 5 For more on the definition of prostitution, see e.g. Martina Löw and Renate Ruhne, Prostitution. Herstellungsweisen einer anderen Welt (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011), 23; Ulrich Leo, “Die strafrechtliche Kontrolle der Prostitution. Bestandsaufnahme und Kritik” (PhD diss., University of Kiel, 1995), 23. 6 Michael Bargon, Prostitution und Zuhälterei. Zur kriminologischen und strafrechtlichen Problematik mit einem geschichtlichen und rechtsvergleichenden Überblick (Lübeck: Schmidt-Roemhild, 1982), 129–133; Roland Girtler, Der Strich. Soziologie eines Milieus (Berlin: LIT, 2013), 272–273.

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account, there is often no evidence at all for individual prostitutes. Additionally, only by focusing on both groups it is possible to make statements about how relationships developed in the milieu, how these were perceived by the police and courts, and to what extent the higher authorities influenced the sex trade through their persecutory practices. The following discussion is based on an examination of contemporary sources on prostitution and pimping from the perspective of the Third Reich, and on the evaluation of articles on the subject from the disciplines of criminology, psychiatry, and social welfare. In addition, files on the criminal prosecution of prostitutes and pimps in the Baden-Württemberg cities of Mannheim, Karlsruhe, and Stuttgart serve as central points of reference. This corpus of sources makes it possible to draw conclusions about the position, perception, and treatment of pimps and prostitutes in the Third Reich and to use local examples to reflect on the characteristics of the prostitution milieu under National Socialism in general. It should be noted that this tradition comes from institutions and authorities that contributed to the discrimination and persecution of the group under consideration. They thus primarily reflect the perspective of the persecution authorities. Thematically relevant ego documents are available only in isolated cases. Prostitutes and Pimps in the Third Reich Nazi ideology defined women who worked as prostitutes and men who participated as pimps as “foreigners to the community,” i.e. as people who “fell from the community due to their immoral lifestyle.”7 They were not understood as members, but as “parasites” of National Socialist society due to their ‘asociality.’8 As the Zeitschrift für Heimatwesen asserted in May 1938, “anyone who cannot or will not fit into the free community life because of long-term physical, mental or moral inadequacy and thereby considerably damages or endangers the people, his family or himself, and in particular anyone depraved

7 Fight against those who are unable of community, Berlin, 20 June 1942, cited from: Wolfgang Ayaß, ed., “Gemeinschaftsfremde”. Quellen zur Verfolgung von “Asozialen” 1933–1945 (Coblenz: Bundesarchiv, 1998), 309. 8 Stefan Mörchen, Schwarzer Markt. Kriminalität, Ordnung und Moral in Bremen 1939–1949 (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2011), 386–387. The Berlin municipal administrator Josef Tress speaks of the “parasitism” of “prostitutes [and] pimps” in large cities, see Josef Tress, “Die Asozialenfrage,” Blätter für Gefängniskunde 72, no. 5 (1941/42): 206, from: International Tracing Service (ITS) Digital Archive 1.1.28.0/82234368-82234392, file 182.

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or threatens to become depraved” was considered asocial.9 This, of course, stigmatised members of society outside the prostitution industry as asocial as well. The term referred to a flexibly defined collection of people and could be expanded as needed. In most cases, it referred to people from marginalised social groups and lower social strata who, according to the Nazi ideological conception, did little, insufficient or no work at all or cultivated a lifestyle deviant from the norm.10 National Socialism linked further negative ascriptions such as immorality, laziness, inferiority, idiocy, loss of control, and corruption to the ideological pattern of asociality. Perceived economic neediness resulted in social stigma and could serve as the decisive justification for exercise of state control, arrest, exploitation and ‘eradication.’11 Thus, those branded as asocial had to reckon with all measures of exclusion, persecution and even death: they could be obliged to perform forced labour, taken into protective custody (Schutzhaft), forcibly sterilised, or expelled to workhouses, institutions or concentration camps.12 Addressing the supply of and demand for prostitution was an important topic for Nazi sexual policy, which dealt with the issues of containing venereal diseases and with questions of how prostitution and pimping could be prevented or possibly abolished. In the Weimar Republic, too, these topics were subject to intense debate, but from the point of view of the Nazi rulers, 9 10 11

12

Excerpt from “Umschau. Behandlung Asozialer,” Zeitschrift für Heimatwesen 43, 13 (May 1938): n. pag., from: Municipal Archive Stuttgart 201/1-1002, file 254. In addition to prostitutes and pimps, the term ‘asocial’ was used, e.g., to describe ‘gypsies,’ people without homes, addicts, and homosexuals. ‘Eradication’ (Ausmerze) is to be understood as the elimination of unwanted persons and groups in the Nazi state by means of social racist and racial hygienic measures (such as compulsory labour, detention, expulsion, forced sterilisation, and murder) as an antipole to the ‘selection’ of ‘desired’ parts of the population, see e.g. Karl-Heinz Roth, “‘Auslese’ und ‘Ausmerze’. Familien- und Bevölkerungspolitik unter der Gewalt der nationalsozialistischen ‘Gesundheitsfürsorge’,” in Medizin und Nationalsozialismus. Tabuisierte Vergangenheit – Ungebrochene Tradition?, eds. Gerhard Baader et al. (Berlin: Verlagsgesellschaft Gesundheit, 1980), 158; Baris Alakus et al., Sex-Zwangsarbeit in nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern (Vienna: Mandelbaum, 2006), 25; Maike Rotzoll, “Verwahren, verpflegen, vernichten. Die Entwicklung der Anstaltspsychiatrie in Deutschland und die NS-Euthanasie,” in “Das Vergessen der Vernichtung ist Teil der Vernichtung selbst”. Lebensgeschichten von Opfern der nationalsozialistischen “Euthanasie”, eds. Petra Fuchs et al. (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2008), 33. On the subject of ‘asociality,’ see in particular Wolfgang Ayaß, “Asoziale” im Nationalsozialismus (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1995), 9, 12, 106; Detlev Peukert, Volksgenossen und Gemeinschaftsfremde. Anpassung, Ausmerze und Aufbegehren unter dem Nationalsozialismus (Cologne: Bund, 1982), 89. Also: Richard  J.  Evans, “Social Outsiders in German History. From the Sixteenth Century to 1933,” in Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany, eds. Robert Gellately et al. (Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001), 38–40.

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the system of the Weimar Republic had failed.13 Criticism targeted the Act to Combat Sexually Transmitted Diseases of 1927 in particular, which put an end to police surveillance of prostitution.14 By repealing the regulation of prostitutes and stipulating that prostitution was no longer the responsibility of the police but of the health authorities, the Act focused on medical care and prevention, i.e. on the treatment of persons suffering from a venereal disease and on the protection of healthy persons.15 Prostitution consequently remained exempt from punishment if various obligations were followed, such as a regular gynaecological examination. Housing restrictions for prostitutes on blocks of flats or streets were no longer permitted following the abolition of regimentation, i.e. brothels and “brothel-like enterprises” were disestablished. Anyone who maintained a brothel was from then on regarded as a “procurer.”16 The Act of 1927 also led to an amendment of paragraph 361.6 in the Reich Penal Code (Reichsstrafgesetzbuch). In 1871, the latter had standardised the regulations on prostitution throughout the entire German Reich. According to the 1871 version, women in sex trade were subject to supervision by vice squads, and prostitution had been punishable by law in the event of violation of the provisions of the vice officers.17 However, since the moral police had become obsolete due to the 1927 Act, the new paragraph 361.6, which came into force several months later in October 1927, determined that prostitution was punishable only if it was conducted “in a manner damaging to morals or decency or is otherwise disturbing” – for example, in the vicinity of churches or schools. Throughout its existence, the Act to Combat Sexually Transmitted Diseases and, in particular, the abolition of the supervision of prostitution by the moral police was harshly criticised by the conservative bourgeois camp, for according to the police and public opinion, both had led to “harlots” (Dirnen) shooting 13 See Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf. Eine kritische Edition, eds. Christian Hartmann et al. (Munich: Institute for Contemporary History, 2016), 651–657. 14 Act to Combat Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 18 February 1927, in Reichsgesetzblatt I/9 (1927), 61–63. The law was the result of the debate since the First World War on the possibilities of curbing the spread of venereal diseases. In its main points, it determined the duty of licensed doctors to treat sexually transmitted diseases, the expansion of counselling centres and the liberalisation of protective measures. 15 ‘Regulation’ is to be understood as a generic term for all state, medical and police control measures against prostitution. 16   §17 of the Act to Combat Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 63. Also: Sabine Gleß, Die Reglementierung von Prostitution in Deutschland (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1999), 78. 17 Robert Sommer, Das KZ-Bordell: Sexuelle Zwangsarbeit in nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern (Munich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2009), 32; Romina Schmitter, “Prostitution – Das ‘älteste Gewerbe der Welt’?,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 63, 9 (2013): 24. See §361.6 of the Reich Penal Code (in the edition from 1894).

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out “of the ground like mushrooms” and thus blemishing the streetscape.18 The Act formally remained in force in the Third Reich until the Second World War.19 Nevertheless, the National Socialists responded to the criticism of the Act: in order to limit the spread of venereal diseases compared to Weimar so that its “pacemaker, prostitution,”20 could be eliminated, they re-criminalised women in prostitution by revising paragraph 361.6 of the Reich Penal Code. It was modified on 26 May 1933 by the “Amendment of Criminal Law Provisions.” Thus, it now threatened not only to imprison the person engaged in prostitution in “a manner damaging to morals or decency or is otherwise disturbing,” but also those who “disturb individuals or the general public in a manner that is likely to incite them to, or offer themselves for, fornication [Unzucht].”21 The police authorities were thus given a free hand to “take action against harlotry [Dirnenwesen].”22 Conventional criminal law was replaced by police law, which could be arbitrarily applied depending on the staff of the police stations. The new paragraph also broadened the definition of prostitution. Not only women who actually offered sex on a commercial basis were henceforth arrested on the foundation of the reshaped interpretative framework of section 361.6 of the Reich Penal Code, but, in principle, all women (and men) who showed themselves to be ‘conspicuous’ in public in any way could be prosecuted.23 18

“Stuttgart. Zur Aufhebung der Sittenpolizei,” Schwäbische Tagwacht 229 (October 1927): n. pag., from: Municipal Archive Stuttgart  201/1-1085, file 13. Likewise, a report by the Chief Criminal Secretary of Karlsruhe of September 1939 uses the same description for the developments regarding prostitution as a result of the law, see record of the Chief Criminal Secretary, Karlsruhe, 29 September 1939, concerning treatment of prostitution, p. 2, in: Generallandesarchiv (GLA) Karlsruhe 330 Access 1991/34–63. 19 On the history of the 1927 law against venereal disease, see Michaela Freund-Widder, Frauen unter Kontrolle. Prostitution und ihre staatliche Bekämpfung in Hamburg vom Ende des Kaiserreichs bis zu den Anfängen der Bundesrepublik (Münster: LIT, 2003), 81–105; Albrecht Scholz, “Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten in verschiedenen politischen Systemen,” Der Hautarzt 7 (2003): 664–673; Sommer, Das KZ-Bordell, 31–34. 20 Hitler, Mein Kampf, 671. 21 Emphasis of the author. See Ayaß, Asoziale, 185; §361.6 of the Reich Penal Code (in the edition from 1933). 22 Letter from the Minister for the Interior to the district authorities et al., Karlsruhe, 19 August 1933, concerning combat against commercial fornication (Gewerbsunzucht), in: GLA Karlsruhe 234–6621. 23 Even women who were found alone in a restaurant or were suspected of suffering from a venereal disease and spreading it further could be arrested on the charge of prostitution. This depended on the moral ideas of the respective civil servants, see Freund-Widder, Frauen unter Kontrolle, 114–115. Likeweise, Rahel Gugel, Das Spannungsverhältnis zwischen Prostitutionsgesetz und Art.  3 II Grundgesetz – eine rechtspolitische Untersuchung (PhD diss., University of Bremen, 2010), 30.

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The Nazi state did not only focus its attention on prostitutes. At the same time, against the background of the demand for a preventive fight against crime, an interdisciplinary discourse surrounding the question of how to deal with men who found guilty of pimping also developed in the early phase of the Third Reich.24 Shortly after the National Socialists came to power, pimps were one of the main objects of the persecution of asociality – alongside the homeless, beggars and ‘gypsies.’ They were regarded as ‘asocials’, who, due to negative predispositions, tended to commit ‘anti-social’ crimes and posed a constant danger potential for future crimes. Therefore, a preventive fight against crime, motivated by racial hygiene, seemed justified.25 Paragraph 181a of the Reich Penal Code, which regulated the offence of pimping, was extended in November 1933 by the Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals and on Measures of Securing and Improvement: As of January 1934, pimping could be punished with sentences of penal servitude (Zuchthausstrafen) of up to five years instead of shorter prison sentences (Gefängnisstrafen).26 In summary, the intensified measures taken against prostitutes and pimps shortly after the National Socialist Worker’s Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP) took power in 1933 were fundamental to the National Socialists’ access to the milieu. Compared to the Weimar Republic, the return to state control of the trade became a significant characteristic of prostitution policy between 1933 and 1945.27 The striking aspect of the treatment of 24 Wagner, Vernichtung der Berufsverbrecher, 97. 25 See Thomas Roth, “Von den ‘Antisozialen’ zu den ‘Asozialen’. Ideologie und Struktur kriminalpolizeilicher ‘Verbrechensbekämpfung’ im Nationalsozialismus,” in Lutz, “minderwertig” und “asozial”, 72. Letter from the Welfare Office Stuttgart, Reich and Prussian Minister of the Interior, to the Regional Governments et al., Berlin, 14 December 1937, concerning the prevention of crime by the police and concerning guidelines for the decree of 14 December 1937 about the term ‘asocial,’ Stuttgart, 20 February 1942, in: Municipal Archive Stuttgart 201/1-1002. Also: letter from the Reichskriminalpolizeiamt, Reinhard Heydrich, to the State Criminal Investigation Department, Berlin, 1 June 1938, concerning preventive fight against crime by the police, in: ITS Digital Archive 1.2.7.26/8234397-82342399. 26 Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals and on Measures of Securing and Improvement, 24 November 1933, in Reichsgesetzblatt I/133 (1933), 995–999; §181a of the Reich Penal Code (in the edition from 1934). 27 On the demarcation of the National Socialist approach to the milieu from that of the Weimar period, and on the various phases of prostitution policy between 1933 and 1945, see Julia Roos, “Backlash against Prostitutes’ Rights: Origins and Dynamics of Nazi Prostitution Policies,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11, 1/2 (2002): 74, 78–93; Annette  F.  Timm, “Sex with a Purpose: Prostitution, Venereal Disease, and Militarized Masculinity in the Third Reich,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11, 1/2 (2002): 228–251. Also: Victoria Harris, Selling Sex in the Reich. Prostitutes in German Society, 1914–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 149–151.

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the milieu in the Third Reich was that the consequences of the measures taken at state or official level could mean life-long suffering and even death for those affected. Examples include forced sterilisation, stigma that continued beyond 1945, and imprisonment in institutions or camps. National Socialist prostitution policy can be divided into two phases. The early phase after 1933 was primarily characterised by the prevention of street prostitution.28 In order to “keep the street clean,”29 police began to carry out surveillance, raids, arrests and increased quartering of prostitution. However, their actions could vary according to region and city. The outbreak of war in 1939 represented a major turning point and the transition to a second phase of prostitution policy, as the handling of prostitution became more radical: the state and police regimentation of the trade was intensified, the Act to Combat Sexually Transmitted Diseases was repealed, and police control of prostitution was reintroduced centrally and comprehensively. From then on, the Nazi state used the milieu for its own purposes and set up brothels in its home and occupation areas and in concentration camps.30 Prostitutes and pimps both fell from the Volksgemeinschaft, because of their “unseemly way of life.”31 At the same time, state actors defined themselves through this exclusion by, for example, performatively advocating for ideals of the Volksgemeinschaft in investigative proceedings or in court that were allegedly not characteristic of the excluded ‘others.’32 But what was the concrete counter image like?

28 29

Secret prostitution remained exempt from punishment cf. Ayaß, Asoziale, 185. Decree of the Prussian Minister of the Interior Hermann Göring to the Police Authorities, Berlin, 22  February  1933, cited from: Ayaß, Gemeinschaftsfremde, 3–4. On this subject: Ayaß, Asoziale, 185; Roth, Von den Antisozialen, 77–78. 30 Ayaß, Asoziale, 192–193; Timm, Sex with a Purpose, 246–249. This contribution distinguishes two phases of Nazi prostitution policy. But it is conceivable, especially between 1939 and 1945, to make further caesura, e.g. in 1940 with the decree to have brothels set up for ‘foreign workers’ or in 1941 with Heinrich Himmler’s order to establish the first camp brothel in the Mauthausen concentration camp; see Roos, Backlash, 91; Sommer, Das KZ-Bordell, 112. 31 Fight against those who are unable of community, Berlin, 20 June 1942, 309. 32 Elizabeth Harvey describes it as follows: “Community implies the fixation of one’s own towards the foreign,” see Elizabeth Harvey, “Weibliche Gemeinschaft als ‘Volksgemeinschaft’: Vergnügen, Konformität und Zwang,” in Schmiechen-Ackermann, Volksgemeinschaft, 250. Also: Pohl, Konstrukt, 70.

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“Unstable” and “Impulsive”: Depictions of Prostitutes in Contemporary Sources First of all, prostitutes represented the negative counter image of the ideal German woman propagated by the National Socialists; they were the opposite of the ‘valuable’ woman. They were regarded as ‘immoral’ and ‘disloyal’ ‘women persons’ (Frauenpersonen): As ‘non-women.’33 With regard to the question of the image of women in National Socialism and the placement of prostitutes within it, it is important to note that Nazi ideology imagined women primarily through their ‘nurturing’ roles. The ‘Aryan’ woman was to be (not only, but above all) a wife and mother; to stand by her husband, who had to prove himself through engagement in the movement, and at best also as a soldier at war; as a ‘companion in life’ by creating a home for him; and by giving birth and raising children. Her children potentiated the strength of the ‘German people’ – numerically and in their future service for the Volksgemeinschaft. The woman secured the state’s existence and future by delivering this ‘Aryan,’ ‘hereditarily healthy,’ and ‘desired’ growth for the Volksgemeinschaft. As mothers, women thus shaped and protected the family microcosm and represented the family as the “smallest, but most valuable unit in the construction of the entire state structure” of Nazi Germany.34 In addition to hereditary health, ‘Aryan’ ancestry and political conformity, other ‘desirable’ attributes of women, in terms of character and body, were above all loyalty, decency and morality, willingness to subordinate, servitude, sense of duty, modesty and availability, especially in sexual aspects, as well as general outward attractiveness.35 Prostitutes thwarted the ideological concept of an idealised role for women oriented towards marriage, motherhood and family. With their supposedly permissive sexuality, which seemed to be aimed at pleasure and profit rather than marriage and reproduction,36 they withdrew from women’s biological, reproductive duty to pregnancy and motherhood according to Nazi ideological 33

Gisela Bock, “Racism and Sexism in Nazi Germany: Motherhood, Compulsory Sterilization, and the State,” in When Biology Became Destiny. Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany, eds. Renate Bridenthal et al. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984), 288. 34 “Adolf Hitler’s Program.” Call for election on 31  July  1932, cited from: Werner Siebarth, Hitlers Wollen. Nach Kernsätzen aus seinen Schriften und Reden (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP Franz Eher Nachf., 1939), 126. 35 On women during National Socialism, see e.g. Claudia Koonz, Mütter im Vaterland. Frauen im Dritten Reich (Freiburg: Kore, 1991), 70–76, 97; Irmgard Weyrather, Muttertag und Mutterkreuz. Der Kult um die “deutsche Mutter” im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1993), 10–16, 58, 115–116. 36 Freund-Widder, Frauen unter Kontrolle, 109–110.

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understanding.37 If they were married mothers, they doubly undermined the National Socialist order. Women who prostituted themselves or were on record as prostitutes were forced to have abortions or be sterilised, and mothers were deprived of custody on the basis that they would have a negative influence on their children. Their motherhood was not legally recognised, and in the opinion of Nazi physicians and lawyers, they were, as asocials, not intended to have offspring in the first place.38 The award of the Mother’s Cross (Ehrenkreuz der Deutschen Mutter) was not to be conferred on them, since they damaged the “reputation of the German mother.”39 Prostitutes shared this stigmatisation as ‘inferior’ and as prototypes of the ‘asocial woman’40 along with mothers of ‘asocial extended families’ and ‘sexually permissive’ women, such as women living their lives as lesbians.41 With regard to same-sex desiring women, the presumed relation between homosexuality and asociality at the time is also worth mentioning: National Socialists supposed that lesbian love was particularly widespread among prostitutes. Consequently, in the case of a complaint according to section 361.6 of the Reich Penal Code, an accusation of homosexuality could also be made and vice versa. Whether prostitutes actually more often lived in lesbian relationships and whether the accusation of homosexuality had an aggravating effect on those accused of prostitution remains to be examined in individual 37

Cornelia Usborne, “Abtreibung: Mord, Therapie oder weibliches Selbstbestimmungsrecht? Der § 218 im medizinischen Diskurs der Weimarer Republik,” in Frauenkörper. Medizin. Sexualität. Auf dem Wege zu einer neuen Sexualmoral, eds. Johanna Geyer-Kordesch et al. (Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1986), 207. 38 Kristine von Soden, “Auf dem Weg zur ‘neuen Sexualmoral’ – Die Sexualberatungsstellen der Weimarer Republik,” in Geyer-Kordesch, Frauenkörper, 256; Freund-Widder, Frauen unter Kontrolle, 110; Ingrid Tomkowiak, “‘Asozialer Nachwuchs ist für die Volksgemeinschaft vollkommen unerwünscht’. Eugenik und Rassenhygiene als Wegbereiter der Verfolgung gesellschaftlicher Außenseiter,” in Lutz, “minderwertig” und “asozial”, 36. The Reich Minister of the Interior, e.g. enacted: “I point out that such cases [pregnant prostitutes – author’s note] fall within the scope of my decree of 19 September 1940 […] and therefore the permission for abortion and any necessary infertilisation can be sought from me,” see letter from the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, Arthur Nebe, to all criminal investigation departments, Berlin, 13 May 1942, concerning pregnant prostitutes, in: GLA Karlsruhe 330 Access 1991/34-269. 39 Decree of the Reich and Prussian Minister of the Interior, Dr. Wilhelm Frick, to the State Government et al., Berlin, 28 January 1939, cited from: Ayaß, Gemeinschaftsfremde, 194–195. 40 Claudia Schoppmann, Zeit der Maskierung. Lebensgeschichten lesbischer Frauen im “Dritten Reich” (Berlin: Orlanda, 1993), 23; Claudia Schoppmann, “Zur Situation lesbischer Frauen in der NS-Zeit,” in Homosexualität in der NS-Zeit. Dokumente einer Diskriminierung und Verfolgung, ed. Günter Gau (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1993), 41. 41 Ayaß, Asoziale, 184.

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cases – and is often indeterminable in retrospect. Fundamentally of importance is the fact that the Nazi regime targeted supposedly deviant female (sexual) behaviour and treated it repressively.42 A second stigmatisation of prostitutes was based on the discursive linking of prostitution and venereal diseases. Prostitutes were regarded as more at risk of contracting venereal disease than women who did not work in prostitution. In Mein Kampf, Hitler described prostitution as “a disgrace to humanity,” which, as the main cause of the “epidemic” – by which he meant the syphilis – had led to the “degeneration” of entire “civilised peoples” (Kulturvölker).43 In doing so, he references a common threat scenario based on the idea of prostitutes as a source of infection for venereal diseases.44 Above all, it was feared that men could become infected by prostitutes and then also infect their wives, who would then either become infertile or give birth to sick children.45 The authorities particularly focused on ‘secret’ prostitutes, i.e. those women who were not registered and were not under the supervision of the health authorities, but who were “urgently suspected” of “frequently having intercourse [häufig wechselnden Geschlechtsverkehr].”46 National Socialists continued to establish an explicit connection between the allegedly increased ‘moral degeneracy’ resulting from sterilisation and the spread of venereal diseases. As the minutes of the first working session of the Committee for Welfare and Custody Law of the Academy for German Law in 42

On this subject see again the publications of Claudia Schoppmann, e.g. “Lesbische Frauen und weibliche Homosexualität im Dritten Reich. Forschungsperspektiven,” in Schwartz, Homosexuelle, 87–88; Nationalsozialistische Sexualpolitik und weibliche Homosexualität (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 1991), 205–209. Samuel Clowes Huneke’s, “The Duplicity of Tolerance: Lesbian Experiences in Nazi Berlin,” Journal of Contemporary History 52 (2017): 15, 17 deals explicitly with a lesbian couple working in prostitution. For more on the connection between ‘deviant’ female gender roles and ‘asociality,’ see the example of Ilse Trotzke by Laurie Marhoefer, “Lesbianism, Transvestitism, and the Nazi State: A Microhistory of a Gestapo Investigation, 1939–1943,” The American Historical Review 121 (2016): 1180–1182. 43 Hitler, Mein Kampf, 661–669. 44 Since the German empire, prostitutes have been held responsible for the spread of venereal diseases, see Sybille Steinbacher, Wie der Sex nach Deutschland kam. Der Kampf um Sittlichkeit und Anstand in der frühen Bundesrepublik (Munich: Siedler, 2011), 88. 45 Freund-Widder, Frauen unter Kontrolle, 110. 46 Activity report of the health authority for the financial year of 1937, 1  April  1937 to 31  March  1938, no place of publication or date given, 1–2, in: Municipal Archive Karlsruhe 1/H Reg A 864. The Nazi state had three fears concerning those women: firstly, that they soon slipped from ‘secret’ into commercial prostitution. Secondly, that there was an increase in unwanted pregnancies, and thirdly, that such ‘sources of infection’ facilitated a spread of sexually transmitted diseases, see Alakus, Sex-Zwangsarbeit, 30; Freund-Widder, Frauen unter Kontrolle, 111.

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Hamburg in 1938 demonstrate, women were considered to be tempted by sterilisation to “give themselves over to a completely uninhibited urge life”; among them are then to be found “the most dangerous carriers and disseminators of bad diseases.”47 This assumed connection between ‘degeneracy,’ sterilisation, and transmission of venereal diseases can be illustrated by the example of the Mannheim worker Anna S.: Anna S. was reported in February 1941 because she had not fulfilled her obligation to have herself examined for venereal diseases by the health authorities.48 She was accused of having “knowingly violated the supervisory measures ordered to prevent the spread of an infectious disease […] by acting contrary to the order of the competent health authority, as a person who is urgently suspected of being sexually ill and of spreading the sexually transmitted disease further, to undergo an examination by a physician designated by that authority.”49 In the expert opinion of a prison physician at the Mannheim jail on Anna S.’s state of mind after her sterilisation in 1934, she was reported as increasingly “morally degenerate,” and “especially in a sexual respect” she had become “more and more unstable.”50 The report documents the history of Anna S.’s persecution and suffering before and after the complaint: she was not only sterilised in 1934, and incapacitated in 1940, but was also classified as “morally imbecile” because of a “schizophrenic defective condition” by medical assessment in 1941. The expert opinion formed the basis for Anna S.’s admission to the Wiesloch sanatorium and nursing home, from where she was transported to Auschwitz in April 1944.51 Contemporary narratives about prostitutes – as well as girls and women who threatened to sink into prostitution from a National Socialist point of view – always contain connotations of a gender-specific deviance. Here, a third contemporary categorisation of prostitutes can be discerned. If one looks at 47

See the minutes of the I.  Workshop of the Committee for Welfare and Custody Law of the Academy for German Law, Hamburg, 19  August  1938, cited from Ayaß, Gemeinschaftsfremde, 144. 48 Anna S. was charged with an offense against §327 of the Reich Penal Code in conjunction with §4 of the Act to Combat Sexually Transmitted Diseases. Both, §327 (in the edition of 1912) and §4, regulated the supervision of sexually transmitted disease care and guaranteed the possibility of having a person who is ill or suspected of being ill with a sexually transmitted disease and its further spread identified and treated. 49 Criminal charge against Anna S., Mannheim, 14 February 1941, in: GLA Karlsruhe 3091998, file 1. 50 Expert opinion of the prison physician, Mannheim, 21 March 1941, concerning the mental state of Anna S., in: GLA Karlsruhe 309-1998, file 23. 51 GLA Karlsruhe 309-1998, file 25; letter from the Directorate of the Wiesloch sanatorium and nursing home to the Chief Public Prosecutor Mannheim, Wiesloch, 11 April 1944, concerning the ward Anna S., in: GLA Karlsruhe 309-1998.

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contributions in police or welfare journals, court reports on prosecutions of prostitutes, or even documents from workhouses concerning the admission of prostitutes, it becomes apparent that recurring meanings of prostitution and inconstancy, lack of discipline, laziness, stupidity, weakness, and uncleanliness predominated.52 Frequently, in relation to the women concerned, their ‘drifting around’ was emphasised, along with their ‘neglect’ in moral and ethical respects, their ‘instinct,’ ‘lack of inhibition,’ ‘lack of stability,’ ‘lack of choice’ in relation to their sexual partners, their ‘deviance’ or their disregard of typical female areas of responsibility were criticised. Thus, in the proceedings against Wilhelmine W., who was convicted in 1943 as a prostitute for violating the Decree Against Parasites (Volkschädlingsverordnung),53 it is stated that she “neglected her household to a great extent” and pursued “changing sexual intercourse.”54 Wilhelmine W. made an “extremely unfavourable impression” according to medical reports and was described as a “morally inferior, reckless and lying person,” “who – although she has only been living on fornication for a few years – has the conduct and moral qualities of a harlot who is up to every trick [einer mit allen Wassern gewaschenen Dirne].”55 Prostitutes were also regarded as ‘easily impressionable,’ ‘spiritually weak,’ ‘ethically defective,’ and ‘prone to mood instability.’ In the files of the inmates of the Buttenhausen workhouse near Stuttgart, Johanna S., who pursued “professional fornication,” was judged “instinctive, ethically defective, [and] unstable.”56 Another impor52

Such connections can also be found in the description of women’s behaviour which had nothing to do with prostitution. These terms were thus used in general to denounce female-deviant behaviour and to describe the endangerment of girls and women before they sank into prostitution, see Ayaß, Asoziale, 195. Contemporarily, various ‘categories’ of prostitutes were distinguished, e.g. the director of the Strecknitz-Lübeck sanatorium, J. Enge, named three groups of prostitutes: those who came to prostitution out of economic hardship, those “morally idiotic,” and those who worked as prostitutes out of “lively sexual instinct,” see J.  Enge, “Entmündigung Prostituierter,” Zeitschrift für psychische Hygiene 14 (1942): 80. 53 The Decree against parasites (Volksschädlingsverordnung) was issued in 1939 as a war ordinance for the handling of the special courts. It was directed against the ‘inner enemy.’ Areas of application were the “exploitation of blackouts” due to air raids and thefting from air-raid shelters, see Decree against parasites, 5 September 1939, in Reichsgesetzblatt I/168 (1939), 1679. About this: Christiane Oehler, Die Rechtsprechung des Sondergerichts Mannheim 1933–1945 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1997), 170–171; Mörchen, Schwarzer Markt, 89. 54 Verdict Special Court Mannheim vs. Erich F., Wilhelmine W., and Elisabeth O., Mannheim, 28. 5. 1943, 6, in: GLA Karlsruhe 507-12276. 55 Senior public prosecutor as head of the prosecution authority at the Special Court in Mannheim to the chairman, Mannheim, 27 April 1943, 13, in: GLA Karlsruhe 507-12276. 56 Buttenhausen workhouse files on Johanna S., in: Municipal Archive Stuttgart 201/1-1004.

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tant unsavoury accusation that was attributed to prostitutes by the police and welfare workers was their lack of cleanliness. They were not only regarded as “morally degenerate,” but also as physically “unclean.”57 “Degenerate” and “Criminal”: The Pimp in National Socialist Ideology In National Socialist ideology, the figure of the pimp ranged between the notions of crime and asociality. The pimp was considered to be “indolent from youth onwards” – a characteristic that would necessitate an “early onset of criminal activity” as well as a “relatively strong criminal predilection.”58 With regard to his alleged criminal disposition, a closer look at the aforementioned Habitual Criminal Law (Gewohnheitsverbrechergesetz) is revealing. With the passing of the law in 1933, the idea of a new type of offender entered criminal law: The attention of the criminal prosecution moved away from the act to be punished and concentrated on the character of the offender.59 The framework in which a judge could henceforth assess delinquent behaviour was thereby extended. For pimps, this implied that they not only had to expect a prison sentence for the pimping offence, but also a classification as a ‘dangerous habitual criminal.’ This in turn meant that the punishment could be aggravated, and the offender detained for an indefinite period of time in order to ‘protect’ the general public by removing him from the community.60

57 58 59

60

Käthe Petersen, “Entmündigung geistesschwacher Prostituierter,” Zeitschrift für psychische Hygiene 15 (1942): 73. Dr. Hauke, “Der Zuhälter als asozialer Typus,” Archiv für Kriminologie 107 (1940): 27. On the “image of the offender,” see Dr. Becker, “Der gefährliche Gewohnheitsverbrecher, seine Bekämpfung im Kriege,” Der öffentliche Gesundheitsdienst A/8, 7 (1942): 154. The “danger” of the pimp was not that he was considered a violent criminal, but that he was permanently active in his “domain” of “easy and middle crime,” see Hauke, Zuhälter, 24. The room for manoeuvre in the assessment that was now granted to the judge was based on the fact that the Habitual Criminal Law had led to the addition of §20a to the Reich Penal Code; in this the assumption of a ‘type of offender’ was anchored, see Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals and on Measures of Securing and Improvement, 995. Also: Heinz Wagner, “Das Strafrecht im Nationalsozialismus,” in Recht und Rechtslehre im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Franz Jürgen Säcker (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1992), 149–150; Monika Frommel, “Verbrechensbekämpfung im Nationalsozialismus,” in Jürgen Säcker, Recht und Rechtslehre, 198–199. The law was further tightened during the war, from 1941 the “dangerous habitual criminal” was also threatened with the death penalty if “the protection of the national community or the need for just atonement” required it. See the Act Amending the Reich Penal Code, 4 September 1942, in Reichsgesetzblatt I/101 (1941), 549–550. Also: Oehler, Rechtsprechung, 215–216.

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In addition to their categorisation as ‘habitual criminals,’ pimps were furthermore ‘asocial’ under the provisions of the Basic Decree Preventive Fight against Crime by the Police (Grunderlass Vorbeugende Verbrechensbekämpfung durch die Polizei) dated December  14, 1937 and its implementing guidelines dated April  1938. With this decree, a richly uniform regulation of preventive detention (Vorbeugungshaft) was passed for the first time, which had already applied to ‘professional and habitual criminals’ since 1933. Similar to the protective custody imposed by the Gestapo, preventive custody was also extended to concentration camps.61 In June  1938, Reinhard Heydrich sent a “strictly confidential” newsletter to the criminal police headquarters, which enabled massive intervention aimed at pimps who had “removed themselves from work” and their transfer to preventive detention. For the June-Action (Juni-Aktion) Heydrich ordered that within one week “at least 200 male persons capable of work (‘asocials’) must be taken into preventive police detention” from each respective criminal police headquarters districts.62 According to Heydrich, these should also include pimps “who were involved in relevant criminal proceedings – even if a conviction was not possible – and who are still in pimps’ and prostitutes’ circles today, or who are urgently suspected of pimping.”63 Stigmatising representations can also be found in police or welfare journals, court reports or documents from workhouses, suggesting a particular male delinquency. Connections were formed between pimping and depravity, common danger, cunning, brutality and excess. In relation to these men, attributions such as corrupt, unstable, morally weak, and morally restricted were frequently used, but also their supposed innate idiocy, abnormal mental disposition, dangerous asociality, as well as their indolence from an early age were emphasised. At the same time pimps were regarded as dangerous for the environment, ‘parasites,’ incorrigible and dangerous criminals, as habitual criminals or professional criminals, who pursued their ‘shady activities’ as ‘dark personalities’ in dishonourable sense. Specifically in documents from workhouses, they are described as “the most restless elements,” who refused to recognise any authority and who actually belonged – according to the assessments of individual chairmen of labour institutions – not in a workhouse, but in a penitentiary, because they would “tend to antisocial activity according 61 62 63

On the decree, see Ayaß, Asoziale, 138–149, 157. Prostitutes could also be taken into preventive police detention on the basis of the decree, see letter from the Welfare Office Stuttgart, Berlin, 14 December 1937, concerning the prevention of crime by the police, 2–3. Letter from the Reichskriminalpolizeiamt, Reinhard Heydrich, Berlin, 1 June 1938, concerning preventive fight against crime by the police, 1. Letter from the Reichskriminalpolizeiamt, Reinhard Heydrich, Berlin, 1 June 1938, 2.

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to their character disposition.”64 Thus, in the decision sent from the head of Kislau workhouse to the Augsburg Criminal Investigation Department, on one pimp, Walter K., who was sentenced to four months imprisonment for pimping in Karlsruhe in December 1941,65 his behaviour is analysed with extreme scepticism: Although he behaved “in accordance with house rules” during his detention in Kislau workhouse, this was only because as an “experienced prison practitioner” he knew that he could “only make his situation bearable in this way.” They should not be fooled, however: “Some improving effect […] of the penal system was not able to reach with him. K. is unstable, morally inferior and unwilling to work. […] He doesn’t deserve to be trusted in any way.” The prognosis with regard to Walter K. was seen as foreseeably grim, so that “the imposition of police preventive detention” was demanded for the “protection of the Volksgemeinschaft.”66 Pimps were typified in the various files as “cunning” and “dexterous,” “untruthful,” “recalcitrant,” “cheeky,” and “uncontrollable,” as “show-offs” and “swindlers,” who “pull mean tricks” and “sow discord” and hung out among the “hustlers” in the workhouses.67 Additional reports frequently reference the pimps’ violent tendencies, describing them as evil, mean, unscrupulous, and irritable. They offered ‘their prostitutes’ protection through violence while ‘walking the streets.’ Their motivations for pimping are considered to be their ‘knack’ for ‘easy’ income. Against this background, the drunkenness, unreasonability, selfishness, and the licentious lifestyle of the pimps were also emphasised. Kurt M., imprisoned in Kislau between 1933 and 1935, was judged to be a “brutal, rebellious, arrogant and explosive psychopath in psychological terms,”68 and “typical of a brutal mean pimp […] doesn’t even try [to] get

64 Director of the provincial labour institution of Brauweiler to the Director of the Baden federal labour institution of Kislau, Brauweiler near Cologne, 7 December 1932, concerning housed pimps, in: ITS Digital Archive 1.1.16.0/82115164. 65 Verdict Local Court vs. Walter  K., Karlsruhe, 23. December  1941, 1, in: GLA Karlsruhe 521-3960. 66 Decision Kislau to the State Criminal Investigation Department, Criminal Investigation Department of Augsburg, on the letter of 20 March 1942, Kislau, 23 March 1942, concerning preventive fight against crime by the police, in: GLA Karlsruhe 521-3960. 67 Director of the federal labour institution of Glückstadt to the Baden federal labour institution of Kislau, Glückstadt, 10  December  1932, concerning combat pimping, in: ITS Digital Archive 1.1.16.0/82115165. 68 Senior Medical Officer at the prisons in Freiburg to the Police Headquarters, Mannheim, 21 November 1933, in: GLA Karlsruhe 521-4647.

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honest work again.” He had “used up most of H.’s very considerable immoral earnings for his luxurious life.”69 Furthermore, according to Nazi logic, a man who was guilty of pimping and who was also the spouse of a prostitute failed to fulfil his ‘husband’s duty’ to support his family. He behaved reprehensibly because he let a woman support him and did not live up to the responsibility of preventing his wife from prostituting herself. This was the verdict against Rudolf B. in 1936 for pimping and procuring: “The behaviour of the accused is the culmination of an immoral sense and a lack of sense of honour. He has brought his own wife to a place known to him as an area favoured by harlots [Dirnenaufenthalt], so that she can practice fornication there. It would have been the defendant’s duty […] to prevent his wife […] from resuming her former trade.” From this, the court derived an “extraordinarily reprehensible moral attitude and the absence of any concepts of the moral content of a marriage” of the accused.70 These negative stigmatisations reflect idealised images of a supposedly appropriate National Socialist masculinity endowed with qualities such as energy, performance, hereditary and physical health, as well as political compatibility, and loyalty: Pimps were measured against hegemonic ideas of masculinity.71 The Prostitute Milieu as a Reflection of the Volksgemeinschaft? Looking at the governmental approach of the Third Reich to those involved in prostitution, this view from the outside reflects norms of the Volksgemeinschaft,

69 70 71

Verdict Court of Lay Assessors Mannheim vs. Kurt M., Mannheim, 20 January 1932, 2, in: GLA Karlsruhe 521-4647, file 28. Verdict in the criminal case against Rudolf B. for pimping and heavy procuring, Karlsruhe, 7 July 1936, in: GLA Karlsruhe 309-1369, files 98, 101. On the subject of masculinity in the Third Reich, e.g. Hauer, NS-Staat; Raewyn Connell, “Masculinity and Nazism,” in Männlichkeitskonstruktionen im Nationalsozialismus. Formen, Funktionen und Wirkungsmacht von Geschlechterkonstruktionen im Nationalsozialismus und ihre Reflexion in der pädadogischen Praxis, eds. Anette Dietrich et al. (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2013), 38–42. On constructions of masculinity specifically in times of war, see e.g. Frank Werner, “‘Noch härter, noch kälter, noch mitleidloser’. Soldatische Männlichkeit im deutschen Vernichtungskrieg 1941–1944,” in Dietrich, Männlichkeitskonstruktionen im Nationalsozialismus, 45–63. Elaborating on the question of ‘soldierly masculinity,’ which was based on probation in war, and the relationship between ‘female homeland’ and ‘male front’ by means of a concrete example, see Frank Werner, “‘Es ist alles verkehrt in der Welt’. Eine Ehe als Leistungsgemeinschaft im Krieg,” in Latzel, Geschlechterbeziehungen und “Volksgemeinschaft”, 175–196.

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despite the simultaneous exclusion of members of the milieu as asocial.72 Ascriptions and categorisations by the police and legislators were based on notions of gender difference between men and women, separate spheres of influence, and the assumption of male control over women. This is particularly apparent with regard to the male surveillance of female sexuality and in the guarantee of (select) male access to the female body from all sides. At the same time, women working as prostitutes were basically made invisible and remained marginalised from men who acted as their pimps. Even if the relationships between couples in the milieu are considered from the inside, evidence demonstrates that gender differences remained in place. What is more, the socio-racist characteristics that constituted Nazi society can also be found in groups excluded from the Volksgemeinschaft. The National Socialists did fight street prostitution and committed themselves to the containment of venereal diseases.73 Nonetheless, they were not concerned with abolishing prostitution; rather, women who worked in this system were to be supervised, controlled and, if necessary, disciplined.74 This meant that the prostitute was obliged to have herself regularly examined by the respective health authorities,75 as well as reckoning with sanctions such as

72

The question of the prostitution milieu as a reflection of the Volksgemeinschaft is inspired by Annette F. Timm, who sees both in the prostitute in comparison to the ‘respectable’ woman in National Socialism, “a contrast and a mirror,” see Timm, “The Ambivalent Outsider. Prostitution, Promiscuity, and VD Control in Nazi Berlin,” in Gellately, Social Outsiders, 200. 73 For example, a circular issued by the Reich Ministry of Justice in 1938 stated that, in order to combat venereal diseases effectively, it was absolutely necessary to identify the “sources of infection” and that, for the purpose of to “fulfil this duty serving the common good,” all physicians and counselling offices must feel a special obligation, see unpublished decree, circular Reich Ministry of Justice of 27 January 1938, concerning Act to Combat Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 1, in: GLA Karlsruhe 330 Access 1991/34-135. 74 Angelika Ebbinghaus, “Der Staat – Prostituiertenjäger und Zuhälter. Eine Dokumentation,” in Heilen und Vernichten im Mustergau Hamburg. Bevölkerungs- und Gesundheitspolitik im Dritten Reich, eds. Angelika Ebbinghaus et al. (Hamburg: Konkret, 1984), 85; Ulrike Eichborn, “Ehestandsdarlehen. Dem Mann den Arbeitsplatz, der Frau Heim, Herd und Kinder,” in Frauenleben im NS-Alltag, ed. Annette Kuhn (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 1994), 62; Gisela Bock, “Ganz normale Frauen. Täter, Opfer, Mitläufer und Zuschauer im Nationalsozialismus,” in Zwischen Karriere und Verfolgung. Handlungsräume von Frauen im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland, eds. Kirsten Heinsohn et al. (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1997), 265. 75 Freund-Widder confirmed the practice of weekly examination in Hamburg, see Freund-Widder, Frauen unter Kontrolle, 126. For Karlsruhe, the examination was carried out once a month by the health authority, see administrative and accounting report of Karlsruhe for the year of 1935, 1 April 1935 to 31 March 1936, 102–103, in: Municipal Archive

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imprisonment, transfer to a workhouse and forced sterilisation or abortion.76 The tendency observed between 1933 and 1939 to regulate prostitution to a greater extent is also reflected in the gradual reintroduction of the quartering of prostitutes in certain districts after 1933. Only there was the trade tolerated. In doing so, the cities took into account the declared goal of the Nazi prostitution policy to “keep the streets clean” by locking the prostitutes away.77 Although these measures banished prostitutes from public life, they did not curb prostitution itself. As long as it was considered unobtrusive, prostitution remained unpunished.78 And while the prostitute was constrained by regulations on the space in which she was allowed to move, and her presence in particular neighbourhoods justified interventions in her private and intimate life, the ‘john’ received comfortable and uncomplicated access to female bodies. The male ‘right’ to use these bodies at any time for payment was not questioned.79 At the beginning of the Second World War, this development, which had previously been negotiated locally, culminated in stricter regulation. Police control of prostitution was officially reintroduced in 1939, and the 1927 Law to Combat Venereal Diseases was repealed. Heydrich recorded the new regulations – and thus the institutionalisation of the spatial restriction of prostitution – in a confidential decree of September 9, 1939. It declares: “The police must immediately take measures to track prostitution […]. Any presence of prostitutes on streets and squares for the purpose of recruitment to fornication must be prevented by the police. […] The practice of commercial fornication is to be tolerated in special houses […]. The […] houses are […] to be supervised.”80

76

77 78 79

80

Karlsruhe, without signature. If a prostitute escaped this obligation, she had to expect sanctions, see Freund-Widder, Frauen unter Kontrolle, 129–130. Ayaß, Asoziale, 188; Soden, Auf dem Weg, 256. For general information on sanctions for non-compliance with health authority regulations, see Christoph Sachße and Florian Tennstedt, Der Wohlfahrtsstaat im Nationalsozialismus. Geschichte der Armenfürsorge in Deutschland, Vol. 3 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1992), 173. See Decree of the Prussian Minister of the Interior Hermann Göring, Berlin, 22 February 1933. Also: Ayaß, Asoziale, 185; Freund-Widder, Frauen unter Kontrolle, 111. Ayaß, Asoziale, 185. For this, see Christa Paul, Zwangsprostitution. Staatlich errichtete Bordelle im Nationalsozialismus (Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1994), 134; Regina Schulte, Sperrbezirke. Tugendhaftigkeit und Prostitution in der bürgerlichen Welt (Hamburg: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1994), 181. Reich Minister of the Interior, signed by Reinhard Heydrich, to the State Governments et al., Berlin, 9 September 1939, concerning police treatment of prostitution, 1–2, in: ITS Digital Archive 2.2.0.1/82330943-82330947.

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However, the Nazi state not only introduced the compulsory quartering of prostitutes in German cities, but also promoted the establishment of various forms of brothel, which were supposedly necessary due to the war. Thus brothels were created for the sexual ‘care’ of ‘foreign’ and forced labourers, soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht, and ‘privileged’ concentration camp inmates all over the Reich, in occupied areas and in concentration camps.81 In accordance with a circular from Martin Bormann dated December 7, 1940, brothels were to be set up for “foreign workers in as many places as possible where they were deployed in large numbers,” with “the general racial principles” to be taken into account.82 In other words, Western and Eastern European forced labourers were given access to ‘foreign’ women in specially furnished shelters, who, as Heydrich put it in concrete terms in January 1941, were to correspond as closely as possible to the “ethnicity” (Volkstum) of the clients.83 A similar system was planned for the concentration camps. As early as 1942, Heinrich Himmler wrote to Oswald Pohl, the head of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt), that he considered it “necessary […] that in the most free form the diligently working prisoners be given women in brothels in order to increase the work of prisoners.” To “deny this would mean […] to be naive and unrealistic.”84 The forced quartering of prostitutes in German cities was consequently accompanied by the establishment of brothels in the Reich and in the areas conquered during the war.85 These developments, which not only controlled prostitution but also decisively promoted it, illustrate the objectification of women. Prostitutes, whether voluntary or under coercion, were to be made – similar to women in marriages 81 Ayaß, Asoziale, 192–193. 82 Decisive for this decree was the “endangerment of the German blood” by relations of ‘foreign’ and forced labourers with German women, cf. circular NSDAP, Deputy of Hitler, Staff chief Martin Bormann, Munich, 7 December  1940, concerning establishment of brothels for foreign workers, in: GLA Karlsruhe 330 Access 1991/34-269. 83 Chief of the Security Police and the SD, Reinhard Heydrich, to the office of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt et al., Berlin, 16  January  1941, concerning police treatment of prostitution (brothels in case of deployed foreign workers in large numbers), in: ITS Digital Archive 2.2.0.1/82330951-82330953. 84 Letter from Heinrich Himmler to Oswald Pohl, Berlin, 23 March 1942, 3, in: Federal Archive Berlin-Lichterfelde NS 19/2065, file 37. 85 On the establishment of brothels in conquered areas, see Maren Röger, Kriegsbeziehungen. Intimität, Gewalt und Prostitution im besetzten Polen 1939 bis 1945 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2015), 29–58; Regina Mühlhäuser, Eroberungen. Sexuelle Gewalttaten und intime Beziehungen deutscher Soldaten in der Sowjetunion 1941 bis 1945 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2010), 214–239.

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within the Volksgemeinschaft – servants of men. While the wives were biologically constituted to serve the state and male interests through their ability to become pregnant and give birth to children, women stigmatised as asocial and ‘alien to the community’ were deemed useful in their ability to satisfy the male urges. This was the primary ‘service’ of those ‘other’ women for the state, especially during the war. The control exercised by the man over the woman and his access to her body were thus guaranteed for certain men both within and outside the Volksgemeinschaft: with their wives, they were to conceive ‘hereditarily healthy’ children; with women ‘alien to the community,’ they could live out their ‘drives’ as needed. Women within marriages and inside the Volksgemeinschaft were primarily concerned with the private, domestic sphere, whereas prostitutes were banished by the Nazi state, within the Reich as well as in the Wehrmacht’s area of operations, to select brothels, streets and behind the blinds.86 In labour camps, the women working in the brothels were ‘hidden’ in certain barracks, which did not differ in appearance from the workers’ accommodations, but which were located apart from each other, which served, among other things, to “protect the German population from nuisance.”87 The brothel barracks – the ‘special buildings’ (Sonderbauten) – in concentration camps were also erected peripherally by the SS; they were thus shielded from the prying eyes of inmates.88 All women thus had to ‘invisibly’ contribute 86 In Hamburg, e.g., the blinds on Herbertstraße were installed in 1933, see Gaby Zürn, “‘A.  ist  Prostituiertentyp’. Zur Ausgrenzung und Vernichtung von Prostituierten und moralisch nicht-angepaßten Frauen im nationalsozialistischen Hamburg,” in Verachtet – verfolgt – vernichtet. Zu den ‘vergessenen’ Opfern des NS-Regimes, ed. Project Group for the Forgotten Victims of the National Socialist Regime in Hamburg, registered association (Hamburg: VSA, 1986), 137. Heydrich extended the scope in which the decree of September  9, 1939 was valid, on September  21, 1939: “With regard to the local area of application of the decree of 9.9.1939, I point out that it is also to come into force in those areas within the present Reich borders which were the operational area of the army until 9.9.1939.” See express letter Reichskriminalpolizeiamt, Reinhard Heydrich, to the State Criminal Investigation Department, Kriminalpolizei(leit)stelle, Berlin, 21 September 1939, concerning police treatment of prostitution, in: GLA Karlsruhe 330 Access 1993/34-136. 87 Report of the Karlsruhe criminal police station about the meeting in the Reichskriminalpolizeiamt on October 2, 1941, Karlsruhe, 11 October 1941, concerning the establishment of brothels for foreign workers, in: GLA Karlsruhe 330 Access 1991/34-269, and express letter from Chief of the Security Police and the SD, Reinhard Heydrich, to all Kriminalpolizei(leit)stellen, Berlin, 10  January  1941, concerning police treatment of prostitution (brothels in case of deployed foreign workers in large numbers), in: GLA Karlsruhe 330 Access 1991/34-269. 88 For more on this topic, see Sommer, Das KZ-Bordell, 163–164. Even in the post-war period, the brothel barracks were to remain ‘invisible;’ e.g. it was not permitted to mention the brothel during guided tours of the Buchenwald concentration camp grounds, see Alakus, Sex-Zwangsarbeit, 138, 179–180.

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to the functioning of the decidedly normative male structure of society, each in their respectively assigned area.89 The concealment of women prostituting themselves is particularly evident in written material from court trials. Especially when prostitution and pimping were negotiated simultaneously and in correlation to each other, the male pimp always appeared as the active, regulating and determining person, while the female prostitute appeared as the passive, influenceable, often weak counterpart who was guided by her pimp. For example, in the case of the pimp Otto B. from Karlsruhe: “There was therefore no doubt in the mind of the court that he had deliberately lured Z. […] to himself and tied her down by a relationship of sexual trust for the purpose of exploiting her in order to be able to obtain a permanent additional income.”90 The woman involved did not seem to be able to defend herself against him; she was considered to have acted naively and emotionally, was blinded by her feelings towards him and did not interpret the situation realistically. Thus, the prostitute Inge S. is supposed to have said about her pimp Karl W.: “I live and die for W., what I have already done for him.”91 At the same time, the court judged the respective prostitutes to work in their profession because of their presumed natural tendency to licentiousness and low mental ability and thus established a causal connection between mental constitution and sexual promiscuity. In the case of the prostitute Wilhelmine W., for example, it was “unlikely, due to her instinctive nature […],” that “she would give up her life as a whore [Dirnenleben] and would be able to turn away from the way of life she had once adopted.”92 Here, the courts ruled, a man would again have to intervene restrictively. If he did not do so, he constituted a ‘bad’ representative of the male sex and assumed the role of a pimp.93 Furthermore, the files describe pimps as dominant and sexually active; they took sexual intercourse where, when and from whom they wanted.94 In the minds of the judicial officers, these men did business with women’s bodies and 89 On the invisibility of prostitutes and other women: Schulte, Sperrbezirke, 181; Hauer, Der NS-Staat, 30–32. Wolfgang König, Das Kondom. Zur Geschichte der Sexualität vom Kaiserreich bis in die Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2016), 123. 90 Verdict District Court Karlsruhe vs. Otto B., Karlsruhe, 8 June 1938, in: GLA Karlsruhe 3091636, file 74. 91 Verdict Court of Lay Assessors Mannheim vs. Karl W., Mannheim, 17 May 1933, 3, in: GLA Karlsruhe 521-7741. 92 Senior public prosecutor as head of the prosecution authority at the Special Court in Mannheim to the chairman, Mannheim, 27 April 1943, 25, in: GLA Karlsruhe 507-12276. 93 See here the previously mentioned example of Rudolf B. 94 A pimp testified: “If  I had the need to have intercourse with her, then […] I gave her signs to understand that she should come to me. For the traffic I […] paid nothing,”

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gained respect among women through violence. Consequently, the court considered Karl W. to be a “violent pimp” who “looks at every woman to see if he can do business with her.” The prostitute Inge S., it was said, lived in constant fear of him.95 If one looks beyond perspectives on the milieu offered by general events and instead, attempts to describe specific couple relationships and gender relations based on existing sources, an ambivalent reality becomes apparent.96 In the majority of cases, the woman who worked in prostitution and the man who participated in it as a pimp were in a kind of loving relationship with each other; they were not infrequently already spouses or presumed to marry soon. Occasionally, they had children together. Often both were already anchored in the trade before the relationship; sometimes the woman was forced into prostitution by the husband or out of general need. In many cases, they lived in separate flats or together in their working ‘accommodation’ (Absteigequartier), i.e. in the room where the woman resided for the purpose of prostitution. She was the main earner in the relationship. He may also have made a small income from casual work or peddling. Often the prostituting woman also provided her partner with clothing, fed him, paid for tobacco and alcohol, and settle his or her joint bills, rents and debts. His work consisted of supplying men. He often accompanied or supervised the woman on her ‘walks’ and, if necessary, provided (violent) help to make clients pay if they refused to do so. Characteristics of the relationships as a whole, based on the circumstances portrayed in the sources, were physical violence on the part of the man, mutual pressure – such as in cases where she threatened to ‘blow him up’ because of pimping – quarrelling, jealousy, coercion, or co-dependency, for example, when there was a common criminal offence. Frequently, the man cultivated several relationships with different prostitutes at the same time, and in some cases the woman provided financial support from prostitution to several men simultaneously or successively. The relationship between Karl  D.  and  Rosa  C. is a good example of this situation. The two met in Karlsruhe in 1931 or 1932. Rosa C. had been working as a prostitute since 1930. The couple got engaged in April 1932 and lived together in Entengasse  16 in Karlsruhe, most likely in different apartments.

95 96

see interrogation of the accused Alexander  B., Karlsruhe, 29  November  1938, in: GLA Karlsruhe 309-1794, file 9. Verdict Court of Lay Assessors Mannheim vs. Karl W., Mannheim, 17 May 1933, 3. The explanations are based on an evaluation of numerous files of the public prosecutor’s offices and courts in Mannheim, Karlsruhe, and Stuttgart in the GLA Karlsruhe (fonds 309) and public archives Ludwigsburg (fonds E 323 II), in which couples within the prostitution milieu could be identified.

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Three years later Karl  D., who had already been convicted of theft, begging and illegal gambling, was once again targeted by the judiciary when he was arrested in March 1935 for pimping Rosa C. and one month later sentenced to two years imprisonment. In the hearing before the Karlsruhe District Court, Rosa C. stated that her fiancé had come for dinner every day since the beginning of her relationship, that she had cooked for him, paid the rent and bought clothes from her “corrupt earnings.” Evident in the sources, the two had originally planned to get married in the summer of 1934, but this did not happen because Karl D. started a relationship with another woman who also presumably worked in prostitution. Adding up the amounts given by Rosa C. during the trial, it seems she provided her fiancé and pimp with an average of three to four Reichsmark a day. The court estimated the total amount of these donations at about 4,000 Reichsmark. Like many of her colleagues, Rosa  C. also reported regular abuse by Karl D. and stated that she had threatened several times to accuse him officially for pimping, to which he responded that he would “slit her throat.” Intimidated by his menaces, Rosa C. no longer dared to take action against him. Ultimately, the court had no doubt that Karl D. had entered into intimate relations with the “prostitute circles” (Dirnenkreise), had encouraged Rosa C. to engage in prostitution, and had granted her protection as a result.97 The relationships between prostitutes and pimps did, to a certain degree, question the hierarchical gender arrangement with the woman acting as the ‘breadwinner’; however, as we can see from the above case, this did not give her the power to control the relationship; her only means of defence against her partner or pimp was to threaten to make a criminal accusation. Although prostitutes often lived alone or separate from their partners, their pimps dominated the relationship by taking on the role of protector and sponsor of the prostitutes and, if necessary, asserted their male claim to superiority through pressure and violence. They thus relegated women to the subordinate position and established the accepted gender hierarchy. The explanations have shown that, both, in the external perception of the prostitution milieu through contemporary jurisprudence and in the couple relationships between prostitutes and pimps, women remained predominantly marginalised, invisible, even objects to be monitored, regulated and used by men.98 Linked to this is the question: to what extent did the invisibility of women who worked in prostitution presuppose their marginalisation 97 98

On the case of Karl D. und Rosa C.: GLA Karlsruhe 309-1882. On the subject of the feminine as the element to be monitored, limited, and used by the masculine, see e.g. Helga Amesberger et al., Sexualisierte Gewalt. Weibliche Erfahrungen

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by men? Or to put it another way: did the invisibility of women condition their marginalisation? And to what extent can parallels and contrasts with the woman inside the Volksgemeinschaft be discerned compared to the ‘othered’ prostitute? Conclusion The question of whether prostitutes and pimps in the Third Reich were beyond the Volksgemeinschaft in relation to their social position and whether they were in opposition to the contemporary gender image with regard to their perception and representation in Nazi ideology can be answered in two ways. On the one hand, they were excluded from the Volksgemeinschaft as ‘alien to the community,’ ‘asocial,’ and considered to be the ‘opponents’ and ‘enemies’ of society. In fact, they were also subjected to all the persecution measures of the Nazi state; this is a specific feature of the Third Reich’s dealing with members of its milieu. Governmental and bureaucratic authorities, as well as representatives of criminological, psychiatric, and welfare disciplines, based their reasoning for stigmatisation, surveillance, discrimination, custody, violence, and, not infrequently, murder, on the construction of a clear and powerful contrast between members of the milieu and the so-called Volksgenossen (members of the Volksgemeinschaft). Within the National Socialist ideology, the woman in prostitution was considered a ‘non-woman,’ an ‘asocial,’ and a propagator of sexually transmitted diseases. The man who took part in the prostitution of the woman as a pimp was portrayed as a habitual, and criminal ‘asocial’ individual who either did not know, failed, or simply ignored his ‘duties’ as a man. The pimp and the hegemonic man thus formed a dialectical counterpart similar to the prostitute and the ideal woman. Both prostitutes and pimps, through their deviant and delinquent behaviour, damaged the Volksgemeinschaft and thwarted the ideal-typical gender image of National Socialism. Accordingly, they were to be ‘eliminated’ in the sense of Nazi racial policy. On the other hand, while prostitutes and pimps were not considered members of the Volksgemeinschaft from an ideological point of view and contradicted the National Socialist ideas of appropriate femininity and masculinity in their actions, they were nonetheless not so ‘alien’ to the Nazi society after all, but rather, as this contribution has shown, also reflected the principles of the Volksgemeinschaft. In social reality, women in prostitution were subordinated in NS-Konzentrationslagern (Vienna: Mandelbaum, 2010), 28–29; Elfriede Jelinek, “Das weibliche Nicht-Opfer,” in Amesberger, Sexualisierte Gewalt, 10–16.

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to perceived male ‘needs.’ Prostitution was not meant to be fought as a system; rather, it was not intended to be visible. Ultimately, prostitution was instrumentalised and promoted in the Second World War for the purposes of those in power. The women in prostitution were marginalised and ‘objectified’ by men; both by men of the Volksgemeinschaft as well as by pimps. The prostitution milieu actually represented a counter image to the National Socialist Volksgemeinschaft – it was the ‘Non-Volksgemeinschaft.’ But even this Non-Volksgemeinschaft was characterised by means of a heteronormatively defined and accepted binary relationship of the sexes under male supremacy. It ultimately contained the same dispositional elements and was thus just as much an expression of a patriarchal fascist society as the Volksgemeinschaft.

“Do you know each other?” Anti-VD Campaigns in Early Post-1945 Germany Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska In 1946, the Swedish journalist Stig Dagerman described a poster he had seen at the railway station in Hamburg: “a young woman, her skull showing faintly beneath the mask of her face, warns against venereal disease. One has to learn to see death in every woman one meets.“1 (fig. 9.1). The poster was designed in 1943 by order of the British Ministry of Health and was initially displayed in the United Kingdom to warn men, particularly soldiers, of the risks of contracting venereal disease (VD) through casual sexual intercourse.2 When the British army occupied Germany after the end of the Second World War, the British military government used the same materials for another anti-VD campaign. The image refers to an iconography that has been visible for centuries throughout European history and depicts prostitutes as ‘loose’ and ‘degenerate’ women.3 Belgian artist Félicien Rops’ paintings of made-up skulls, female skeletons in underwear or men having sex with a female Death can be mentioned as one of many examples (fig. 9.2). 1 Stig Dagerman, German Autumn. trans. Robin Fulton Mcpherson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 102. 2 Even though today’s medicine prefers the term sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) or sexually transmitted infections (STIs), I use the notion of venereal diseases (VDs) throughout this article as this is how syphilis and gonorrhea were referred to in the early post-war years. Since I analyze neither the spoken nor written discourse, dividing contemporary wordings from those available in the sources would be of no benefit to the article. Allan M. Brand, “AIDS in Historical Perspective. Four Lessons from the History of Sexually Transmitted Diseases,” American Journal of Public Health 78 (1988): 367–371; Guenter Burg, “History of Sexually Transmitted Diseases,” Giornale Italiano di Dermatologia i Venerologia 147 (2012): 329–340; Franjo Gruber, Jasna Lipozenčić, Tatjana Kehler, “History of Venereal Diseases from Antiquity to the Renaissance,” Acta Dermatovenerol Croat 23 (2015): 1–11. 3 Mary Spongberg, Feminizing Venereal Disease. The Body of the Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century Medical Discourse (New York: New York University Press, 1997); Elfriede Regina Knauer, “Portrait of a Lady? Some reflections on images of prostitutes from the later fifteenth century,” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 47 (2002): 95–117; Lutz  D.H.  Sauerteig, “‘The Fatherland is in Danger, Save the Fatherland!’ Venereal disease, sexuality and gender in Imperial and Weimar Germany,” in Sex, Sin and Suffering: Venereal Disease and European Society since 1870, eds. Roger Davidson, Lesley A. Hall (London, New York: Routledge, 2011), 76–92.

© Brill Schöningh, 2023 | doi:10.30965/9783657790470_010

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Fig. 9.1 British anti-VD poster, ca. 1943, source: Science Museum London: Wellcome Images, Creative Commons, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 9.2 Félicien Rops, “Menschliche Parodie,” In Félicien Rops 1833–1898, edited by Hans Joachim Nyer (Ostfildern: Ruit, 1999), 201.

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At the same time as Dagerman made his observation in Hamburg, thousands of posters presenting a sick man juxtaposed to a happy family were put on display in the Soviet sector of Berlin (fig. 9.3). The text informed readers that, in order to save the family, anyone who thought he/she might have been infected should visit a physician or medical practice, as all VDs were curable. Contrary to the British poster, the East German image carries two positive messages: family bliss, and the curability of VDs. The children with their parents are presented in an almost religious mode, resembling classical paintings of the Holy Family, most notably of the early modern subjects of Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, Raphael’s Madonna of the Goldfinch or his Canigiani Holy Family, to name but a few of the possible references. Accordingly, the figures are depicted in a triangular composition with the children siting on their mother’s lap, mirroring the Renaissance iconography of Jesus on Mary’s lap. The light that surrounds the family on the poster strengthens the Biblical reference. The second message of the poster, namely the curability of VDs, could have been introduced only after the invention of penicillin, which became accessible during the course of the Second World War. Hence, it was a new theme in 1946 and therefore absent from the Hamburg poster designed three years earlier. These early post-war anti-VD campaigns reveal the administrations’ attitude towards prostitution, promiscuity and controlling sexual behavior.4 This article discusses anti-VD campaigns in occupied West and East Germany as a biopolitical tool of both keeping the allied armies healthy and combat-ready and reestablishing conservative family norms and gender relations in German society. The notion of biopolitics has been highly influenced by Michele Foucault’s works on the history of sexuality and madness, in which he showed how the state controlled and disciplined health and reproduction in order to shape a collective, national ‘body.’ Historians focusing on Germany have mostly drawn on this concept in the context of Nazi racial policies. However, as Edward Ross Dickson rightly claims, biopolitics deserves to be analyzed in a broader historical perspective that includes both pre-Nazi Germany as well as the post-war period.5 Accordingly, this study concentrates on the transitional years from 1945 until the founding of the GDR and FRG in 1949 and mostly focuses on the Soviet and American occupation zones, with a few additional examples from the British zone.6 I adopt a comparative approach which enables an analysis 4 Claude Quetel, History of Syphilis, trans. Judith Braddock, Brian Pike (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1990). 5 Edward Ross Dickson, “Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy: Some Reflections on Our Discourse about ‘Modernity’,” Central European History 37, 1 (2004): 1–48. 6 The French zone is not included in this study, but it seems probable that the results would be at least to some extent similar to those from the American and British zone. In her excellent

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Fig. 9.3

Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska

Anti-VD poster from the Soviet occupation zone, 1946, source: Bundesarchiv, sign. B285 Plak-025-016.

191

Anti-VD campaigns in early post-war Germany, 1945–1949

of the biopolitical discourses from a broader perspective, on both sides of the iron curtain. The VD Epidemic and Prostitution At the peak of the early post-war VD epidemic, the total number of registered gonorrhea and syphilis infections reached 52.3 to 72.1 cases per 10,000 inhabitants (excluding Berlin). To realize how serious this epidemic was, it is worth comparing it with the widely-commented-on 2014 Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, where the number of infected people reached 18 per 10,000 inhabitants.7 However, the high number of infections caused by VDs in the post-war realities was not a solely German problem. In Poland, for instance, the number of syphilis infections in 1946 is estimated to have been between 50 to even 200 per 10,000 inhabitants.8 Neither was the epidemic limited to this particular period of time. Large outbreaks of of gonorrhea and syphilis have always been highly correlated with wars and migratory movements.9 Table 9.1

Cases of gonorrhea and syphilis per 10,000 inhabitants within the German population

gonorrhea

syphilis

all

1946 Soviet zone

30.5

14.7

44.7

1947 Soviet zone

22.0

30.3

52.3

1948 Soviet zone

13.0

18.5

31.5

1949 Soviet zone

8.6

16.5

25.1

1946 Western zones

51.7

20.4

72.1

1947 Western zones

40.1

25.3

65.4

1948 Western zones

28.8

21.4

50.2

book on the public health crisis in early post-war Germany, Jessica Reinisch points out that France “was bound – for both practical and political reasons – by Anglo-American policies.” The administrations of all Western zones followed similar rules that were introduced predominantly by the Americans, even if detailed regulations may have differed in particular cases. Jessica Reinisch, The Perils of Peace: The Public Health Crisis in Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 262. 7 Ebola Outbreaks. Accessed December 10, 2018, https://www.healthmap.org/ebola/ #projection. 8 Piotr Barański, “Walka z chorobami wenerycznymi w Polsce w latach 1948–1949,” in Kłopoty z seksem w PRL. Rodzenie nie całkiem po ludzku, aborcja, choroby, odmienności, ed. Marcin Kula (Warszawa: Wydawnictwa UW, 2012), 21–23. 9 Quetel, History, chapter 5.

192 Table 9.1

Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska Cases of gonorrhea and syphilis per 10,000 inhabitants (cont.)

gonorrhea 1949 Western zones

syphilis

all

21.4

13.4

34.8

1946 Berlin

103.5

40.3

143.8

1947 Berlin

57.1

27.6

84.7

1948 Berlin

47.6

24.4

72.0

1949 Berlin

42.3

14.5

56.8

Sources: World Health Organization, Epidemiological and Vital Statistical Report (1949); Berlin in Zahlen 1948–1949 (Berlin: Hauptamt für Statistik von Groß-Berlin, 1950); Statistisches Jahrbuch für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1954 (Wiesbaden: Statistisches Bundesamt, 1955); Statistisches Jahrbuch der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik 1956 (Berlin: Staatliche Zentralverwaltung für Statistik, 1957).

Ever since the emergence of syphilis in Europe in the 16th century, the illness has been discursively linked to prostitution. However, as Claude Quétel argues, from the late 18th century, the authorities often manipulated the numbers in order to accuse the prostitutes of acting against the social order.10 At least in the western zones of early post-war Germany, the situation was not very different. In a case study from Hamburg, Michaela Freund shows that prostitution and VDs belonged to the same discursive field. The police or social workers defined who was to be considered a prostitute, a ‘loose woman’, and a spreader of VDs.11 Contrary to the number of VD infections that required treatment, and thus were usually registered by physicians and health offices, the number of prostitutes is difficult to estimate. The Police in Stuttgart counted, for instance, only 62 prostitutes in 194812 – a number which cannot have reflected the real dimension of phenomenon, but corresponded to the 1927 Act for the Combating of Venereal Diseases (Gesetz zur Bekämpfung von Geschlechtskrankheiten), which required the registration of persons having “intercourse with frequently changing partners” (häufig wechselnder Geschlechtsverkehr). In an altered version, the Act was kept in force both in Nazi-Germany and, after further changes, in post-war Germany, even though the authorities were aware of its inadequacy.13 The Medical Division of the Headquarters of European 10 11

Ibid., 211–221. Michaela Freund, “Women, venereal disease and the control of female sexuality in postwar Hamburg,” in Sex, Sin and Suffering, 217. 12 Report, City of Stuttgart, Police Department to Military Government, Subject: Disorderly State of Prostitution in Stuttgart, August 16, 1948, p. 2. BA Z45/F15/115-2/46. 13 For the legal changes, see the text by Mirjam Schnorr in this volume as well as Julia Roos, Weimar through the lens of gender. Prostitution reform, woman’s emancipation,

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Command thus distinguished between about 100 full-time (meaning: registered) prostitutes in Frankfurt and about 2,000 part-time (meaning: not-registered) prostitutes.14 In Bremen, in turn, policemen stated that: Current venereal diseases problems are (…) directly related to the large numbers of uncontrolled prostitutes who inhabit or visit the Bremen area. Their number is presently estimated at from 300 to 500. For the most part, they are vagrants with neither regular work nor a regular place of abode, many of whom arrive from the Eastern Zone of Germany and others follow departing troops.15

According to Donna Harsh, about 100,000 prostitutes lived in Berlin in the early post-war years, although her understanding of prostitution goes beyond the legal frames of the time. Apparently, her definition includes all ‘promiscuous’ women having occasional sex with men in exchange of gifts or food as prostitutes.16 Indeed, numerous women had short affairs with both allied soldiers and German men and they used to receive presents, although rarely money, from them.17 This notwithstanding, most of these women would not have called themselves prostitutes, nor would these men have said they were clients. Both explained their promiscuity by post-war realities, such as enjoying the fact that the war had finally ended, unemployment (especially among and German democracy, 1919–33 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010); Julia Roos, “Backlash against Prostitutes’ Rights: Origins and Dynamics of Nazi Prostitution Policies,” in Sexuality and German Fascism, ed. Dagmar Herzog (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005) 67–94; Sybille Steinbacher, Wie der Sex nach Deutschland kam. Der Kampf um Sittlichkeit und Anstand in der frühen Bundesrepublik (Munich: Siedler, 2011); Michaela Freund-Widder, Frauen unter Kontrolle. Prostitution und ihre staatliche Bekämpfung in Hamburg vom Ende des Ende des Kaiserreichs bis zu den Anfängen der Republik (Münster: LIT, 2003). 14 Report, Headquarters European Command, Medical Division to Chief, Public Health Branch, Subject: Licensing of Prostitutes in Germany, July 21, 1948. BA Z45/F15/115-2/46. 15 Report, Office of Military Government for Bremen to Office of Military Government for Germany (US), September 22, 1948, p. 2. NARA RG 260/OMGUS, shipment 15, box 115-2, folder 46 (Folder title: Control of venereal diseases, EUCOM Circular no. 55). Throughout the article the folder is cited as BA Z45/F15/115-2/46 since I quote from the copy held at the Bundesarchiv Koblenz. 16 Donna Harsch, Revenge of the Domestic. Women, the Family, and Communism in the German Democratic Republic (Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007), 29. 17 The literature on the topic is huge. See for instance: Maria Höhn, GIs and Fräuleins. The German-American Encounter in 1950s West Germany (Chapel Hill, London: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Annette Brauerhoch, “Fräuleins” und GIs. Geschichte und Filmgeschichte (Frankfurt am Main, Basel: Stromfeld, 2006); Elisabeth Heinemann, What Difference Does a Husband Make? Women and Marital Status in Nazi and Postwar Germany (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 1999). For the Soviet occupation zone see: Harsch, Revenge; Silke Satjukow, Besatzer. “Die Russen” in Deutschland, 1945–1994 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2008).

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women) or the demographic disproportion (in Berlin, for instance, there were 141 women per 100 men in the age cohort of 20 to 40 years).18 The military governments in the western zones took a negative attitude towards prostitution, especially when it came to judging sexual intercourse between German women and GIs, which was seen as responsible for the high number of VDs.19 However, there are at least two factors that raise doubts about this assumption. First, a serious epidemic of VDs occurred also in other post-war countries where no allied troops operated. The aforementioned high number of infections in Poland, for instance, could not have been a result of sexual intercourse between Polish women and Soviet soldiers, as such encounters were rare.20 The same should be stated about the situation in German Soviet occupation zone, although recent research proves that both brief and long-standing relationships between German women and Soviet soldiers occurred.21 Secondly, the number of infected German women and German men was almost equal in the period 1946 to 1949, however slightly more men suffered from gonorrhea and slightly more women from syphilis – a proportion usual in other VD epidemics.22 If the infections had been caused primarily by contact between the so called ‘fräuleins’ and the GIs, the number of infected German men would have been lower. The majority of infections must have therefore resulted from intercourse between German women and German men. In fact, documents from the Central Health Commission (Zentralverwaltung für das Gesundheitswesen) in the Soviet zone do not even mention prostitution as one of the reasons for the epidemic, but instead point to ‘accidental’ sexual intercourse with strangers under the influence of alcohol and without condoms.23 Contrary to the western zones where VDs were still linked to prostitution in accordance with the old discourse of ‘degenerate’ women, in the Soviet zone, both phenomena appeared separately. The public campaigns of the Central Health Commission remained silent about prostitution until 1948 when they ordered the feature 18 Berlin in Zahlen, 29. 19 Höhn, Fräuleins and GIs, passim. 20 Marcin Zaremba, Wielka Trwoga. Polska 1944–1947. Ludowa reakcja na kryzys (Kraków, Warszawa: Znak, ISP PAN, 2012), 151–157. 21 Satjukow, Besatzer; Silke Satjukow and Rainer Gries, Bankerte! Besatzungskinder in Deutschland nach 1945 (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2015). 22 Statistisches Jahrbuch für die Bundesrepublik, 77; Barbara Smith, The Rules of Engagement. German Women and British Occupiers 1945–1949 (Theses and Dissertations, Waterloo, 2009), accessed December  10, 2018, http://scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=2071&context=etd, 174. 23 Informationen über Gesundheitswesen, Gesundheitspolitik und Erziehung zur Volkshygiene, June 15, 1946, BA SAPMO DQ1/1524, 2.

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film Street Acquaintance (Straßenbekanntschaft) by Peter Pewas (discussed later in this paper). Instead, they educated the public about the causes and symptoms of syphilis and gonorrhea, as well as about the advantages of remaining healthy. The post-1945 epidemic was different than previous epidemics in one important aspect: due to the discovery of penicillin, the prognosis for patients was much more optimistic than in previous epochs. Treatments prior to the development of antibiotics could only relieve the symptoms, whereas penicillin was the first effective drug that combated syphilis and gonorrhea. Although the antibacterial property of the mould penicillium was discovered in the late 1920s, it took many years before the drug could be produced in large quantities.24 During the Second World War, the US Army administered it to soldiers for the treatment of the infected wounds and by the end of the war, the first doses were prescribed to civilians. However, access to penicillin was still limited in early post-war Germany. The following anecdote provided by the British reporter Victor Gollancz proves that, despite treating patients suffering from VDs as a priority, penicillin was available only for the most severely sick. In late 1946, he visited hospitals in Hamburg and spoke to German doctors, one of whom agreed that: “there wasn’t enough penicillin,” but his own explanation – “the Germans can’t pay for it” – appeared, in his view, to dispose of the matter once and for all. I was to remember what he said when I saw a man a few days later at the University Hospital of Hamburg in agony because there was no penicillin for him.25

Regardless of the fact that, thanks to penicillin and public health measures, the situation in post-war Germany improved within only two years (the numbers decreased by about 25 to 50 percent), the issue remained present in the public sphere until at least the founding of the two German states in 1949. Dagmar Ellerbrock argues that the reason for continued propaganda measures against all kind of infections was of a political rather than sanitary nature. The military government in the American zone especially provoked the fear of germs as a justification for enforcing discipline, and putting the administration in a good light when the epidemic finally ended.26 Only in big cities like Berlin, Hamburg 24 Ulrike Lindner, Gesundheitspolitik in der Nachkriegszeit. Großbritannien und die Bundesrepublik im Vergleich (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2004), 289–290. 25 Victor Gollancz, In Darkest Germany (Hindsdale: Henry Regnery Company, 1947), 39–40. 26 Dagmar Ellerbrock, “Healing Democracy.” – Demokratie als Heilmittel. Gesundheit, Krankheit und Politik in der amerikanischen Besatzungszone 1945–1949 (Bonn: Dietz, 2004), 322.

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or Bremen did the number of infections remain worryingly high after 1948. It is noteworthy that this was usually seen as a consequence of prostitution. Anti-VD Measures in the Western Occupation Zones Sexual intercourse between German women and allied soldiers belong to the cultural memory of the early post-war period. Part of this discourse were the notions “nylon stockings” (Nylonstrümpfe) and “Veronika Dankeschön” (Veronika, thank you). The first referred to the alleged gifts that allied soldiers gave to their German girlfriends. As early as 1948, Billy Wilder used the motif of nylon stockings in his film A Foreign Affair, starring Marlene Dietrich who played a German ex-Nazi singer having an affair with a high-ranked American officer. The second notion is a play on words with the acronym VD, in which “Veronika” was a popular code for “fraternization,” while “Dankeschön” was an ironic statement about the infection.27 Since the military government were attempting to fight syphilis and gonorrhea among their people, the posters mentioned and presented here are written in English (fig. 9.4). Additionally, bulletin-boards in the barracks displayed pictures of infected women (fig. 9.5). In a broader sense, warning soldiers away from German women was not just a public health measure but also part of the American non-fraternization policy that “included a range of prohibited forms of contact, such as shaking hands or eating and drinking with Germans, giving or receiving gifts, playing games or sports, sharing accommodation, as well as any form of sexual relations.”28 The policy derived from the premises of denazification, according to which, all Germans were suspected of supporting Nazism. Only after the rules of denazification had been softened was the fraternization ban lifted in 1947. Interestingly enough, the high numbers of VDs among American soldiers contributed to the policy’s change. The Health Offices feared that, due to the fraternization ban and the punishment for sexual intercourse with German women, infected allied soldiers were avoiding treatment, which was then furthering the spread of VDs.29 As a result of the fraternization ban’s political framing and the Public Health Branch’s concentration on allied soldiers, measures to educate the local population were kept to a minimum. One of the few contrary examples is a poster from July 1946 intended to inform Germans about the rise of infections, the 27 Heinemann, What Difference, 100–101; Maria Höhn, GIs and Fräuleins, 128–129. 28 Jessica Reinisch, The Perils of Peace, 194. 29 Ibid., 195.

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Fig. 9.4

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Posters addressed to American soldiers, 1946 and 1948, Source: Winfried Ranke et al., Kultur, Pajoks und Care-Pakete. Eine Berliner Chronik 1945–1949 (Berlin: NiSHEN, 1990), 225.

Fig. 9.5 A bulletin-board with portraits of infected German women. Photographer: Gerhard Groenefeld. Source: N.N., “Der moderne Pranger.” Neue Berliner Illustrierte 38 (1947), 5.

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Fig. 9.6 Poster addressed to Germans, 1946. Source: Institut für Stadtgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main.

necessity of the treatment and the remedial effect of penicillin (Fig. 9.6). Because the post-war health care in West Germany was generally based on the 1934 Gesetz zur Vereinheitlichung des Gesundheitswesens (with the exception of paragraphs concerning race or euthanasia),30 the appearance of the Nazi-rooted word “Volksseuche” (nation’s plague) in gothic letters is unsurprising. The numbers on the graph are underestimated by at least tenfold as it probably attempts to illustrate the dynamics of the epidemic rather than providing actual statistics. The most significant element of this poster, however, is the appeal to both German men and women. Contrary to the material distributed among allied soldiers, it does not represent the threat as coming solely from women. Although 100,000 copies of this poster were printed, this example seems to have been an exception to the rule. Another special case was the limited distribution of the semi-documentary US film Fight syphilis (1942), which the Information Control Division imported to Germany and translated in 1946.31 The German audience watched images of their occupiers suffering from syphilis, and were provided with medical 30 Ellerbrock, Healing Democracy, 160; Melanie Arndt, Gesundheitspolitik im geteilten Berlin 1948–1961 (Köln et al: Böhlau, 2009), 43. 31 Brigitte  J.  Jahn, Umerziehung durch Dokumentarfilm? Ein Instrument amerikanischer Kulturpolitik im Nachkriegsdeutschland (1945–1953) (Münster: Lit, 1997), 280.

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knowledge from before the popularization of penicillin. Only in 1948, after two years of discussions between the Information Control Division and the Public Health Branch, was the German film Reaction: positive (Reaktion: positiv) produced.32 It provided actual medical information within a fictional frame about a German couple, but was screened at a time when the epidemic was already under control. The British administration followed a similar strategy. First, they ordered a very limited production run of the one minute film Unfortunately it is so (Es ist leider so, 1946), which was of very limited range.33 Eventually, the more popular film, Enemies in Blood (Feinde im Blut),34 was made in 1948. Overall, this shows the muddled and somewhat lengthy process of the British and American media campaign to adopt film as a productive part of their antiVD campaigns. Among the most controversial measures taken by the authorities to control the spread of VDs were vice raids. The police arrested women around bars, cinemas, railway stations, or other public stations and took them for compulsory gynecological examination. Officially, such measures were directed at potentially infected women, not all of whom were necessarily prostitutes. Instructions from May 1947 announced that “Vice raids will be conducted only when verifiable information is available to indicate beyond a reasonable doubt that those apprehended are infected with venereal disease and then only with concurrence by Military Government Officials and the active support of the civil authorities.”35 In practice, the raids were conducted “around known hangouts of prostitutes.”36 In her book What a difference does a Husband make? Elisabeth Heinemann quotes an interview with a thirty year old woman who: happy that the wartime prohibition on dancing had been lifted, visited a club with her mother and friend only to end in the evening in an assembly-line gynecological examination: “Well, before we could look around, there was a truck outside. (…) That was really bad; we were handled like hookers there.”37

Generally, attempting to primarily protect American and British soldiers rather than the German population did not produce the desired results. An internal report illustrates the helplessness of the administration: 32 33 34 35

Copy from Bundesarchiv Filmarchiv, sign. 280579. Copy from Bundesarchiv Filmarchiv, sign. 2830. Copy from Bundesarchiv Filmarchiv, sign. 2226. Headquarters European Command, Unclassified, May 28, 1947, Ref. No. M. SC-28639. BA Z45/F15/115-2/46. 36 Report from Military Government Liaison and Security Office Munich to Office off Military Government for Bavaria, Subject: Control of VD, February  9, 1948. BA Z45/ F15/115-2/46. 37 Elisabeth D. Heinemann, What Difference, 102.

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GIs contracted venereal diseases from local women, who had also sexual intercourse with local men. Thus, all three groups were equally concerned. In the eyes of the American and British military governments, however, most of the infections were transmitted by prostitutes,39 and so they continued to suggest that venereal diseases were primarily spread by German women even after lifting the fraternization ban in 1947. Anti-VD Measures in the Soviet Occupation Zone Raids also took place in the Soviet zone. The administration justified this practice as a means of efficient protection of the population. Moreover, their press organs pointed to the irresponsible “fräuleins” who moved between the zones, went out with western (mainly American) soldiers and thus spread the epidemic.40 Therefore, while the Americans held German women responsible for infections, the Soviets found the GIs no less guilty and embedded VDs in their anti-capitalist discourse. The health offices in the Soviet occupation zone also reacted differently to the epidemic of VDs than the military governments in the western zones. Firstly, anti-VD campaigns started earlier; secondly, they were addressed primarily at the local population and aimed at protecting German women and men rather than only Soviet soldiers; thirdly, they rarely referred to prostitution as the main cause of the epidemic. These three differences could be easily observed in the visual public sphere of the early post-war Soviet zone. At a time when paper was a limited and often-recycled resource, hundreds of thousands of colorful anti VD-posters, leaflets and postcards were printed.41 In September 1946, a certain Dr. Teller from the Central Health Commission wrote: Numerous public ambulances in all urban and rural districts are established for people suffering from VDs. (…) The directors of the ambulances are responsible 38 39 40 41

Officer Tenney, Prostitution and VD in Germany (draft), p. 10. BA Z45/F15/115-2/46. Letter from Public Safety Bruch Berlin to Civil Administration Divisions OMGUS, Subject: Licensing of Prostitutes in Germany, September 13, 1948. BA Z45/F15/115-2/46. N.N., “Die Geissel der Nachkriegszeit,” Neue Berliner Illustrierte 38 (1947): 4–5. Wolfgang Benz, Auftrag Demokratie. Die Gründungsgeschichte der Bundesrepublik und die Entstehung der DDR 1945–1949 (Berlin: Metropol, 2009), 149.

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for a widely scheduled education program about the nature and the risks of VDs as well as about their curability and predictability. Brochures, posters, the press, film and radio as well as public lectures are the media of this education program.42

Already on 9th March, 1946, the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden, which was subordinated to the Central Health Commission, reopened the exhibition Venereal Diseases and Their Treatment (Geschlechtskrankheiten und ihre Bekämpfung). By the end of the year, its full or shortened version was presented in 82 other cities in the Soviet zone and in nine districts of East Berlin.43 Only later did the museum put further topics, such as other infectious diseases or nutrition, on display. In a mix of artistic tableaus and scientific wax models, the first post-war exhibition explained the causes and symptoms of syphilis and gonorrhea. Although the sexual act itself was referred to quite vaguely, the tableaus informed visitors about the risks of having sex with different partners. Among the most visible and repeated slogans were: “venereal diseases are infectious”; “venereal diseases are avoidable”; “venereal diseases are curable.” Faithfulness to one partner was declared to be the most effective protection. The German Hygiene Museum in Dresden had much experience in educational measures. The museum was initially opened in 1912 and specialized in exhibitions devoted to medical issues, organizing anti-VD campaigns as early as the 1920s. Many of the props in the 1946 exhibition, including the extremely realistic wax models of ulcerations of the genitalia, came from the pre-war years. Most of the old tableaus were replaced, however, as medical knowledge about VDs had changed over the course of time. This exhibition reached an audience of over 700,000 visitors, 96.5 percent of them attending the exhibition in organized groups.44 111,000 of the visitors received a small catalogue and another 12,000 bought a special brochure devoted to VDs. The design of the exhibition followed contemporary standards of propaganda. The curator, Dr. Rudolf Neubert, explained: What is the value of the exhibition? Firstly, fact that most people think visually, hence pictures they see impress them and remain in their memory more than words. The tableaus bring pictures and words together in a way that turned out effective already. These are tools of advertising which we use not to sell things but to fulfil the aims of social hygiene.45 42 Informationen über Gesundheitswesen, p. 2. 43 Report on the audience of large and medium travelling exhibitions concerning venereal diseases, 1946, Sächsisches Staatsarchiv Dresden, sign. 13658. 44 Ibid. 45 Dr. med. Rudolf Neubert, Report on the travelling exhibition concerning venereal diseases, Sächsisches Staatsarchiv Dresden, sign. 13658, p. 1.

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It seems clear that the Central Health Commission and the Hygiene Museum arranged the exhibition as a tool of social engineering intended to have a massive impact on the audience. Drawing on the pre-war experience of the museum it had not just practical, but also ideological reasons. Despite the museum’s engagement in Nazi racial policies, it was still perceived as an institution that embodied the ideas of modernity and health; it contributed significantly to the discourse of a modern and technocratic East Germany.46 As a result, the antiVD campaign promoted healthy and strong bodies in an efficient society – the exhibition ended, for instance, with tableaus explaining that the yearly loss caused by syphilis and gonorrhea, as well as the cost of treating them, equaled the price of rebuilding Dresden. The issue of modernization was often embodied by figures of physicians and scientists: men wearing gowns and glasses, often holding test tubes or syringes in their hands to represent professionality, knowledge and development. Among the images that complemented the anti-VD exhibition was the poster displayed in the introduction to this article. In this image, the doctor takes care of the sick man. Despite the dark colors symbolizing the patient’s bad condition, he gives hope for successful treatment. The professional status of the physician is juxtaposed to the family bliss referred to in terms of religious symbols, as discussed above. The most important thing, however, is the fact that we have no information on how the man was infected. We can only assume that he must have cheated on his wife/partner and the resulting infection was a kind of punishment for his transgression, which – according to Mary Douglas – is a culturally prevalent explanation of illness.47 The quasi-religious composition of the image suggests that extramarital sex should be treated as a sin and refers to the symbolic figure of KKK (Kinder, Küche, Kirche) that dominated the German discourse of femininity throughout the 19th and early 20th century.48 Either way, the poster does not fit the socialist ideal of a strong and working feminine body,49 proving that anti-VD iconography reached beyond prevalent political discourses and was designed to attract a range of different 46

Susanne König, “Bilder vom Menschen – Geschichte und Gegenwart. Die Dauerausstellung des Deutschen Hygiene Museums Dresden,” Zeithistorische Forschungen / Studies in Contemporary History  4 (2007): 246–256; Das Deutsche Hygiene-Museum Dresden 1911– 1990, ed. Klaus Vogel (Dresden: DHMD, 2003). 47 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. First published in 1966. (London, New York: Routledge, 2001), 5. 48 Sylvia Paletschek, “Kinder – Küche – Kirche,” in Deutsche Erinnerungsorte, vol. 2, eds. Etienne François, Hagen Schulze (München: Beck, 2001). 49 Gunnilla-Friedrike Budde, “Die Körper der ‘sozialistischen Frauenpersönlichkeit.’ Weiblichkeits-Vorstellungen in der SBZ und der frühen DDR,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 26 (2000): 602–628.

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Fig. 9.7

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Anti-venereal poster from the Soviet occupation zone, 1946, source: Bundesarchiv, sign. B285 Plak-025-008.

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audiences. Nor does it contain any clear reference to prostitution, which remained largely invisible in the East German anti-VD campaign. A good example of the absence of prostitutes in anti-VD discourse is provided by another image from the same campaign. Like the poster discussed above, it depicts a happy family in its upper part and the sick man beneath (fig. 9.7). This time, however, it is the wife, not the doctor, who looks after the man. The punishment reaches not only the actual ‘sinner’ (the cheating man) but also his wife who has to nurse him, although she may now be sick herself. The little girl is unusually similar to Little Red Riding Hood, the woman wears a traditional German dress (Tracht) and the man is astonishingly feminine, although this is better explained by the poor artistic skills of the painter rather than a hidden allusion to homosexuality. Instead of referring to religious motifs, this poster suggests that VDs threaten both the traditional family and the German national culture. Even though the image strongly resembles Nazi propaganda of the ‘national-body’ (Volkskörper),50 it was designed and approved in July 1946 by the Central Health Commission in the Soviet zone. Apparently, it addresses viewers attached to traditional, national values even if they do not correspond with the dominant discourses of the Soviet zone. Both posters seem to have double meanings: on the one hand, they obviously warn the viewers about VDs; on the other hand, they are a tool of reestablishing the conservative family ideal in a demographically destroyed post-war society. Indeed, the high disproportion between numbers of men and women as well as the high rate of divorces, especially in families where the men had returned after many years of absence, seemed to challenge the traditional family model.51 The VD epidemic thus provided a persuasive pretext to praise the married couple with children – a genuinely conservative model – not as valued in itself, but as a preventive measure in the field of public health. The image of female extramarital sexual partners who threatened the public order was strengthened by other media. In 1947, the DEFA (the only film production company in the Soviet occupation zone and later in the GDR) 50 See: Körper im Nationalsozialismus. Bilder und Praxen, ed. Paula Diehl (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2006). 51 Merith Niehuss, Famile, Frau und Gesellschaft. Studien zur Strukturgeschichte der Familie in Westdeutschland, 1945–1960 (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck and Ruprecht, 2001), 99; Robert Moeller, Protecting Motherhood. Women and the Family in the Politics of Postwar West Germany (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 1993), 28; Annette Kuhn, “‘Kann ich mir einen Mann leisten?’ Frauengeschichtliche Überlegungen zu einer Zeitungsumfrage des Jahres 1948,” in Nach dem Krieg. Frauenleben und Geschlechterkonstruktionen in Europa nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, eds. Irene Bandhauer-Schöffmann, Claire Duchen (Herbolzheim: Centaurus, 2000), 105–115. For a contemporary voice see: Walter von Hollander, “Der Mann als Balast,” Constanze 5 (1948): 7.

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Fig. 9.8–9.9 Posters from the campaign Do you know each other? Source: Bundesarchiv Bildarchiv, sign. B 285 Plak-026-009 and B 285 Plak-026-010.

produced a short film lasting under two minutes entitled Population pyramid of our nation (Der Lebensbaum unseres Volkes),52 which argued that the VD epidemic would end in demographic catastrophe. A graph shows how fast gonorrhea and syphilis could spread. In the middle of the graph, there is a silhouette of a woman who transmits the bacteria to a couple of men, who in turn infect other women and so on. Again, the initial danger comes from a woman. In 1947, the Central Health Commission started another campaign, Do you know each other? (Kennt ihr euch überhaupt?), which complemented the preceding campaigns and referred primarily to the presumed main cause of the epidemic – sexual intercourse with strangers who were not, however, referred to as prostitutes (either female or male). The posters present a dancing couple, a man with a woman leaving a café and a man looking at a woman who is suggested to be infected. A line connects the two figures with the text “Venereal diseases threaten” (Geschlechtskrankheiten drohen) and makes it clear that it is the women who threaten the men, not the other way round. The final element of the campaign Do you know each other? was the feature film Street Acquaintance from 1948. It was made on behalf of the Central Health Commission and told the story of three women: Erika, Marion and Annemie. 52

Copy from Bundesarchiv Filmarchiv, sign. 309791.

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While Erika and Marion enjoy life and meet men who offer them gifts for sex, Annemie organizes the acquaintances. Erika and Marion contract syphilis because of their lack of education and recklessness. Annemie, in contrast, is well-aware of her illness and, despite this, continues to have sex with numerous men. For her, infecting men is a form of revenge for all the bad things she has experienced from them. She does not care that her behavior threatens other women as well. Erika realizes that she is sick when she gets caught in a raid and is taken for a compulsory gynecological examination; Marion, who contracted syphilis earlier, already has visible symptoms. Nevertheless, her husband remains understanding towards her and looks after her. Meanwhile, Erika realizes that instead of meeting various men, the best way of enjoying life is to stay with one loving partner. Within the abovementioned fictional frame, many educational scenes are shown. For example, the doctor who examines Erika explains the symptoms of syphilis and the necessity of compulsory examinations. The dialogues at the end of the film strengthen the main message of the campaign Do you know each other? and emphasize that faithfulness is the best way to protect oneself from VDs. Many reviewers, however, criticized the entanglement of fictional and educational scenes. Some of them argued that it would have made more sense to make a purely documentary Kulturfilm with precise medical explanations.53 Even though the word ‘prostitution’ is hardly present in the film, it is the first time in the short history of anti-VD campaigns in the Soviet zone where prostitution becomes an important issue. Erika, who is a nice 16 year old girl working in the cleaners, symbolizing her purity, meets Annemie and then goes to parties with strangers. What she naively thinks of as a way of enjoying life in the difficult post-war realities turns out to be organized prostitution. Three conclusions can be drawn from this story: firstly, it shows the blurred boundaries of prostitution; secondly, it suggests that even innocent girls may become prostitutes despite their will; thirdly, it strengthens the message that women – including wives and nice teenagers – are potentially a threat to public order. The only person who can prevent a woman from becoming a prostitute, or help her when she catches a VD, is her loving male partner, preferably her husband. Street Acquaintance thus reveals the discourse about the advantages of a ‘complete’ family in a damaged society. The film’s premiere took place in mid-April 1948 and was screened throughout the rest of the year. At this time, gonorrhea and syphilis were almost under control thanks to penicillin and the previous campaigns. Hence, in terms of propaganda, the film’s normative family discourse proved to be an even more important aim than preventing VDs. 53 Review published in Der Tagesspiegel on April  15, 1948, transcript in Bundesarchiv Filmarchiv, FilmSG1/16174I.

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Conclusion What do the anti-VD campaigns in early post-war Germany tell us about prostitution? Although internal documents of the Public Health Branches in the American and British occupation zones saw VDs and prostitution as parts of the same problem, public campaigns preferred the notion of an ‘easy’ girlfriend or just the letters VD as an acronym for both “venereal disease” and “Veronika Dankeschön.” The women were stigmatized by reference to the infection rather than to prostitution, as the “VD Hall of Fames” in the barracks proved (fig. 9.5). Nevertheless, presenting German women as moral degenerates who threatened the public order ended without any significant results, as the military government soon realized. In 1947, the fraternization ban was lifted, and syphilis and gonorrhea ceased to spread thanks to penicillin rather than the campaigns. In the Soviet zone, the number of infections was lower. And yet, anti-VD campaigns appeared more intensively than in West Germany and addressed the whole population – until 1948, almost without reference to prostitution. As the Central Health Commission cooperated with the German Hygiene Museum, they reused and redesigned much of the pre-war material. Even though among the new messages was the curability of VDs, the campaigns based on a certain politics of fear – men were told that they might lose their beloved families if they became infected. Both in West and East Germany, anti-VD campaigns were subordinated to broader political issues, such as denazification in the western zones (hence, the image of the threatening German women) and anti-capitalism in the Soviet zone (which was why Street Acquaintance, for instance, combined the topic with excessive consumption). The biopolitical dimension of the antiVD campaigns is most visible in the measures implemented by the Central Health Commission. Syphilis and gonorrhea provided a convenient pretext to introduce the conservative politics of moral ‘normalization’; to promote the model of a two-generational heterosexual family as protection from VDs. Both in West and East Germany, this rationale enabled the condemnation of any extramarital sexual intercourse through indirect references to religion and the ‘national body.’

Social Pathology or Freelance Occupation? The Debates on Prostitution and Sex Work in State-Socialist Poland Anna Dobrowolska Introduction In January 1953, Radio Free Europe received a confidential source report on allegedly deteriorating morals of the Polish society under communist rule. As its author proclaimed: It must be admitted that in comparison with the period of German occupation morality has become much worse. The parents are too busy to be able to take proper care of their children and they are always the last to hear about things and then it is too late. Since prostitution is being propagated by the regime, the radio broadcasts should fight it.1

The RFE employee evaluated this report as exaggerated and possibly “intentionally biased”. Yet, the report’s language is interesting on its own. Only a few years later similar rhetorical devices would be eagerly adopted by Polish writers and journalists to illustrate the shortcomings of the communist project during the political Thaw of 1956. Media discourses presented prostitution as a social pathology deeply embedded in the context of the newly built socialist society. Consequently, the calls to solve and fight this “problem” had a deeply political character and reflected more general anxieties about modernisation or recently imposed gender equality. Such phenomenon was however not unique to the 1950s. On the contrary, I argue that throughout the state-socialist period prostitution was employed as a metaphor to narrate concerns about * The research for this article has been supported by the National Science Center (Poland) grant no. 2015/17/B/HS3/00105 “Gender History as a Subject of Knowledge: Theoretical Frames and Research Practice of Studies on Women’s Past in Poland in the International Context” and by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Poland in the “Diamond Grant” scheme (research funding for the years 2017–2021, no. 0137/ DIA/2017/46). I would like to thank Sonja Dolinsek, Agata Ignaciuk and Magdalena SaryuszWolska for their comments on the first drafts of this chapter. 1 “Morality and Prostitution in Poland”, 7 January 1953. [Electronic Record] HU OSA 300-12-29460; Records of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Institute: General Records: Information Items; Open Society Archives at Central European University, Budapest. http:// hdl.handle.net/10891/osa:867a0b05-5c66-4efa-b73f-182d83445c57 [accessed May 10, 2019].

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social and political transformations. To showcase this phenomenon, this chapter focuses primarily on two moments in the post-war history of Poland: the mid-1950s political Thaw and the 1970s consumerist transformation. Generally, both gender and sexual history are a developing field in the Polish historiography and, as a result, the history of prostitution in the postwar period still awaits systematic examination.2 However, commercial sex has arisen as a background topic or an illustration in histories on everyday life, urban landscapes or alcoholism.3 Although the historians have not focused on prostitution itself, they have provided valuable insights into the social context in which it functioned in state-socialist Poland. Moreover, a few studies have treated prostitution as a topic of its own. Some of them have focused on particular regional case-studies while others have been interested in the countrywide perspective.4 The first periodisation of the state-socialist history of prostitution was offered by Barbara Klich-Kluczewska. She has proposed to understand the changing attitudes towards prostitution in the broader context of transforming gender norms and position of women in the Polish society. According to 2 So far, the scholarship in gender history has concentrated mainly on women’s emancipation, labour history and private life. Only recently more studies in the history of sexuality (i.e. sexology, sexual education, contraception) have emerged. Małgorzata Fidelis, “Recovering women’s voices in communist Poland” in: Contesting archives. Finding women in the sources, edited by Nupur Chaudhuri, Sherry J. Katz and Mary Elisabeth Perry (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 107–124. Dobrochna Kałwa, “Historia kobiet – kilka uwag metodologicznych” in: Dzieje kobiet w Polsce. Dyskusje wokół przyszłej syntezy, edited by Krzysztof Makowski (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Nauka i Innowacje, 2014), 13–28; Sylwia Kuźma-Markowska, “Why There Is No Gender History in Poland?” Dialogue and Universalism, (2010) no. 5–6: 9–18. See also Agata Ignaciuk, “Reproductive Policies and Women’s Birth Control. Practices in State-Socialist Poland (1960s-1980s),” in “Wenn Die Chemie Stimmt  …”. Geschlechterbeziehungen Und Geburtenkontrolle Im Zeitalter Der “Pille” – Gender Relations and Birth Control in the Age of the “Pill,” ed. Lutz Niethammer and Silke Satjukow (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2016), 305–28; Agnieszka Kościańska, Płeć, przyjemność i przemoc: kształtowanie wiedzy eksperckiej o seksualności w Polsce (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2014); Agnieszka Kościańska, Zobaczyć Łosia. Historia Polskiej Edukacji Seksualnej Od Pierwszej Lekcji Do Internetu (Wołowiec: Wydawnictwo Czarne, 2017). 3 Dariusz Jarosz, “Wybrane problemy kultury życia codziennego kobiet pracujących w Nowej Hucie w latach pięćdziesiątych XX wieku” in: Kobieta i kultura życia codziennego. Wiek XIX i XX, eds. Anna Żarnowska and Andrzej Szwarc (Warszawa: DIG, 1997), 413–415; Krzysztof Kosiński, Historia pijaństwa w czasach PRL. Polityka – obyczaje – szara strefa – patologie, (Warszawa: Neriton – Instytut Historii PAN, 2008), 592–610, Błażej Brzostek, Za progiem. Codzienność w przestrzeni publicznej Warszawy lat 1950–1970 (Warszawa: Trio, 2007), 427–434, 488–494. 4 For regional case studies See Urszula Kozłowska. “Ciemna Strona Miasta Portowego. Zjawisko Prostytucji w Powojennym Szczecinie (Lata Pięćdziesiąte).” Roczniki Socjologii Morskiej XXIV (2015): 79–85. Tracz, Bogusław. “Dworcowe Kurtyzany.” Czasypismo 10, no. 2 (2016): 151–56.

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her, in the 1940s the state’s policy on prostitution was restrictive and regulatory but quite quickly shifted to tabooisation during the Stalinist period. Finally, from 1956 up to the late 1970s we can speak of “quasi-abolitionism” as the abolitionist measures were implemented only on paper, while in reality the state still attempted to register and control women who worked as prostitutes.5 Klich-Kluczewska’s periodisation has been supplemented by Krzysztof Kosiński’s remarks on the last two decades of state-socialism as he reflected on the impact the martial law and political changes had had on the history of prostitution.6 Drawing on their conclusions, I understand the history of prostitution in state-socialist Poland in the context of changing political and social circumstances. The existing scholarship on prostitution in post-war Poland has however paid relatively little attention to the importance of language and the changing discourses on prostitution. Prostitution has been treated as a social fact and discourses surrounding it have rarely been questioned.7 Yet, as we know from works by scholars such as Judith Walkowitz,8 language reflects and reaffirms hierarchies of power that guide popular understanding of prostitution.9 For instance, the category of “prostitution” itself has been immensely criticised because of it stigmatising and oppressive character.10 Therefore, cultural texts convey not only reflections of historical reality but foremostly complex system 5

Barbara Klich-Kluczewska, “Unzüchtiger Realsozialismus. Prostitution in der Volksrepublik Polen”, Osteuropa 56, (2006), no 6: 303–317. See also Marcin Zaremba, “Ein Abgrund von Moral und Machtlosigkeit. Prostitution in Polen zwischen NS-Besatzung und Entstalinisierung”, Osteuropa 56, (2006), no 6: 318–323. 6 Krzysztof Kosiński, “Prostytucja w PRL”, Polska 1944/45–1989. Studia i materiały 9 (Warsaw: Instytut Historii PAN, 2009): 85–132. 7 However, such discourses have been analysed in the sociology of sex work. See Agata Dziuban and Anna Ratecka, “Sprostytuowane, Zranione, Wrobione: Konstruowanie Reprezentacji Pracownic Seksualnych w Dyskursie Abolicyjnym,” Lud 101 (2017): 171–202; Izabela Ślęzak, Praca Kobiet Świadczących Usługi Seksualne w Agencjach Towarzyskich (Łódź: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2016). 8 Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London. (London: Virago, 1992), 7–10. 9 For instance, as many scholars argue, prostitution often returns as an object of moral panic. See Julia Laite, “Justifiable Sensationalism: Newspapers, Public Opinion and Official Policy about Commercial Sex in Midtwentieth-Century Britain,” Media History 20, no. 2 (2014): 126–45, Keely Stauter-Halsted, “Moral Panic and the Prostitute in Partitioned Poland: Middle-Class Respectability in Defense of the Modern Nation,” Slavic Review 68, no. 3 (2009): 557–81. 10 As  I acknowledge the importance of language-sensitive history writing in this paper I attempt to introduce the terminology of sex work or sexual services where applicable as well as refrain from the use of the word “prostitute” substituting it with phrases such as “women who worked/were perceived as prostitutes”. See Teela Sanders, Maggie O’Neill and Jane Pitcher, Prostitution. Sex Work, Policy & Politics, (London: Sage, 2009), 1–5. Gail

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of meanings. Looking into how stories of prostitution are narrated in the public discourse provides insight into shifting social and cultural patterns and allows us to historicise them.11 Drawing on the existing research, I analyse the representations of prostitution in the public discourse of state-socialist Poland by reference to archival documents, literary texts as well as two documentary movies: Paragraf Zero [Article Zero, directed by Włodzimierz Borowik] from 1957 and Wolny zawód [Freelance Occupation, directed by Andrzej Titkow] from 1981. Both produced in the years of political upheavals, they represent dominant features of the public debates on prostitution and offer insights into shifting discursive understandings of the phenomenon. In this chapter, I show how these discourses were deeply embedded in the historical and social context and transformed significantly over the years. Most importantly, in the 1970s a new discourse on sexual services emerged and profoundly transformed portrayal of prostitution in the public debate. To emphasise the distinctiveness of this new discourse, I propose to understand it as “sex as work” discourse, therefore introducing this terminology into the scholarship on prostitution in post-war Poland.12 In addition to the two documentaries by Borowik and Titkow, this paper is based the Citizens’ Militia documents from the 1960s and press publications from both regional and country-wide newspapers.13 The Militia documents provide valuable insights into institutional discourses and general legal frameworks. If only indirectly, such documents also illuminate the conditions in which prostitution functioned (as observed by police officers). On the other hand, I analyse various press publications to reconstruct how this phenomenon was narrated in the popular discourse. Combining these two approaches Pheterson, “The Category “Prostitute” in Scientific Inquiry”, Journal of Sex Research 27, no 3 (1990): 399. 11 Timothy J. Gilfoyle, “Prostitutes in History: From Parables of Pornography to Metaphors of Modernity,” The American Historical Review 104, no. 1 (1999): 117–41. 12 For earlier periods, see Joanna Ostrowska’s book on “forced sex work” under Nazi occupation: Joanna Ostrowska, Przemilczane: Seksualna Praca Przymusowa w Czasie II Wojny Światowej (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Marginesy, 2018). 13 Citizens’ Militia [Polish: Milicja Obywatelska] was a police organisation in the Polish People’s Republic from 1944 till 1990. According to the Chief Commander orders from 1948, 1956 and 1959 one of its responsibilities was the fight against prostitution through specially designated units. See Jerzy Eisler, “Milicja Obywatelska w latach 1945–1989” in Historia i rola społeczna formacji policyjnych w jubileuszu 85-lecia, eds. Grzegorz Gryz, Grzegorz Jach and Maria Laurentowska, (Legionowo: Wydawnictwo Centrum Szkolenia Policji, 2005), 97–114. Anna Dobrowolska, “Problem, którego miało nie być. Język milicyjnych dokumentów poświęconych prostytucji w latach 1956–1969”, Polska 1944/45–1989. Studia i materiały, 15 (2017): 217–239.

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allows me to sketch a nuanced picture of prostitution debates in state-socialist Poland as well as to show how it was employed as a metaphor in discussions on contentious social and political topics. Legal and Institutional Frameworks After the World War II The discourses on prostitution in state-socialist Poland were deeply embedded in the socio-political situation. It is therefore important to note how the legal frameworks developed in the immediate post-war years. On the one hand, shortly after the World War II the state’s approach towards paid sex was shaped by the legacy of regulationism of the inter-war period and the Ministry of Health decree from 1922. According to this law, local authorities had been responsible for registering sex workers and equipping them with socalled “black books”. These were special permits which attested that a woman had undergone medical examination with regards to venereal diseases and could thus legally work.14 Theoretically, these regulations were still in place after the war and initially in some cities the inter-war clerks resumed their duties accordingly.15 Later, the socialist state attempted to supress prostitution through special female Citizens’ Militia units and imposed strict sanctions on women who did not want to abandon their occupation (including imprisonment or forced labour camps).16 The chaotic situation was further complicated by the rise of sexually transmitted diseases in the post-war years.17 A countrywide campaign “W” was launched in 1948 (named after the Polish adjective “weneryczny” which means “venereal”). Women who worked as prostitutes were categorised by the officials as dangerous and “infectious” and thus many of the actions against venereal diseases focused on them.18 14

Marzena Lipska-Toumi, Prawo polskie wobec zjawiska prostytucji w latach 1918–1939, (Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL, 2014), 214. 15 Archiwum Państwowe w Krakowie [APwK], UW II 2545, Pismo kierownika Przychodni Sanitarno-obyczajowej do Urzędu Wojewódzkiego Krakowskiego, Kraków, 27 XI 1948, 5. 16 Archiwum Główne Policji, Warszawa [AGP], 4/14 B, Tymczasowa instrukcja o obowiązkach Milicji Obywatelskiej w walce z nierządem, 90–92. 17 Piotr Barański, “Walka z chorobami wenerycznymi w Polsce w latach 1948–1949” in Kłopoty z seksem w PRL. Rodzenie nie całkiem po ludzku, aborcja, choroby, odmienności, ed. Marcin Kula, (Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2012), 21–23; Bogumiła Kempińska-Mirosławska and Agnieszka Woźniak-Kosek, “Health Policy Regarding the Fight against Veneral Diseases in Poland in the Years 1945–1958,” Military Pharmacy and Medicine VI, no. 4 (2013): 49–72. 18 AGP  4/14 B, Rozkaz nr 307 Komendanta Głównego Milicji Obywatelskiej z dnia 15 X 1948 r., 89.

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Most importantly, the existence of prostitution was ideologically contradictory with the principles of the new socialist society. As the Communist Manifesto proclaimed: “it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system,  i.e., of prostitution, both public and private”.19 According to Marxist ideologues, prostitution was a relic of the bourgeois society and thus its eradication was at least initially understood as a natural consequence of the communist revolution.20 Such pronouncements had very little to do with the reality, but they contributed to the overall confusion over the status of prostitution and the state’s policy towards it. Moreover, the onset of Stalinisation in 1948 quickly shifted the state and propaganda attention towards different topics such as rapid industrialisation, new housing developments or campaign against private entrepreneurship.21 In 1952, Poland ratified the United Nations’ Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others which required the state to abolish all forms of regulation targeted on people engaging in prostitution.22 After the ratification, the Citizens’ Militia declared the problem of prostitution to be non-existent or at least irrelevant: even the special units for the fight against prostitution ceased to exist. However, only a few years later, the growing attention of both the public and the Communist Party forced the authorities, Ministry of the Interion in particular, to acknowledge that such approach was premature and to deal with the problem once more.23 The political turmoil reached its peak in 1956 and what turned out to be significant for the regulation of prostitution as well. Prompted by press debates as well as recommendations from the Party officials24 the Citizens’ Militia Chief 19

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto: A Modern Edition, ed. Erich Hobsbawm, (London: Verso, 2012), 57. For critical feminist reading of Marxist views on prostitution see Jacquilyn Weeks, “Un-/Re-Productive Maternal Labor: Marxist Feminism and Chapter Fifteen of Marx’s Capital,” Rethinking Marxism 23, no. 1 (2011): 36. 20 AGP  4/14 B, Tymczasowa instrukcja o obowiązkach Milicji Obywatelskiej w walce z nierządem, 15 X 1948 r., 90. 21 Katherine Lebow, Unfinished Utopia: Nowa Huta, Stalinism, and Polish Society, 1949–56, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013), 13–43. 22 Dz.U. 1952 nr 41 poz. 278, Konwencja ONZ w sprawie zwalczania handlu ludźmi i przeciwdziałania prostytucji. 23 Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Warszawa [AIPN] BU 01253/36, Materiały Gabinetu Ministra Spraw Wewnętrznych na posiedzenia Kolegium Ministerstwa Spraw Wewnętrznych za okres marzec-grudzień 1959, Notatka dotycząca walki z prostytucją i przestępstwami seksualnymi, 36–51. 24 In July 1955 the Polish United Workers Party instituted a special commission to investigate the scale of the problem. See AIPN BU 1550/3079, Notatka ws. prostytucji, Komisja KC PZPR, sierpień 1955, 13–15.

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Commander issued an order to reinstitute units for the fight against prostitution (Polish: Sekcje do walki z nierządem).25 In the accompanying guidelines a worth-noting redefinition of the “problem” could be observed: Prostitution is a relic of the capitalist system and results from bourgeois moral habits deeply rooted in the society. […] The Citizens’ Militia’s inadequate commitment to combatting all of the prostitution-related phenomena inevitably leads to rising crime rates and delays the formation of new socialist morality in our society.26

The official documents were filled with abolitionist slogans combined with ideologized understanding of the origins of prostitution. However, the communist system no longer seemed to be a single solution of the “problem”. Hence the new legal actions undertaken by the Citizens’ Militia focused on battling prostitution as a social and criminal problem. The closer we examine the Citizens’ Militia documents, the less convincing the proclamations about abolitionist approach appear. According to Barbara Klich-Kluczewska, they should rather be interpreted as “quasi-abolitionist” as the state still attempted to maintain control over prostitution, but it employed different, less transparent methods to achieve it.27 To illustrate the practical aspects of this “quasi-abolitionist” approach, let us analyse how the afore-mentioned units for the fight against prostitution functioned in the 1960s. The assumptions about “criminal” and “pathological” character of prostitution guided the Citizens’ Militia attitude towards women who engaged in sex work.28 Therefore, the main goal of these newly-reinstated units was to control sex workers, particularly in relation to their (assumed) involvement in criminal activities. Citizen’s Militia’s officers perceived them either as potential culprits or at least witnesses of a variety of crimes, ranging from petty theft to murders.29 Apart from unofficial registration, on paper the policemen’s role was also to offer “help”, for instance through assistance in finding a “decent” job, applying for new identity cards or seeking medical treatment. However, these medical examinations were far from voluntary and women

25 AGP, 4/59, Rozkaz Komendanta Głównego Milicji Obywatelskiej nr 2/56 w sprawie wzmożenia walki z prostytucją, 23 I 1956 r., 20–21. 26 AGP, 4/59, Wytyczne w sprawie wzmożenia walki z prostytucją, k. 22. 27 Klich-Kluczewska, “Unzüchtiger Realsozialismus”. 28 See Dobrowolska, “Problem, którego miało nie być”. 29 Stanisław Górnicki, “Prostytucja a przestępczość, cz. I”, Służba MO, 34, no 1 (1963): 28–33.

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identified as prostitutes were forced to undergo them regularly.30 Moreover, the units patrolled the streets to prevent “violations of public order” – a measure used commonly as a justification for arrests and fines.31 Even if on paper the policemen declared their intention to help, in fact they did not have the means necessary to do so. The attempts to involve other public institutions and organisations (such as the Ministry of Health or the League of Women) were largely unsuccessful and by the early 1960s the problem was once again swept under the carpet and confined to be solely a police matter.32 Consequently, the Citizens’ Militia treated prostitution chiefly as a criminological problem, the one that felt within the scope of their duties. Such approach justified registration and control over the “problematic element”,33 not so distant from the patterns known from the interwar regulationist system. The “pathological” understanding of prostitution guided the police officers’ actions but, as we are going to see in the following paragraphs, was also remarkably influential in the public debate. Unfulfilled Promises and the Post-Stalinist Backlash The political Thaw of mid-1950s was a period of unparalleled freedom of public debate. As we shall see in the following paragraphs, prostitution was often at the very centre of those debates. The Thaw symbolically started in summer 1955 when Adam Ważyk published his Poem for adults (Polish: Poemat dla dorosłych).34 The author, formerly a devoted communist writer, aimed to describe lamentable living conditions in the newly built housing developments such as Nowa Huta near Cracow.35 While state propaganda had proclaimed these new settlements to be a place where the “new, socialist man” could 30 31 32 33 34 35

Archiwum Komendy Stołecznej Policji, Warszawa [AKSP], ADM-1796, Sprawozdanie z działalności w 1969 r. Sekcji d/w z Nierządem Komendy Stołecznej MO w Warszawie w zakresie ścigania przestępstw nierządu karalnego i ograniczania prostytucji, k. 17–18. AGP, 4/59, Rozkaz Komendanta Głównego Milicji Obywatelskiej nr 2/56 w sprawie wzmożenia walki z prostytucją, 23 I 1956 r., k. 20–21. AIPN BU 01253/36, Sprawozdanie dot. walki z nierządem karalnym przez KWMO w Szczecinie, Wrocławiu i Katowicach, Warszawa, 3 grudnia 1959, k. 47–48. AKSP, ADM-1474, Sprawozdanie z działalności Sekcji do Walki z Nierządem i jednostek M.O. m.st. Warszawy w zakresie ścigania przestępstw nierządu karalnego i ograniczania prostytucji, k. 13. Adam Ważyk, Poemat dla dorosłych i inne wiersze, (Warszawa: PIW, 1956). Firstly published in “Nowa Kultura” on 21st August 1955. Tomasz Chrząstek, “Ucieczka z Domu Wariatów Czyli o ‘Poemacie Dla Dorosłych’ Raz Jeszcze,” Rocznik Historii Prasy Polskiej 11, no. 1 (2003): 123–42.

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finally live in dignity, Ważyk stressed what in his view was a final evidence of moral degeneration and social disintegration.36 Among other examples Ważyk painted a picture of sexual promiscuity, prostitution and mounting rates of illegal abortions. As he wrote: In garbage baskets and on hanging ropes / boys fly like cats on night walls / girls’ hostels, the secular nunneries / burst with rutting–And then the “Duchesses” / ditch the foetus – the Vistula flows here…  .[…] The staircase is full of names, melodious, feminine names, / fifteen-year-old whores walk down the planks to the basement / their smiles seem made of lime, they smell of lime / in the neighbourhood the radio plays darkly for magical dances/ the night comes, hooligans play hooligans.37

Both dramatic, misogynistic language and the choice of examples was meant to induce outrage and moral panic among the readers. Female sexuality, as particularly sensitive and potent topic, served as a perfect tool to voice such concerns. Those social “pathologies” were just a means to convey different message – a political one.38 If only indirectly, Poem for Adults was a call for reevaluation of the communist project and in particular its unfulfilled promises such as full employment, workers’ dignity or availability of housing. The public opinion quickly responded to Ważyk’s call. After the publication of Poem for Adults, downsides of the post-war modernisation became openly discussed for the very first time. Topics such as hooliganism, unemployment or alcoholism flooded the newspapers.39 Shortly afterwards Ryszard Kapuściński, future world-renowned reporter, visited Nowa Huta to verify Ważyk’s accusations. In September 1955 in the communist youth magazine “Sztandar Młodych” he published an article under the title: This is the truth about Nowa Huta as well (Polish: To też jest prawda o Nowej Hucie). Following Ważyk’s approach, Kapuściński concentrated on alleged moral degeneration of the city and prostitution reappeared as an important symbol of it. For instance, he wrote: Recently a 14-year-old girl infected eight boys. When we spoke with her, she was so vulgar that I almost vomited. She is not the only one. Not all are so young, but there is a lot of them […] There are flats in Nowa Huta where in one room 36 See also Klich-Kluczewska, “Unzüchtiger Realsozialismus”, 307–9. 37 English translation citied from: https://konicki.com/blog2/2009/06/04/june-4-a-poemfor-adults-by-adam-wazyk/ [accessed May 10, 2019]. 38 For gendered analysis of the mid-1950s debates see Małgorzata Fidelis, Women, Communism, and Industrialization in Postwar Poland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 170–202. 39 For in-depth coverage of the 1956 Thaw debates See Jerzy Kochanowski, Rewolucja międzypaździernikowa: Polska 1956–1957 (Kraków: Znak, 2017).

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Anna Dobrowolska a mother collects money from men and in the second room her daughter offers them her services. This is not the only such flat.40

Similarly to Ważyk, Kapuściński conflated the problem of prostitution with the spread of venereal diseases and general promiscuity to paint a picture of general degeneration and state’s failure to deal with it. Furthermore, it is not without a reason that in the quoted excerpt the author stressed young age of women who offered sexual services in Nowa Huta. Thus, he not only underlined the illegal character of the activity (as the 1932 Criminal Code set the age of consent at 15), but also appealed to widespread concerns about the situation of young people and their low moral standards. The debates about the youth and their problems were an important feature of the political Thaw41 which is understandable if we consider that in the mid-1950s the first generation of people raised after the World War II was entering their adult life. Therefore, the discussions about their problems were if fact debates on the newly-established communist state itself. Their alleged demoralisation was seen as a threat not only to the social order, but foremostly to the nation’s future.42 Such assessment applied specifically to women who were seen to transgress the norms both by their sexual behaviour and by the sole fact of working in male-dominated industries and not fulfilling their “traditional” roles as mothers and wives.43 As Jerzy Działak, an émigré writer, summed up in his later publication designed for foreign audience: “Nowa Huta became the symbol of banditry, drunkenness, debauchery – nowhere were there so many illegitimate children”.44 His words serve as a great illustration of Małgorzata Fidelis’ argument that the debates on female sexuality in Nowa Huta were deeply 40 41

Ryszard Kapuściński, “To też jest prawda o Nowej Hucie”, Sztandar Młodych (1955), no 234. Especially after the Fifth World Festival of Youth and Students was organised in Warsaw in summer 1955. See Andrzej Krzywicki, Poststalinowski karnawał radości: V Światowy Festiwal Młodzieży i Studentów o Pokój i Przyjaźń, Warszawa 1955 r.: przygotowania, przebieg, znaczenie, (Warszawa: Wydawn. Trio, 2009). 42 Such arguments fitted in with the pro-natalist discourses of the post-war period, See Barbara Klich-Kluczewska, “Making Up for the Losses of War. Reproduction Politics in Post-War Poland,” in Women and Men at War: A Gender Perspective on World War II and Its Aftermath in Central and Eastern Europe, edited by Maren Röger and Ruth Leiserowitz (Osnabrück: Fibre Verlag, 2012), 308–29. 43 See for example: Salomon Łastik, “O hotelach robotniczych bez osłonek”, Nowa Kultura (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1955), nr 35, s. 2; Salomon Łastik, “O prostytucji: czy przyczyną jest nędza?”, Nowa Kultura, 1957, nr 7, s. 3, 9. Wiesław Wernic, “Właśnie takie  …”, Tygodnik Demokratyczny, 1958, nr 21, s. 4, 7. 44 G.J. Flemming [J. Działak], “Making a Living in Poland”, East Europe (1967), no 9 (16), 3. The article was an English translation of his book Polska mało znana, (Paris: Instytut Literacki 1967).

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embedded in traditional values. According to journalists, women were supposed to bear children and care about their homes, not work in heavy industry. Illegitimate children, venereal diseases and other social problems were seen as logical consequences of the Stalinist project of emancipation. Thus, alleged sexual promiscuity of Nowa Huta’s female workers served as an argument in the discussions about limiting their workforce participation.45 The prostitution panic was therefore just one of the ways in which general backlash against the project of female emancipation on the job market manifested itself.46 As Katherine Lebow has argued, this sense of moral crisis visible in the aforequoted publications was a reflection of general anxieties about rapid social transformation that Poland underwent in the post-war years. In her words: “In Poland’s ‘first socialist city’ rumors of prostitution and infanticide raised the specter of a nation unable to regenerate itself, weakened first by war and then by the Stalinist assault against Polish culture and traditions”.47 The answer to such challenges was to restore “normal” order, bring women back home and combat their promiscuity by controlling prostitution. The outburst of such discourses on the eve of the political Thaw demonstrated how shallow and ephemeral the Stalinist transformation of gender order had been. Paragraf Zero: Hierarchies of Prostitution Revisited “Night by night: the police stations are flooded by those characters from social margins. Younger and older: those who can be saved and those whom we can only try to cure”. This quote from the 1957 documentary movie Paragraf Zero48 accurately summarises the Citizens’ Militia’s strategy in their fight against prostitution as well as some of the arguments recurring in the press debates. As this section of the paper argues, not all women who sold sex were treated equally. On the contrary, the policemen and journalists’ approach to this issue differed significantly depending on a woman’s age, appearance or social background. Therefore, I argue, following how such discursive hierarchies were construed 45 Małgorzata Fidelis, “Młode Robotnice w Mieście: Percepcja Kobiecej Seksualności w Polsce w Latach Pięćdziesiątych XX Wieku,” in Kobieta i Małżeństwo. Społeczno-Kulturowe Aspekty Seksualności. Wiek XIX i XX, eds. Anna Żarnowska and Andrzej Szwarc, (Warsaw: DIG, 2004), 464–68. 46 Dobrochna Kałwa, “Post-Stalinist backlash in Poland”, Clio: Histoire, Femmes et Sociétés 41 (2015), no 1: 153–154. 47 Katherine Lebow, Unfinished Utopia: Nowa Huta, Stalinism, and Polish Society, 1949–56. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013), 121. 48 Paragraf Zero, 1957, directed by Włodzimierz Borowik.

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is a key to better understand the role prostitution played in public debates of state-socialist Poland. Paragraf Zero was directed in 1957 by Włodzimierz Borowik and formed a part of the so-called Black Series of Polish documentary movie.49 Intended for the domestic audience, the Black Series movies focused on the drawbacks of socialist modernisation, voicing severe social and political critique. Among them, Paragraf Zero played quite a special role as it addressed the issues of sexuality and public morality that had been taboos before.50 The movie was produced in cooperation with the Citizens’ Militia and as such reflected institutional approach towards the issue.51 It concentrated on the work of the Warsaw unit for fight against prostitution. Filmmakers followed policemen’s actions during one night of duty as they detained women identified as “prostitutes” and brought them to the police station for questioning. Ironically, the narrator summarised this scene with following words: “the Militia employs methods of delicate persuasion. There are no other sanctions”. However, the methods the movie presented were clearly far from delicate. The women were brought to the police station by force in the middle of the night and their eyes were covered with black strips, suggesting their criminal activity. These scenes themselves serve as a great illustration of the “quasi-abolitionist” strategies analysed above. In the following scenes the camera witnessed how female police officers interviewed four of these women. The filmmakers portrayed each of them differently to reflect the hierarchy of different types of prostitution. For instance, the first girl being questioned is a 16-year old who fled home with her friends. She is portrayed as lost in this situation and does not speak up for herself. Even 49

All the films were produced in the years 1955–1959 and aimed to uncover social problems that had not been previously spoken of because of the Stalinist censorship (such as prostitution, juvenile delinquency, alcoholism). Stylistically they marked a significant departure from the aesthetics of socialist realism and thus often are referred to as “black realism”. Marek Haltof, Historical Dictionary of Polish Cinema (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2007), 25; Marek Haltof, Polish Cinema: A History (New York: Berghahn, 2018), 125–6. 50 See also: Gabriela Nastałek-Żygadło, Filmowy portret problemów społecznych w “czarnej serii” (1956–1958) (Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2013), 7–9, 13–53; Tomasz Sikorski ““Ludzie z pustego obszaru”. Margines społeczny Warszawy w polskim filmie dokumentalnym w latach 1956–1959” in Obrzeża społeczne komunistycznej Warszawy (1945–1989), ed. Patryk Pleskot (Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2018), 246–270. 51 Therefore, it represented the Citizens’ Militia point of view, deeply rooted in pathological and criminological understanding of prostitution. Moreover, this discourse helped to rationalise the actions undertaken by the authorities at that time such as the re-creation of the Citizens’ Militia special units for the fight against prostitution in 1956 and political debates about the best strategy for “combating the problem”. See Dobrowolska, “Problem, którego miało nie być”.

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her mother, who is present during the questioning, offers no support at all. On the contrary, she asks the officers to issue a “black book” for her daughter (i.e. to officially register her as a prostitute according to the pre-war regulations). Yet, the Militia officers seem to disagree with the mother, stressing that in the socialist state approach to prostitution is different than it used to be in “bourgeois” Poland. As the narrator concludes: “Not everything is lost at her age. Maybe there is something to be done for her”. However, not all young women “deserved to be saved” as the portrayal of the second interviewee may suggest. Her behaviour differs significantly form her predecessor’s. She is presented as self-confident and relaxed. It is especially remarkable that she even gossips with the officer about her hair colour, a scene which suggests that this is not their first meeting at the police station. Such self-confidence is not without a reason. As the narrator stresses, she is 23 years old and works in the “Polonia” Hotel, a place famous for its relatively “high class” prostitution in the 1950s. Therefore, for the 1957 audience it was likely quite clear that such a confidence was a result of the woman’s relative wealth and good position on the market (as her young age and place of work helped her to attract better clients). Consequently, in the narrator’s opinion, her “kind of women” was particularly hard to “save”. This opinion summarises quite well the film’s central message that women who had chosen sex work deliberately despite having other “decent” sources of income available are “destined” for degeneration and themselves responsible for such fate. Comparison of the two above-presented examples may lead us to conclusion that agency is a crucial category to understand both popular and institutional approach to prostitution in mid-1950s Poland. I argue that as long as women remained passive objects of other people’s actions, they could be perceived as victims and thus worth “saving”. Any manifestations of subjective position were dismissed as pathological or misguided. Hence, the Citizens’ Militia’s (and consequently filmmakers’) discourse left very little room for more nuanced interpretations of women’s decisions to engage in prostitution. To add another layer to this argument, let us focus on the two women interviewed towards the end of the film because their stories show how important age and appearances were for discursive hierarchies of prostitution. As the narrator explains, the women were featured in the movie to showcase what can happen “after a few years” in the business. They were portrayed as deviants, that can only be cured and should be kept away from the “healthy society”. To achieve this rhetorical goal the filmmakers presented them alongside a range of social pathologies such as alcoholism, poverty, violence and crimes. They concluded with a story of one woman, who, with Citizens’ Militia help, found a new job in a State Agricultural Farm. However, she got mocked and bullied

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there because of her former profession and soon decided to go back to prostitution. This serves as a final evidence for the movie’s message – that in the end there was no alternative for sex workers but growing social degradation and marginalisation. Even the socialist state, despite its best attempts, could do very little to help them.52 Both Paragraf Zero and the above-analysed press publications are products of their own time – the peculiar years of the mid-1950s Thaw. Prostitution often appeared in these debates alongside other previously silenced issues such as alcoholism, venereal diseases, extreme poverty or hooliganism.53 Thus, speaking about them was a manifestation of destalinization itself. The Thaw discussions contributed to a new discourse on social pathologies and laid the ground for modern research in social sciences, sociology in particular.54 Hierarchies of prostitution and the discourse of pathologies accompanying them helped the Citizen’s Militia to portray it as an acute social problem and to justify various actions against women identified as “prostitutes” (such as police interrogations or forced medical examinations). However, prostitution, because of its entanglement in moral evaluations of sexuality, served as a political argument in its own right as well. As I have argued earlier in this paper, prostitution was used as a metaphor of unfulfilled promises of the communist project and thus a tool to voice social critique and disapproval with situation in the country. Such a discourse, unique to the second half of the 1950s, was however not the only one guiding the popular understanding of prostitution in postwar Poland. As  I argue in the following paragraphs, the economic situation in the late state-socialist period brought about new, distinctive narrations on commercial sex.

52

What is worth noting here, is that the filmmakers do not question if the help that woman had received was sufficient or how stereotypes and stigmatisation function in the society. Rather, they present her as exclusively responsible for such situation. 53 Jerzy Kochanowski, Rewolucja międzypaździernikowa: Polska 1956–1957 (Kraków: Znak, 2017), 45. 54 For example, after 1956 Magdalena Jasińska, a Warsaw-based sociologists started working on the first research on social aspects of prostitution in post-war Poland. See Magdalena Jasińska, Proces społecznego wykolejenia młodocianych dziewcząt, (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Prawnicze, 1967). More on the history of Polish sociology after 1956, see Małgorzata Mazurek, “Between Sociology and Ideology. Perception of Work and Sociologists Advisors in Communist Poland, 1956–1970,” Revue d’Histoire Des Sciences Humaines 16, no. 1 (2010): 12–13.

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Economic “Prosperity” and the Rise of a New Type of Sex Work After the political Thaw of 1956 the regulations on private entrepreneurship were lessened and the government called off the ban on private possession of foreign currencies and gold. Although still state-regulated, the currency trade became less dangerous and rarely prosecuted. Such policy direction was even strengthened in the 1970s. The Communist Party under Edward Gierek’s leadership tried to win popular approval by providing at least a delusion of economic prosperity through increased availability of consumer goods.55 The authorities relaxed control of cross border movement of people and invested in tourism. As a consequence, the numbers of Poles travelling abroad increased and their consumerist aspirations rose.56 Moreover, the new economic and international policy resulted in increased numbers of foreigners visiting Polish cities for business, tourist or diplomatic reasons. Therefore, a growing amount of foreign currencies (especially dollars) became available on the market while the state-approved exchange rates stayed fixed and did not resemble their real market-value.57 This created perfect conditions in which black market could flourish. Two groups of people availed themselves the most of these opportunities: “cinkciarze” (illegal currency traders) as well as women who would offer a new type of sexual services. In January 1970, Citizens’ Militia officers called up a meeting to deal with the problem of “the most exclusive prostitution”.58 As they observed, a new kind of prostitution flourished in Warsaw. Women who offered such services were said to only target foreign clients and therefore receive their wages in hard currencies (so-called “dewizy”). As a consequence, their incomes were estimated to reach as much as 50 dollars per month, which, because of to the black-market exchange rates, could equal from 10 000 up to 15 000 PLN.59 In 1969 such a 55 Małgorzata Mazurek, “Moralities of Consumption in Poland across the Short Twentieth Century,” Annales (English Ed.) 68, no. 2 (2013): 414–5. 56 See Andrzej Szczerski, “The Decade of Luxury: The People’s Republic of Poland and Hotels in the 1970s,” Art in Translation 3, no. 2 (2011): 179–212. 57 Jerzy Kochanowski, “Niepewne czasy, pewny dolar, czyli szkic do portretu warszawskiego czarnego rynku walutowego”. Przegląd Historyczny 100, (2009), no 1: 29–46. 58 AKSP, ADM-1796, Telegram nr Kr-VI-27/70 z dn. 15 I 1970, k. 2. 59 According to the Militia statistics, “exclusive prostitution” constituted around 10 percent of the population (i.e. women working as prostitutes in Warsaw at the time and recognised by the officers as such). AKSP, ADM-1796, Wstępna informacja Wydziału Kryminalnego KSMO w Warszawie – Sekcji d/w z Nierządem o sytuacji w zakresie prostytucji tzw. “dolarowej” w Warszawie z dn. 23 I 1970 roku, k. 5.

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sum was five times higher than the average monthly salary.60 However, it was not only the Citizens’ Militia that observed the rise of a new type of prostitution. The topic soon appeared in press publications and in popular TV series. Such media discourses contributed to a new understanding of prostitution. As I argue in the following paragraphs, contrary to the previous “pathological” depictions, women who offered sexual services were now portrayed as selfreliant and confident individuals and their decisions as based on rational economic calculations. Therefore, I propose to understand the late state-socialist discourses on prostitution as beacons of the Polish “sex as work discourse”. A great illustration of this argument can be found in TV series 07 zgłoś się (07 Call in) aired by the Polish Television between 1976 and 1989. It told a story of a brave Citizens’ Militia officer, Borewicz, as he carried out his duties (modelled on the adventures of James Bond).61 Borewicz often came across women who offered sexual services to foreigners and wealthy clients. The TV series presented them as well-dressed, confident and fluent in foreign languages. As one of them advertised herself: “My first name is Ewa, my second name is fifty dollars”.62 In other episode another woman confessed quite frankly: “I graduated from a law school and now I am finishing a course in foreign languages”.63 Press publications on the topic present a similar narration. Women who offered such sexual services were characterised by their distinct habitus as they behaved and dressed differently. Their social status was described as being far from marginal. As the press reported, sex workers could easily communicate in foreign languages and behave appropriately even in first-class restaurants or hotels. Joanna Czetwertyńska, a journalist, characterised them as “colourful butterflies”.64 As I have argued, from the 1970s onwards the public perception of prostitution changed significantly. However, the more affluent and publicly visible these women were, the more ambivalance could be observed in the public 60

61

62 63 64

According to the Main Statistical Office (GUS) the average salary in 1969 would equal 2174 PLN. See “Przeciętne miesięczne wynagrodzenie w gospodarce narodowej w latach 1950–2017”, Główny Urząd Statystyczny, https://stat.gov.pl/obszary-tematyczne/rynekpracy/pracujacy-zatrudnieni-wynagrodzenia-koszty-pracy/przecietne-miesiecznewynagrodzenie-w-gospodarce-narodowej-w-latach-1950-2017,2,1.html [accessed September 17, 2018]. Weronika Dorociak, ““Chicago Na Marszałkowskiej” – Obraz Warszawskiego Świata Przestępczego w Serialu  07 Zgłoś Się,” in Obrzeża Społeczne Komunistycznej Warszawy (1945–1989), ed. Patryk Pleskot (Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2018), 271–88. “07, zgłoś się: Brudna sprawa”, 1978, directed by Krzysztof Szmagier. “07, zgłoś się: Przerwany urlop”, 1987, directed by Krzysztof Szmagier. Joanna Czetwertyńska, “Kwiaty na bagnie”, Prawo i życie (1973) no 12: 1, 8–9.

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debate. On the one hand commercial sex was still deemed immoral but on the other a certain twinge of jealousy could be observed alongside. The income which they accumulated thanks to sex work far exceeded the amount of money that an average person could ever earn. As one publicist warned in his comments after a court case against people facilitating prostitution in one of Warsaw hotels: Let me remind you of the famous trial against the staff and prostitutes from ‘Europejska’ in Warsaw. The debates on it were full of jealousy of these women who could earn thousands of zlotys during just one day, weren’t they?65

Yet, envy was not the only resentment visible in such press publications. The newly observed type of prostitution was exclusive not only in a financial sense and even received its own name: “hard currency prostitution” (Polish: prostytucja dewizowa). What bothered the journalist was also an ethnic exclusion as the Polish clients could not afford this kind of services (and they were not a desired type of customer in the first place).66 As a journalist from Szczecin put it: Our compatriots on business trips and other fellow countrymen, who are hungry for adventures, have almost no chance at all. However, “blacha”, a banknote of 100 Swedish crowns opens hearts of women who frequent clubs such as “Balaton”, “Kaskada”, “Artystyczna”.67

As the market expanded, a certain degree of specialisation became necessary. For instance, journalists reported that women who worked for Arabs became known as “arabesques”, while the ones with wealthy Italian clients were called “sicilians”.68 A general, misogynistic belief that Polish women were willing to do anything if they were offered some amount of foreign currencies dominated the press publications on the topic. Such interpretations became particularly influential in the early 1980s when a huge human trafficking case, known under the name “Dziwex” was revealed by the media. This is an interesting wordplay itself. “Dziwka” means “whore” in Polish, while “-ex” was a popular ending of 65 Stanisław Wlazło, “Faryzeusze i prostytutki”, Kierunki (1974), no 20: 4–5. 66 In smaller cities, for example Puławy, such phenomenon was according to journalists particularly visible because all of the sexworkers there wanted to work with foreign businessmen and engineers. Stanisław Harasimiuk, “Tarcza dla Austriaka”, Tygodnik Kulturalny (1977) no 19: 10. 67 Henryk Chmielowski, “Szczecin by night”, Tygodnik Morski (1969) no 40: 8. 68 See Małgorzata Jarocka, “Panienki do wynajęcia”, Ekspres Reporterów (1989), no 1.

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many company names in the late state-socialist period.69 Thus, “Dziwex” was not only a story about sexuality, but foremostly about the society in the process of consumerist transformation. As one commentator noted: How many other “Dziwexes” have not been made public? Specialists in the topic (by which I mean various types of playboys who have extensive contacts among the girls) claim that we have exported temporarily or for good at least half a million ladies thirsty for a sweet life. This is our only profitable sector of export, apart from the coal.70

Prostitution, and in this case also human trafficking, was once again seen as an argument in the debates on the condition of Polish society and its economy. On the one hand, women who engaged in sex work undermined the prevailing assumption that profession was simply a social pathology. On the contrary, they earned more money than an average worker could ever dream of. They could afford consumer goods inaccessible otherwise (as they could buy them in “Pewex”, a shop that only accepted hard currencies). Such situation contributed to the changing image of prostitution in the popular opinion. However, on the other hand, it was also seen as a result of other social and political problems of late state-socialism. Economic crisis, shortages, unfulfilled consumerist aspirations – a figure of a “prostitute” was reemployed to narrate such anxieties. If only indirectly, it symbolised all the ills and nonsenses of the economic and political system in which commercial sex was one of the only ways to achieve financial success and stability. Freelance Occupation: Consumerist Aspirations and Sex Work As we have seen, the “prostitute” figure reappeared in the discourse at the beginning of the 1980s. It was a time of so-called “Solidarity’s Carnival” which, similarly to the 1956 political Thaw, was a time when previously silenced matters could be openly discussed. As Andrzej Paczkowski has argued, “a feeling of individual and collective freedom dominated, and also a hope that the world would change, and that freedom was there to stay”.71 Wolny zawód (Freelance occupation), a 1981 documentary movie by Andrzej Titkow should be therefore 69 70 71

See Anna Dobrowolska, “‘Everyone Dreams about Leaving’: Debates on Human Trafficking in State-Socialist Poland,” Journal of Women’s History 33, no. 4 (2021): 168–93. Mieczysław Olbromski, “Komu dziewczynkę?”, Rzeczywistość (1984), no 5, s. 7. Andrzej Paczkowski, Revolution and Counterrevolution in Poland, 1980–1989: Solidarity, Martial Law, and the End of Communism in Europe (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2015), 31.

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seen as a result of this “carnival”.72 The movie engaged with the main themes of the recent debates on prostitution, but its significance lied elsewhere. It was above all a testimony of a real sex worker – perhaps the first such attempt to give voice to this previously silenced group. From the very beginning, the movie was not intended to be a conventional depiction of prostitution as a “social pathology”. As Titkow himself declared, he had rather been interested in creating a deeply psychological portrait of a woman who engaged in sex work.73 Therefore, the narration concentrated on one person – woman, introduced as “Dziunia” – and her life story. Most of the scenes were shot in her apartment (which, as back-then viewers could easily assume, she bought thanks to her exceptionally profitable profession). She was sitting on a sofa with a glass of some alcohol and a pack of cigarettes and the camera concentrated on her most of the time. Only occasionally the narration was interrupted by short scenes with two hotel-maids making a bed as well as images of foreign illustrated magazines and advertisements of consumer goods. The camera also witnessed Dziunia’s birthday party as she celebrated with her female friends (also sex workers). Such a narrative strategy provided an interesting comparison of two completely different lifestyles but also a contrast between grey reality of everyday life and the imagined “West” with its abundance of consumer goods. Dziunia and her colleagues, unlike most of the people in 1980s Poland, belonged to this second, shiny and luxurious world. “I feel rather completely free, when I sit on my chair next to the bar, I have my own will and freedom of choice” – this is how Dziunia explained the core of her work. It was just one of numerous passages in which she stressed her own agency and independence, a message even strengthened by the filming techniques applied by Titkow. Thus, prostitution (or perhaps speaking of sex work would be more appropriate here) was characterised as a way of exercising one’s own will. As Dziunia seemed to argue, she was not a victim. Rather, she was the one who actively made decisions. Such narration extended to her approach to clients too – she mocked them, made fun of their sexual inefficiencies and presented them as passive objects of her power. As one of Dziunia’s colleagues put it: “they are funny for me, one after another, I make fun of them all […] this is most absorbing for me, this kind of game”. This “game” served as a tool for undermining and negotiating the structures of power, at least on a discursive 72

73

Titkow had attempted to produce the film before, but he had met with opposition from his supervisors. I was not possible until after the government had signed the Gdańsk Agreement in 1980. Wolny zawód, 1981, directed by Andrzej Titkow, NINATEKA, [accessed September 17, 2018], http://ninateka.pl/film/andrzej-titkow-wolny-zaw-d-wfdif. All the quotes and background information come from the film’s transcript which is available on the Ninateka’s website: http://ninateka.pl/film/andrzej-titkow-wolny-zaw-d-wfdif [accessed on September 17, 2018].

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level. Such portrayal of her work seemed to give Dziunia a chance to question the dominant discourse on prostitution and provide her own, personal interpretation of it. Consequently, Dziunia’s biography played a role in this reinterpretation as well. The core parts of the movie were structured as a biographical interview which gave Dziunia a chance to present reasons for her life choices. As she explained, she paid a lot for her room in the city because she had moved out from her parents to live independently. Sex work turned out to be a way to achieve these goals. However, what in her narration proved most important were values such as individuality and self-reliance. For her, wealth was not only a way of fulfilling consumerist aspirations but above all a tool of shaping one’s own identity. Such an approach was stressed in her final sentence: “Of course, I am happy […] the only objection I have is that I started [doing] it so late. I would have accumulated so much more money … [by now] I could have owned a villa … and a garden”.

The sole fact that she expressed no regrets stands in stark contrast to the pathological discourses on prostitution according to which it could only be a “slippery slope”74, a point from where there was no return to a “decent” and “normal” life. Dziunia had nothing in common with the women portrayed in Paragraf Zero who were treated as social outcasts in need of being “saved”. On the contrary, she rather exemplified the dreams and longings of an ordinary (wo)man. “A villa and a garden” belonged to the imaginary bourgeois world and contradicted the popular perception of what “prostitutes” could dream of. As it turned out, she had the same dreams as anybody else but, unlike most of her contemporaries, had financial means to fulfil them. Thus, Titkow used Dziunia’s story not only to call for a more nuanced understanding of such life choices but also as an argument in the debate on failures of the state-socialist project. Concerns about its inability to address and fulfil citizens’ consumerist aspirations were once again voiced with the “prostitute” figure. Conclusion Paragraf Zero and Wolny Zawód presented two distinct discourses on prostitution, both deeply embedded in the socio-political context of their times. The first one portrayed prostitution as a social pathology and a problem to 74 Stanisław Podemski, “Dziewczęta z równi pochyłej”, Prawo i Życie (1965) no 16: 8, 7.

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be resolved. The latter put more emphasis on economic emancipation as well as on agency and subjectivity of women who engaged in sex work. These two different discourses found their echoes in the press publications of that time, contributing to the transformation of popular views on commercial sex in the late state-socialist period. These media representations of prostitution reflected broader political debates, and, in such debates, prostitution reappeared as a metaphor of the communist project’s failure. It was used to voice various anxieties. On the one hand, the backlash against Stalinist labour market policies and modernisation project of the 1950s. On the other, the unfulfilled consumerist aspirations of the 1970s. Finally, the “prostitute” figure was also reemployed to narrate the economic and political crisis of the early 1980s. However, what still remains to be seen is how such debates reflected the changing patterns of sexual behaviour and the public discussions on sexuality in the last decades of state-socialism.75 In the early 1990s the landscape of sex services was completely transformed due to the new capitalist market conditions. Freedom of movement as well as freedom of economic activity had their profound influence over the entire Polish society, but the development of sex industry was commonly perceived to be one of the most visible effects of such transformations. Sex-shops, erotic magazines and escort agencies (Polish: agencje towarzyskie) became a symbol of the new, capitalist reality.76 Commercial sex was on the one hand seen as a fulfilment of consumerist dreams and a final evidence that the Iron Curtain had collapsed. On the other, sex services were presented as a threat to national integrity, particularly in the context of re-emergence of human trafficking.77 Thus, once again the public attention concentrated on the figure of a “prostitute”. Although different in their focus, these new narrative frameworks closely resembled the discourses developed in the state-socialist period.

75

Izabela Kalinowska, “Seks, polityka i koniec PRL-u: o cielesności w polskim kinie lat osiemdziesiątych,” in Ciało i seksualność w kinie polskim, eds. Sebastian Jagielski and Agnieszka Morstin-Poplawska (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellonskiego, 2009), 63–78. 76 “Niebieskie pieczęcie na czerwonych serduszkach”, Express Wieczorny (23 July 1991), 5. 77 Marlise Simons, “East Europeans Duped into West’s Sex Trade”, The New York Times, (9 June 1993), The New York Times Article Archive (27 May 2019). See Wojciech Welskop, Zjawisko prostytucji w Polsce po 1989 roku (Toruń: Europejskie Centrum Edukacyjne, 2013), 101–103.

Hunters, Hotels and Hungarian Girls: Moral Panic at the Intersection of Prostitution and Tourism Under Hungarian Consumer Socialism Priska Komáromi Katalin1 was in her early twenties when she moved to Budapest from a small town to be a typist. In the summer of 1965, she met Veronika at the Gellert Hotel in Buda, which was frequented by foreign, often Western, tourists. Veronika was also from the countryside and after working several jobs, falling ill, and getting into debt, she started having sex with foreign men for money. Katalin thought this seemed like an easier way to make money than working as a typist and after a while she began to enjoy it. She exclusively met foreign clients who generally paid her in foreign currency, but sometimes also in gifts. Katalin and Veronika met their clients at hotels and bars; they usually had sex with them in the clients’ hotel rooms, but sometimes they would also take them to their own flats.2 On July 13, 1966, Katalin and Veronika were tried for professional prostitution, criminal indolence, and various foreign currency offences. They were sentenced to eighteen months and twenty months in prison respectively. In the closing remarks of the trial, Dr György Berend, their defense attorney, lamented the lack of activity on the part of law enforcement, even going so far as to say their behaviour seemed to suggest prostitution was tolerated. Despite the fact that the same hotels were repeatedly named by women accused of prostitution, he argued that this did not result in increased police presence in these places, or more surveillance of these girls once they were released from prison. Audio from this trial was edited and broadcast ten days later on Kossuth Ado, a national radio station. This abridged radio broadcast of the trial of Katalin and Veronika, while possibly not an accurate reflection of the actual court proceedings, is interesting because it touches on many of the key themes around prostitution in Hungary from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. Prostitution trials that were reported on 1 Throughout this paper, I have used names as they appeared in published media sources but have not used surnames in order to protect the identity of the women involved. 2 Transcript of “Törvénykönyv” (radio programme) from Kossuth Adó, July 23, 1966 and transcript of “Nőkről Nőknek: Nők a Birosag előtt” (radio programme) from Kossuth Adó May 21, 1967, both (HU OSA 300-40-1, Box 132: Prostitució), Open Society Archives (OSA), Budapest. All translations from Hungarian my own unless otherwise stated.

© Brill Schöningh, 2023 | doi:10.30965/9783657790470_012

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in the press predominantly involved women who “slept exclusively with foreign men” and cases where prostitution charges were accompanied by charges for foreign currency offences.3 These women were often presented as having a pathological desire for luxury, which they financed through prostitution. Conversely, there was a lively critique of the state apparently ‘turning a blind eye’ to prostitution when it involved hotels frequented by foreigners with hard currency.4 Finally, the influx of foreign tourists presented an opportunity for women with little education, often from rural backgrounds, to access luxury goods from the West, as well as a standard of living (such as being able to purchase their own apartments) that they would not have been able to afford with their salaries as secretaries or factory workers. This paper investigates the policing of prostitution related to increasing tourism under ‘consumer socialism’ in Hungary, loosely spanning the mid1960s to the mid-1970s. It investigates the contradictions between the international branding of Hungary and moral panic over prostitution at home, why the ‘hotel prostitute’ was perceived as such a threat by law enforcement, and the ways in which women engaged in prostitution were able to negotiate the opportunities provided by increased tourism from the West. In doing so, this paper offers new insights into the history of prostitution in Hungary under state socialism. Numerically, prostitution involving foreign clients made up the smallest proportion of prostitution overall. Street prostitution involving disadvantaged groups such as Roma women and domestic customers was actually more prevalent.5 Why, then, was it “the clandestine prostitute [who] copulates with foreigners in hotels” that loomed the largest in the public imagination, and presented the “greatest danger in the estimation of law enforcement?”6 How can we explain the contradiction between Hungary’s international ‘branding’ and the moral panic over prostitution involving foreigners at home? To what extent were these women able to navigate this hypocritical space for personal 3 Transcript of “168 óra” (radio programme) from Kossuth Adó September  25, 1971, (HU OSA 300-40-1, Box 132: Prostitució), OSA. 4 Hard currency is a currency that can easily be exchanged for others and that is accepted for international payments because it is unlikely to go down in value. In the period in question, ‘Western’ currencies, such as the US dollar, the West German mark and the British pound were considered ‘hard currencies.’ 5 Mihály Szécsényi, “A Budapesti Prostitúció átalakulása az 1960as években,” URBS Magy. Várostörténeti Évkv. V (2010): 315, 321. 6 Jenő Palkó, “Jelentés: a prostitució és a prostitucióhoz kapcsolódó büntettek alakulása a fövárosban, 1966–1970. években” (HU BFL VI.14.a Box  115 (5)), Budapest City Archives, Budapest (BFL), Budapest.

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gain, especially in the context of consumer socialism, which emphasized luxury and leisure time as valuable pursuits? The fear of the death of the Hungarian ethnic nation has been a pervasive trope of Hungarian nationalism since the nineteenth century. It has influenced discourses on nation and population throughout the different political regimes of the twentieth century and continues to do so today.7 Falling fertility rates in the 1960s and 1970s precipitated a panic about the future of the socialist nation across the ‘Eastern bloc.’8 In Hungary, this led to a host of pro-natalist policies and an attempt at re-traditionalizing the role of the woman out of the workplace and into the home.9 It is against this backdrop of falling fertility rates, the need for hard currency, and the influx of foreign tourists that this paper seeks to explain the moral panic around prostitution and shed light on the contradictions and negotiations contained within it. Using primarily Hungarian and international press materials,10 as well archival police and legal documents,11 this paper argues that the moral panic around the ‘hotel prostitute’ was a reflection of the existential anxieties of the state and society, which demonstrates the importance of women’s bodies in defining the nation. However, 7 8

9

10 11

Attila Kund, “‘Duties for her race and nation’: Scientistic racist views on sexuality and reproduction in 1920s Hungary,” Sexualities 19 (February 2016): 200. Rada Drezgić, “Politics and Practices of Fertility Control under State Socialism,” History of the Family 15 (2010): 191.; See also M.G.  Antić, K.H.  Vidmar, “The Construction of Woman’s Identity in Socialism: The Case of Slovenia,” in Women’s Movements: Networks and Debates in post-communist Countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, eds. E.  Saurer, M.  Lanzinger, E.  Frysak (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2006), 291–306; S.  Bridger, “Young Women and Perestroika,” in Women and Society in Russia and the Soviet Union, ed. H. Edmondson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 179; H. Havelkova, “The Three Stages of Gender Law,” in The Politics of Gender Culture under State Socialism, eds. H. Havelkova and L. Oates-Indruchova (London: Routledge, 2014), 37–41. The government believed that it was partly the “integration of women into social and economic life [that] resulted in a decrease of the birth rate.” Throughout the 1960s, women were banned from certain occupations deemed dangerous for their reproductive health and in 1967, GYES (Gyermekgondozási segély), an expanded childcare allowance, was introduced. In 1973, a more comprehensive population policy was introduced, propagating a family ideal of three children by tightening abortion regulation and increasing GYES as well as housing benefits for families with children, especially those with three or more children. See Lynne Haney, Inventing the Needy: Gender and the Politics of Welfare in Hungary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002),. 95; Joanna Goven, “The gendered foundations of Hungarian socialism: State, society, and the anti-politics of antifeminism, 1948–1990,” (Ph.D. diss, UC Berkeley,1993), 174. In the archives of Radio Free Europe accessed at the Open Society Foundation Archives in Budapest in January  2018, as well as the extensive digital periodical database www. arcanum.hu. Accessed at the Budapest City Archives in January 2019.

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in its quest for hard currency, the state opened up spaces, both physical and discursive, where its subjects could negotiate the boundaries of appropriate femininity. Female Sexuality and National Identity Women occupy a fundamental role in the discursive and practical aspects of nation building. First of all, they are symbolically and physically the ‘mothers of the nation.’ Yuval-Davis and Anthias argue that women are vital for the “biological production of members of the ethnic collective,” as well as “reproducers of the [normative] boundaries of ethnic/national groups [by enacting proper feminine behaviour].”12 Therefore, while women are expected to be fertile as mothers, deviant sexual behaviour “threatens to discredit the nation.”13 Nagel argues that “sexual denigrations of racial, ethnic, and national ‘others’ and the regulation of in-group sexual behaviour are important mechanisms by which ethnic boundaries are constructed, maintained, and defended.”14 Historical discussion of prostitution in the interwar Hórthy period has addressed this interaction between race, nation and female sexuality in Hungary.15 Both Kund and Bokor have described how nationalist discourses in the 1920s paid special attention to women’s reproductive role in maintaining the nation, while eugenicists considered prostitutes and promiscuous women (they often saw no distinction between the two) the most dangerous groups.16 Szegedi has discussed how the legally vague but emotionally powerful notion of honour was used in the 1940s to demarcate and police the boundaries 12 Joanne Nagel, “Masculinity and nationalism: gender and sexuality in the making of Nations,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 21,2 (1998): 252. 13 Ibid., 256. 14 Joanne Nagel, “Racial, Ethnic, and National Boundaries: Sexual Intersections and Symbolic Interactions,” Symbolic Interaction 24, 2 (2001): 123. 15 For a discussion of the interaction between eugenic ‘national hygiene programs’ and prostitution in the 1920s, see Zsuzsa Bokor, “Nők a nemzetben, nemzet a nőkben. A magyar egyesület a leánykereskedelem ellen eugenikai olvasata,” Socio.hu 2 (2015): 86–100; Kund, ‘“Duties for her race and nation”’; On the interaction between anti-Semitism and policing of sexuality in the 1940s, see Gábor Szegedi, “Stand by Your Man: Honor and ‘Race Defilement’ in Hungary, 1941–44,” Hungarian Historical Review 4, 3 (2015): 577–605; Gábor Szegedi, ‘Tisztaság, tisztesség, fajgyalázás. Szexuális és faji normalizáció a Horthy-korban,’ Socio.hu 1 (2015): 57–76. 16 Kund, “‘Duties for her race and nation’,” 190–196; Bokor, “Nők a nemzetben, nemzet a nőkben. 95.

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between Jews and non-Jews.17 The historiography on the socialist period, on the other hand, has focused primarily on how measures taken by the state to control and punish prostitution were used to bolster an older, more traditional gender hierarchy and notion of family, while never directly addressing the interaction between female sexuality and the boundaries of the Hungarian nation.18 Existing Hungarian literature on prostitution in the Kádar era has tended towards descriptive rather than analytical discussions of media and police discourse around prostitution, touching upon, but never fully exploring, its link to tourism.19 Case studies on other state socialist countries in the Eastern bloc have also discussed how the discourse around prostitution could become “a vehicle for promoting and upholding traditional gender norms towards all women.”20 Historians have begun to engage with the notoriously difficult task of ‘uncovering’ responses to this discourse and voices of women engaged in prostitution in a state socialist context.21 While acknowledging the limitations of primarily using media sources, this paper also seeks to shed 17 18

Szegedi, “Stand by Your Man”. In his chapter on prostitution in Stalin City in the late 1950s, Horváth argues that “measures taken by the state to control and punish prostitution served … to make people regard extra martial sex as a form of deviance.” See Sándor Horváth, “Prostitution,” in Stalinism Reloaded: Everyday Life in Stalin-City, Hungary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), 247–258. 19 Tóth and Murai claim to address this lack of academic engagement with the topic of prostitution in the 1960s and 70s in their seminal work on sexuality under socialism in Hungary, yet also primarily focus on the 1980s in their chapter on prostitution. See Eszter Zsófia Tóth and András Murai, Szex és szocializmus avagy “Hagyjuk a szexualitást a hanyatló nyugat ópiumának”? (Budapest: Libri, 2014), 83; Szécsényi gives a brief overview of the changing nature of prostitution in the 1960s, see Szécsényi, “A Budapesti Prostitúció”. A notable exception to this for the 1980s is Magó-Maghiar’s exploration of representations of sexuality through an analysis of comics in the Hungarian satirical magazine Ludas Matyi, see Ana Magó-Maghiar, “Representations of Sexuality in Hungarian Popular Culture of the 1980s,” Medij. Istraž 16, 1 (2010): 73–95. 20 Barbara Havelkova, “Blaming all Women: On Regulation of Prostitution in State Socialist Czechoslovakia,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 36 (2016): 165. See also Christiane Brenner, “Líné Dívky, Lehké Dívky? “Příživnictví” a Disciplinace Mladých Žen v Době Normalizace [Faule Mädchen, Leichte Mädchen? “Schmarotzertum” Und Die Disziplinierung Junger Frauen in Der Zeit Der Normalisierung],” Dějiny a Současnost 7 (2013): 19–22. 21 See in this volume Christiane Brenner, Behind the Crime of ‘Parasitism’: The Hidden History of Prostitution in Socialist Czechoslovakia’ and Anna Dobrowolska, “Social Pathology or Freelance Occupation? The Debates on Prostitution and Sex Work in StateSocialist Poland”. Steffi Brüning has done this for prostitution in the GDR through interviews with several women who sold sex in this period. See Steffi Brüning, Prostitution in der DDR. Eine Untersuchung am Beispiel der Städte Rostock, Berlin und Leipzig von 1968 bis 1989. (Berlin: be.bra verlag, 2019).

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light on the agency of the women at the center of this discourse,22 as well as popular reactions to the hypocrisy of the state at the intersection of tourism and prostitution. Legal Background The first comprehensive decree directly addressing prostitution in Hungary was passed in 1867, partly in an attempt to control rising rates of syphilis. It required the registration of brothels and women working as prostitutes and introduced compulsory health checks for these women.23 By the mid-1880s, ‘clandestine prostitution’ became the primary concern of the police.24 In 1913, the term közvesélyes munkakerülés (KMK, meaning criminal indolence) was first introduced as a criminal offence, and ‘secret prostitutes,’ those who did not register with the police, were prosecuted under this offence.25 Throughout the regulationist period, the legally flexible notion of ‘clandestine prostitution’ could be used to “assert control over the bodies of women who did not fit the expected norm,” despite prostitution being technically legal.26 A legislative decree in 1926 maintained the regulationist model, but enforced much stricter rules about who could register as a prostitute and prohibited the opening of new brothels, reflecting the reactionary and conservative tendencies of 22 In this sense, this paper draws inspiration from studies focusing on prostitution elsewhere in Europe at the turn of the century such as Nancy Meriwether Wingfield, The World of Prostitution in Late Imperial Austria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Julia Laite, Common Prostitutes and Ordinary Citizens: Commercial Sex in London, 1885–1960 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Siobhán Hearne, “To Denounce or Defend? Public Participation in the Policing of Prostitution in Late Imperial Russia,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 19, 4 (2018): 717–744. 23 Gergely Vaskuti, “A prostitúció szabályozásának változásai magyarországon,” Válogatás a Kriminológia és Büntető Tudományok (2016), 349. 24 Markian Prokopovych, “Prostitution in Budapest in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century,” in Trafficking in Women (1924–1926): The Paul Kinsie Reports for the League of Nations – Vol. 2, eds. J Chaumont, M.  Rodriguez  Garcia and M.  Servais (New York: United Nations, 2017), 40–41, https://www.un-ilibrary.org/women-and-gender-issues/ trafficking-in-women-1924-1926_e5041020-en; see also Judit Forrai, “History of the Politics of Prostitution in Hungary,” Orvostorteneti Kozlemenyek 54, 1 (2008): 31–45; Judit Forrai, “Kávéházak és kéjnők,” Budapesti Negyed 12–13 (1996), on this period. 25 Sándor Nagy, “Üzletszerű kéjelgés, garázdaság, közveszélyes munkakerülés – prostitúció és alkoholizmus: Ügyészségi jelentések az 1955. évi 17. tvr. budapesti végrehajtásáról,” archivnet.hu, 2 (2002). 26 Szegedi, “Stand by Your Man,” 586.

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the Hórthy regime.27 This remained in force until 1955, when a new legislative decree ended ‘legal’ registration of prostitutes and explicitly made üzletszerü titkos kéjelgés, or ‘clandestine prostitution,’ a crime. This decree also introduced the new criminal category of garazdság (public menace), which was used alongside KMK to prosecute street prostitution and alcoholism.28 In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, socialist writers believed prostitution to be a product of women’s inequality and poverty under capitalism, with marriage, as a form of economic dependence of women on men, also described as a form of prostitution.29 For Lenin, prostitution, as “commerce in women’s bodies,” epitomised the exploitative economic relations of capitalist societies.30 There was a belief among socialist governments in the inevitability of prostitution under capitalism and therefore its inevitable disappearance under socialism with the economic independence and equality of women.31 Although regulated prostitution had technically been ‘legal’ in the first five years of the Stalinist Rákosi period, in practice it was eliminated.32 Brothels were closed in 1950, and all women engaging in prostitution were effectively prosecuted under the KMK offence, which could result in a year’s imprisonment or banishment. Previously legally registered prostitutes were placed in re-education homes.33 In many other state socialist countries, prostitution was punished under this legal provision of ‘parasitism’ until the late 1960s rather than acknowledging that socialism had not led to the ‘inevitable’ end of prostitution.34 The 1961 Criminal Code of Hungary enshrined üzletszerü kéjelgés (ÜK, professional prostitution) “and related offences”35 as a crime much earlier than its

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

Vaskuti, “A prostitúció szabályozásának,” 351–352. Nagy, “Üzletszerű kéjelgés”. Hungary also signed the prohibitionist UN Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others in 1955. Elizabeth Waters, “Victim or Villain: Prostitution in Post-Revolutionary Russia,” in Women and Society in Russia and the Soviet Union, ed. H.  Edmondson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 162–163. Raluca Maria Popa, “The Socialist Project for Gender (In)Equality: A Critical Discussion,” Journal of Religious and Ideological Studies 6 (2003): 68. Waters, “Victim or Villain,” 163. Nagy, “Üzletszerű kéjelgés,” 1. Vaskuti, “A Prostitúció Szabályozásának,” 352. Havelkova, “Blaming All Women,” 171, 176. These included the ‘promotion of professional prostitution’, ‘pimping’ and ‘procurement.’

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neighbours.36 It fell under chapter XIV, “crimes against matrimony, the family, youth and sexual morality,” alongside crimes such as “rape” and “incest.”37 ÜK was defined as “[practicing] sexual intercourse, perversion against nature or any other form of perversion for profit.” It was “punishable by up to one year of incarceration,” or three years for recidivists.38 Defining the prostitute was not simply achieved by an act of legislation, however; she was defined by law enforcement and the judiciary when they interpreted this law, she was defined by social scientists and media commentators, and she was defined by everyday exchanges between individuals.39 Defining the prostitute was simultaneously an exercise in defining the ‘ideal’ woman and ‘appropriate’ sexuality. Moral Panic in the Swinging City From the mid-1960s, Hungary sought to end its international isolation, and developing tourism, particularly from the West, was key to obtaining the hard currency needed for its modernisation efforts.40 Tourism was lucrative for 36 The GDR only explicitly criminalised prostitution in 1968. Uta Falck, VEB Bordell: Geschichte der Prostitution in der DDR (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2012), 86. In Czechosolvakia, the Criminal Code of 1956 criminalised sex work indirectly through the crime of “parasitism,” which was defined as “making a living improperly and avoiding honest work.” Barbara Havelková, “Prostitution Law and Policy in the Czech Republic,” in Assessing Prostitution Policies in Europe, ed. S Jahnsen and H Wagenaar (Routledge, 2017), 272. 37 “nemi erkölcs elleni büncselekmények” could be translated as crimes against gender morality or sexual morality. 38 1961 évi V. törvény a Magyar Népköztársaság Büntető Törvénykönyvéről [Hungarian Criminal Code 1961], accessed March  01, 2019, http://www.jogiportal.hu/index.php?id= qko4y25brxtctd8vw&state=19790414&menu=view; An interpretive provision in the penal code of 1978, defined ÜK as “regularly intending to gain profit from practicing prostitution or any other perversion,” and went on to define the term ‘perversion’ ( fajtalanság) as “any severely indecent act apart from intercourse that serves to arouse and satisfy sexual desire.” Büntető törvénykönyv, 1978 (Hungarian Penal Code, 1978), Online Archive of the National Legislature, accessed April  04, 2018, http://njt.hu/cgi_bin/njt_doc. cgi?docid=3356.237644. 39 Wingfield and Stauter-Halsted argue that understandings of sexual deviance are defined in negotiation between the state and society in a sort of feedback loop which involves “public trials, popular press, rumours, observations at cafes.” Keely Stauter-Halsted and Nancy M. Wingfield, “Introduction: The Construction of Sexual Deviance in Late Imperial Eastern Europe,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 20, 2 (2011): 222. 40 János Rainer, “The Sixties in Hungary- Some Historical Approaches,” in Muddling Through in the Long 1960s: Ideas and Everyday Life in High Politics and the Lower Classes of

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the state: between 1965 and 1970, the income from the operation of hotels doubled, reaching a total of 407 million forint in 1970, mostly in hard currency.41 In 1971, the world’s largest hunting exposition was held in Budapest, drawing millions of international visitors and opening up a new branch of the tourism industry. Along with its new economic approach of high tolerance for an informal economy, the Kádar regime of the 1960s and 70s emphasized consumer goods, leisure activities, entertainment and quality of life for its citizens, earning Hungarian state socialism the nickname ‘refrigerator’ or ‘goulash communism.’42 Budapest, or ‘Csudapest’ (‘City of Wonder’) became the shop window of this new consumer socialism, opening luxury department stores and putting Western consumer goods on display.43 Luxury and its associated artefacts and spaces (Western goods and hotels built for foreign tourists) became a glaring example of many of the paradoxes of state socialism.44 In a supposedly classless society, special hard currency ‘inter-stores’45 sold Western goods only to a certain class of people: those with access to hard currency. Therefore, policing the consumption of luxury by its own citizens became a matter of great significance to the state.46 By the late 1960s, Budapest had gained an international reputation as “Eastern Europe’s most Swinging City,” where girls wore short skirts and “nightclubs [offered] … decadent stripteases.”47 Perceived to be widespread and continually spreading, prostitution was fervently discussed and debated from the mid-1960s and throughout the 1970s as a pressing moral and medical problem in Hungary. While the number of trials for ÜK actually showed a decreasing Communist Hungary eds. György Péteri and János Rainer (Trondheim: Program on East European Cultures and Societies, 2005), 9, 20. 41 Radio Free Europe, Hungarian Situation Report/33 (14 September 1971), OSA online. 42 Krisztina Fehérváry, Politics in Color and Concrete: Socialist Materialities and the Middle Class in Hungary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 79, 111. 43 Sándor Horváth, Children of Communism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2022), 133–136. 44 Alexander Vari, “Nocturnal Entertainments, Five-Star hotels, and Youth Counterculture: Reinventing Budapest’s Nightlife under Socialism,” in Socialist Escapes: Breaking Away from Ideology and Everyday Routine in Eastern Europe, 1945–1989, edited by Cathleen Giustino and Catherine Plum, (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013), 202. 45 David Crowley and Susan Emily Reid, eds., Pleasures in Socialism: Leisure and Luxury in the Eastern Bloc (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2010), 9; On ‘intershops’ in Hungary, see Annina Gagyiova, “Legitimizing Socialism? Hard-Currency Stores and Western Goods in Hungary, 1956–1989,” Hungarian Studies Review, 48,1 (2021): 19–47. 46 Crowley and Reid, Pleasures in Socialism, 7. 47 Stephen Somerville, “Hungary Seeking to Attract more Tourists from West,” Reuters (April 1970), HU OSA 300-40-2: Box 105: Tourism 1966/88, OSA.

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trend in the 1960s and 70s, the police and the press were adamant that prostitution was on the rise.48 One factor that was repeatedly and explicitly linked to the ‘increase’ of prostitution was the actual increase of foreign tourism. In 1965, Belügyi Szemle, the internal magazine of the Ministry of the Interior, initiated an extensive debate on the “contemporary questions of prostitution.” The first article in this debate argued that prostitution had changed, and law enforcement was not equipped to fight it. It concluded by posing the question “How can one identify a prostitute?”49 In response, several high-ranking police officials in the Budapest police presented three tiers of prostitution. The first, they argued, consisted of street prostitution, which occurred in parks and public spaces. This presented a threat to public order but was also the easiest to control as it was the most visible. The second consisted of women who met customers at nightclubs and bars and had sex with them in their own apartments. The third category of prostitute, numerically the smallest category, the so-called ‘hotel prostitute,’ “slept exclusively with foreign men” at hotels, often in exchange for luxury items or holidays. She was the ‘most worrisome’ because she was difficult to uncover and control.50 This moral panic around the ‘hotel prostitute’ continued to be expressed by the press and internal reports of the Budapest police throughout the late 1960s and 1970s. As increasing numbers of tourists, many of them from the West, poured into Hungary, the press lamented a “flourishing” of prostitution and linked this directly to the increase of tourism.51 In 1968, an article in the cultural lifestyle magazine Budapest, written by the capital’s chief prosecutor Dr Tibor Borsai, argued that: The connection between the increase in tourism and the rise in clandestine prostitution is undeniable  … there is an increasing number of young women who have no occupation … who seek to make easy money by targeting Western tourists in entertainment venues.52

A forty-three page ‘top secret’ report by the police colonel Jenő Palkó in 1971 outlining the “development of prostitution and associated crimes between 1966–1970” is perhaps the most comprehensive expression of this. Palkó was 48 49 50 51 52

Eszter Zsófia Tóth and András Murai, Szex és szocializmus, 88. Szécsényi, “A Budapesti Prostitúció,” 312. Szécsényi, “A Budapesti Prostitúció,” 315. Hungarian Situation Report/33; Radio Free Europe, Hungarian Situation Report/30 (8 August 1972), OSA online. Dr. T. Borsai, “Idegenforgalmunk az ügyész szemével,” Budapest (1968), Arcanum Online Archive, accessed August 15, 2019, https://www.arcanum.hu/en/.

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the head of the Budapest police crime division and wrote several reports in the late 1960s on the changing situation of prostitution in the capital and advocated for greater medical control of ‘suspicious women.’ The 1971 report was much more extensive than his previous reports, including seventeen appendices of statistics, and was passed up through the Deputy for Crime to the Interior Ministry. The report itself broadly contained three sections, outlining in alarmist terms the current revival of prostitution and the danger it posed to society, explaining its causes and suggesting new approaches to fighting it.53 According to Palkó, prostitution posed both a moral and physical threat to society through the spread of venereal disease and the encouragement of a morally deviant lifestyle based on a pathological and un-socialist love of luxury. While the report cited the disintegration of the family and urbanization as causes of prostitution, it also placed special emphasis on the increase of tourism and the danger of the ‘hotel prostitute’ who “copulates with foreigners at hotels.” Palkó described the hotel prostitute as having a “very cultured appearance, sometimes speaking several languages,” and explicitly entering into prostitution “for the purpose of getting hold of foreign currency.”54 This type of prostitute, he contended, pursues prostitution as a means to finance her “desire for luxury.”55 The report explored the difficulty of ‘uncovering’ these women, and pointed to the importance of using women engaged in prostitution as agents and informants in the struggle against ‘hotel prostitution.’ In the first appendix, Palkó cites several examples of trials in which women were successfully convicted on the basis of information from agents. The first case he outlined was that of Katalin and Veronika described at the start of this paper. Furthermore, he suggested the imposition of compulsory medical examination of all “suspicious women,” whether they were charged with ÜK (professional prostitution) or not.56 Tourism and prostitution linked to tourism were also extensively blamed for spreading venereal disease in the press. The 1968 article by Dr. Tibor Borsai, for instance, explicitly linked rising VD rates to rising prostitution, which in turn was linked to tourism; arguing that “the revival of prostitution is not just dangerous in terms of morality, but also for public health … the rate of venereal disease has rapidly increased in the past few years.”57 The focus on prostitution as a public health problem, and the self-evident way in which venereal disease 53 54 55 56 57

Palkó, Jelentés: A prostitució. Ibid., 5. Ibid., 9. Ibid., 40. Borsai, “Idegenforgalmunk,” 21–22.

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and prostitution were linked in the public and expert imagination, is common to the control of prostitution across several regimes and time periods.58 This link between prostitution, promiscuity and venereal disease is both a discursive one, in that physical disease can be described as the externalisation of the ‘moral’ disease of prostitution, as well as a highly effective way of controlling sexuality under the pretense of medical necessity. Thus, prostitutes who primarily had sex with foreign men posed not only a moral but also a physical threat to the socialist Hungarian nation. Their association with foreigners – especially Western tourists – and their rejection of acceptable ‘work’ openly challenged the foundational beliefs of the socialist system.59 They were figuratively and literally allowing foreign influences to ‘contaminate’ Hungarian society. Their promiscuity posed a danger to older notions of appropriate female sexuality and the family; they were not fulfilling their reproductive roles as mothers. The close perceived association between prostitution and venereal disease threatened the physical health and reproductive capabilities of the nation. Tourism and the Hypocrisy of the State The presentation of women who had sex with foreign men as manipulative money hoarders was not limited to police reports. This trope also found popular expression amongst Hungarian men and women in the press. Reports on a trial of several women in 1972 were published under titles such as “Millionaire Prostitutes Face the Court,” and focused on how these women deliberately “strove for the accumulation of great wealth” by targeting foreign clients.60 When the reporter from the radio show 168 Ora asked a young Hungarian man what he thought about “Hungarian girls being the cheapest in Europe,” he replied “Hungarian girls are not cheap … and I would never take them, even if they paid me. Last summer, I used to work in the catering industry and we just called them ‘little spaghetti strumpets’.”61 Furthermore, a report by a Western correspondent in 1970 observed that anti-Arab sentiment in Hungary was directed particularly at Arabs who had relationships with Hungarian women, 58 See Laite, Common Prostitutes; Judit Forrai, “Politics of Prostitution in Hungary,” 31–45; Joyce Outshoorn, The Politics of Prostitution: Women’s Movements, Democratic States and the Globalisation of Sex Commerce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 59 Szécsényi, “A Budapesti Prostitúció,” 320. 60 “Trial of Prostitutes in Budapest Opens,” February 23, 1972 (Press clipping), (HU OSA 30040-2: Box 107/3: Society: Prostitution, Homosexuality, 1966–1988), OSA. 61 “Digózás,” Élet és Iradalom (18 September 1971).

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stating that “whenever an Arab student in Budapest is seen with a Hungarian girl someone will loudly crack a nasty joke about the military prowess of Israel.”62 Because, as Nagel argues, women are symbolically tied up with the virtue of the nation, “sexual encounters between national women and ‘alien’ men can create a crisis of honour and can precipitate vengeful violence.”63 The perceived frequent association of Hungarian women with foreign men hurt the ‘pride’ and ‘honour’ of Hungarian men, which ties into a much longer history of the fear of the extinction of the Hungarian nation and ethnicity.64 While the media, law enforcement, and popular opinion derided the women who had sex with foreign men, they played into the reputation of Hungary’s women as beautiful and sexually available in marketing Hungary to foreign tourists. In fact, the state tourism company IBUSZ seems to have used Hungarian women as a selling point. In a promotional pamphlet published by the Danube Travel Agency limited, the British branch of IBUSZ65 boasts that: Hungary has night clubs, discotheques  … beguiling girls, gypsy charm  … Budapest is Paris, but more romantic … you can watch the world go by, count the pretty girls … Hungary is a place to rediscover romance.66

The pamphlet boasts of the “luxurious hotels” in Budapest, such as the Gellert, Margitsziget and Royal. These hotels were all listed by accused women in trials as well as in numerous police reports as places where prostitutes were known to have sex with foreign clients, and were places where this was even seemingly “tolerated.”67 A secret police report from 1966 even claims that at the Vörös Csillag Hotel, “prostitutes meeting foreign citizens can legally use the rooms.”68 Palkó’s 1971 report describes this relationship between prostitution and tourism in unequivocal terms, lamenting that: The spread of prostitution is exacerbated by the fact that certain hotels- evidently in the interest of increasing profit- consider the operation of female prostitutes explicitly necessary from a business perspective. According to certain 62

“East Europeans Hostile to Arab Cause,” February 11, 1970 (press clipping) (HU OSA 30040-2: Box 107: Society: General Mood), OSA. 63 Nagel, “Masculinity and nationalism,” 256. 64 Tanya Watson, “Hungarian Motherhood and Nök Lapja Café,” Hungarian Studies Review, XLI:1–2 (2014): 133. 65 (Idegenforgalmi Beszerzési, Utazási és Szállítási Rt.), the Hungarian State Travel Bureau. 66 Danube Travel Agency Promotional Material United Kingdom, June  20, 1972 (HU OSA 300-40-2: Box 105), OSA. 67 Transcript of “Törvénykönyv” (radio programme) from Kossuth Adó, July 23, 1966. 68 István Horváth, Jelentés 1966.09.01, HU BFL VI.14.a 65 box 3, BFL.

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Western visitors and commentators were equally explicit in their impressions of the sexual nature of Hungarian tourism. A Time article from 1969 described the lengths communist countries such as Hungary were going to in order to lure “Western tourists to spend their money on decadent diversions” such as “strip joints, discotheques and nude beaches.”70 A 1969 film promoting tourism and hotels in Hungary, entitled “Travel reports from Budapest” (produced by a Hungarian team for a German audience and shown on German TV), portrayed Budapest as the “city of fun and entertainment” by showing explicit footage of a strip-tease at a bar.71 A 1973 article by a United Press International reporter on the rising trend of hunting tourism in Hungary quoted a French tourist on a hunting tour saying, “with a wink”: “I heard about the good hunting – and the ladies. I combined the two and I certainly wasn’t disappointed.”72 While it is of course possible that these American reporters, in the context of the Cold War, were aiming to discredit or undermine the socialist system through such reporting, this international reputation fed into the Hungarian state’s own self-promotion to the world. Even within Hungarian reports generally critical of prostitution and its link to tourism, there seems to be a strange pride in the renowned beauty of Hungarian women. For instance, in 1971, one radio reporter claimed that “The fame of Budapest girls has reached Italy and Italians are coming just for the girls.”73 This phenomenon of the beauty of a nation’s women being celebrated as a symbol of “collective worth and a source of collective national pride” has a longer history in Hungary.74 The “far-famed beauty of the Hungarian ladies,” as one American traveller wrote in 1844, was a common trope among Western travellers. Many contemporary travellers accounts in the late nineteenth century “[spoke] of the fame of Budapest … as a centre of prostitution surpassed that of its historic places of interest.”75 69 Palkó, Jelentés: A prostitució. 9. 70 “Luring Capitalists Eastwards,” Time Magazine (May 1969), HU OSA 300-40-2, Box 105, OSA. 71 A. Dutka, “Reisereportagen Aus Ungarn” (Vogue Touristik, 1969), accessed March 21, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V69sqrUYPg. 72 Suemeghi, Andrew, “A Hunting they are going, to Hungary,” January 1,1973, (HU OSA 30040-2: Box 105), OSA. 73 “Italians are better lovers than Hungarians,” (transcript, Radio Budapest, 9 August 1971), HU OSA 300-40-2, Box 107/3: Prostitution, Homosexuality, 1966–1988, OSA. 74 Alexander Maxwell, “Nationalizing Sexuality: Sexual Stereotypes in the Habsburg Empire,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 14 (2005): 280. 75 Prokopovych, “Prostitution in Budapest,” 40.

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The hypocrisy of the state’s “almost manic efforts to tempt Western tourists to spend their [hard currency]… while at the same time keeping their own people uncontaminated”76 was discussed by foreign visitors, but also by the wider public, including those women engaged in prostitution. A scene from a 1969 Hungarian “smash hit film,” for instance, features a strip-tease at a “gaudy nightclub in a [resort for tourists]” repeatedly interrupted by the resort manager to send out the guests who have not paid in “hard currency.” By the end, “only the West Germans, Scandinavians and Americans can stay.”77Alongside this satirical comment on the government essentially prostituting itself for hard currency, there was also more overt critique in the Hungarian press of law enforcement ‘turning a blind eye’ to prostitution when it involved foreign tourists. In an article from the political weekly magazine Élet és Irodalom in 1970, the author claims that the “existence of prostitution in Hungary is legally ignored,” and that “society makes allowances in the interests of business.” This same article, however, also quotes several young people’s views on prostitution as basically positive, claiming that “it encourages tourism” and provides hard currency for the country.78 Negotiation and Agency In the quest for hard currency, the state opened up spaces, both physical and discursive, where “those labelled deviant negotiated pressures to conform … converting sexual transgression into tools of economic mobility and personal autonomy.”79 When women engaged in ‘prostitution’ were directly quoted in the contemporary press, they deployed the argument of the economic necessity of foreign currency in defending their work. An article in Élet es Iradalom in late 1969, for instance, quotes a “Budapest prostitute” as saying: We bring grist to the mill of the state. If anybody counted up all the hard currency the Western tourists and businessmen spend on us, some of our great and wise guardians of morality would be struck dumb … the money remains here.80

This woman was explicitly pointing out the hypocrisy inherent in the attempts of the state, experts, and the media to police female sexuality and female 76 77 78 79 80

“Luring Capitalists Eastwards”. Ibid. Livia Mohás, “Lányok a Piacon,” Élet és Iradalom (8 January 1970). Stauter-Halsted and Wingfield, “Introduction,” 233. Hungarian Situation Report/33.

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sexual contact with foreigners at home, while at the same time desperately trying to persuade those same foreigners to spend their money in Hungary. Her comments, as well as those of others mentioned above, demonstrate an astute understanding of the state’s economic priorities regarding tourism. By arguing that she is bringing in foreign currency, she is framing herself as someone actively contributing to the building of the Hungarian nation state, contesting the dominant rhetoric of prostitutes as work-shy and unpatriotic. Reporting on prostitution also often emphasized the women’s preference for Western tourists,81 or the fact that they “exclusively chose foreign partners.”82 In 1971, the popular radio show 168 Óra broadcast a report entitled “‘Italians are better lovers than Hungarians’ based on interviews with ‘professional’ girls in Budapest … who specialized in contacts with foreigners.” The women claimed that “Italian men appreciated the beauty of the female body … and knew how to make love,” compared to Hungarian men, “who are brutal.” When questioned on how much they charged the Italians, one girl said: “Well, if he is young, nothing, or just a present, dresses. If he is a sugar daddy, then money and dresses.”83 While such reporting in the media was partially meant to frame women who associated with foreign men as manipulative, morally bankrupt, and somehow traitors to their nation, it inadvertently demonstrates the agency of those labelled as ‘deviant’ in contesting this label. Preference and choice both suggest that these women were able to navigate the opportunities opened up by tourism for a variety of reasons. In his study on prostitution carried out in 1973, Hungarian-American sociologist Ivan Völgyes argued that Western tourists “[offered] the Hungarian prostitute the possibility of providing, through marriage, an opportunity to leave to the West, as well as hard currency and scarce consumer goods.”84 For people living under ‘refrigerator socialism,’ consumer goods such as cars and clothing often became integral to the everyday 81

In a newspaper report on the trial of Anna and her 14 accomplices, the reporter described how: “The girls generally picked up their customers at the amusement places and night clubs of Budapest, preferring foreigners, and foreign currency and gold object in payment.” “Trial of Prostitutes in Budapest Opens,” February 23, 1972., (HU OSA 300-40-2: Box  107/3); A description of a trial of two married women accused of prostitution in 1967 describes their “penchant for foreign men.” “Elitélték az éjsaka fekete liliomait,” Esti Hirlap, January 16, 1967, (HU OSA 300-40-1: Box 132). 82 The trial of Elvira and her accomplices in 1971, reported on the radio show 68 Ora, describes how the prostitutes had “exclusively foreign clients.” “Hung Monitoring 168 ora,” September 25, 1971, (HU OSA 300-40-1: Box 132), OSA. 83 Hungarian Situation Report/33. 84 Ivan Völgyes and John Peters, “Social Deviance in Hungary: The Case of Prostitution,” in Social Deviance in Eastern Europe, ed. Ivan Völgyes (Boulder: Westview Press, 1978), 40.

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identity formation.85 As historians David Crowley and Susan Reid have argued, luxury is “contingent upon the sumptuary, moral, ideological frameworks of societies in which it is produced and consumed.”86 Consumer goods and commodities from the West, such as Western brands of toiletries, clothes and foodstuffs, held an especially important meaning in society as both “repositories for unlimited fantasies” of the West, and tangible symbols of social status. Their value was also enhanced by their rarity, and the fact that they could only be purchased at special foreign currency stores, or brought from abroad, thus indicating ties to the West or access to foreign currency.87 The case of Anna and her associates in 1972, similar to that of Katalin and Veronica in 1966, demonstrates how the influx of foreign tourists provided them with the means for buying and furnishing their own apartments and cars. In this case, nine women were tried for ÜK and foreign currency offences in a widely publicized trial, one of whom was defended by Dr. György Berend, a well-known lawyer who also defended Katalin in the 1966 trial mentioned at the beginning of this paper.88 Given that the majority of the women in this case (although not all of them) had a relatively low level of education, with many of them coming from poorer rural backgrounds, they would not have been able to afford these luxuries with their regular salary as a sales assistant or secretaries. In their confessions and statements to police in pre-trial detention, two of the accused women emphasized that they were responsible for financially supporting their parents and grandparents in their hometowns.89 Anna, the primary named defendant in the case, described how she was saving up foreign currency in order to leave Hungary and “have something to start [her] new life with.”90 Shortly before her arrest in the spring of 1971, she was engaged to a Hungarian-French citizen who lived in Copenhagen, and planned on moving to Denmark and opening a Hungarian restaurant there. 85

On the meaning of cars to female factory workers, see: Eszter Zsófia Tóth, “My Work, My Family, My Car,” in Gender Politics and Everyday Life in State Socialist Eastern and Central Europe, eds. Shana Penn and Jill Massino (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 38. 86 Crowley and Reid, Pleasures in Socialism, 7. 87 Crowley and Reid, Pleasures in Socialism, 19–20; Paulina Bren and Mary Neuburger, eds., Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012), 14; Tibor Valuch, “Csepel Bicikli, Caesar Konyak, Symphonia, Trapper Farmer: A Fogyasztás És a Fogyasztói Magatartás Változásai [Csepel bicycles, Caesar cognac, Symphonia, Trapper jeans: Consumption and changes in consumer behaviour],” Multunk, 3 (2008): 41. 88 XXV.44.b. 3287 I (box 978), BFL. 89 “Appeal Letter to District Court,” February  5, 1972, XXV.44.b. 3287 I (box 978), BFL; “Statement,” May 24, 1971, XXV.44.b. 3287 III (box 980), BFL. 90 “Statement” March 9, 1971, XXV.44.b. 3287 II (box 979), BFL.

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Commercial sex with foreign tourists was an avenue for acquiring foreign currency, which Hungarians were generally not allowed to have in any large amounts. This currency allowed these women to buy luxury items only available at special hard currency stores and presented them with the means to emigrate from Hungary. Anna and the other women in this case were also able to forge connections with rich foreigners through their work at hotels; connections that ranged from intimate friendships that spanned decades, to romantic relationships, marriages, and a way out of Hungary. In some cases, these foreign men paid for the lawyer’s fees of the women, they wrote Christmas cards to them and their families, and brought them expensive ‘Western’ consumer goods not available in Hungary.91 Commercial sex with foreign tourists could be a highly effective tool for economic mobility and personal autonomy. Postscript The 1960s in Hungary were a period marked by domestic political debate concerned with “squeezing some released genii back into the bottle.”92 The moral panic at the intersection of prostitution and tourism demonstrates this contradictory nature of ‘consumer socialism’ in Hungary, and the complex ways in which citizens negotiated it. At a time of panic over demographic crisis and the influx of Western tourists, the ‘hotel prostitute’ became a focal point for the media and law enforcement. She was representative of fears around the death of the Hungarian ethnic nation, as well as youthful deviance and the potential dangers of excessive consumer culture and Western influence. She posed a moral and physical threat to the socialist Hungarian nation; her association with foreigners and her promiscuity were antithetical and threatening to increasingly traditional notions of acceptable socialist femininity. At the same time, the state, in desperate need of hard currency, actively used Budapest’s reputation as ‘Eastern Europe’s most Swinging City’ to sell itself to Western tourists. Women who sold sex to foreigners at hotels were able to navigate the new opportunities for economic mobility, luxury and autonomy opened up by the resulting increase in tourism. Although not discussed in this paper, there is evidence to suggest that many of these women also worked as agents for the police or Ministry of the Interior at some point in their careers. This aspect of the interaction between the state and women engaged in prostitution opens up further questions of negotiation and agency and is certainly 91 XXV.44.b. 3287 I (box 978), BFL. 92 Rainer, “The Sixties in Hungary,” 12.

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a fruitful field for further inquiry. Furthermore, it is important to reiterate that the ‘hotel prostitute’ constituted a minority of total prostitution in Budapest and was in many ways an ‘elite’ form of prostitution. The policing and experience of women in prostitution from marginalized communities such as the Roma during this period, who predominantly worked with ‘domestic’ customers, often in public spaces, are topics of research that are sorely lacking in the Hungarian socialist context.

Behind the Crime of ‘Parasitism’: The Hidden History of Prostitution in Socialist Czechoslovakia Christiane Brenner According to official propaganda, there was no prostitution in socialist Czechoslovakia.1 Obviously, this claim hardly reflected reality. It was an open secret that prostitution existed, although it became less visible after the Communists came to power in 1948. Prostitution’s reduced visibility in socialist Czechoslovakia resulted from the raids and purges conducted immediately after February  1948, which hit the nightlife of the cities especially hard. However, in the long run, prostitution was obscured by an ideologically motivated policy enforced by acts of censorship and laws. Starting during the Stalinist period and continuing throughout the Cold War, official statements argued that in a socialist society everybody could make a decent living with ‘honest work.’ According to Party ideology, ‘human exploitation by humans’ was thought to have been overcome by socialism, and individuals who offered sexual services in exchange for payment were accused of violating ‘socialist morals’ and ‘the socialist way of life.’2 Against that background, exploring how prostitution was officially interpreted in socialist Czechoslovakia and how the state handled it in practice can afford profound insights into the disciplinary practices of the socialist period, with its specific social and gender biases.3

* I want to thank all those who have supported me in writing this article: Sonja Dolinsek, who invited me to two extremely inspiring conferences where I could discuss my work, Cathleen  M.  Giustino, Kate Davison and Stephanie Weiss for a critical reading of my text and many valuable comments, and most of all Thomas Lüttenberg, who has read this paper in all its stages and helped me improve it with his questions, suggestions and incredible patience. Any remaining errors are mine alone. 1 Boj proti pohlavním chorobám: Referát a diskusní příspěvky celostátní konference krajských zdravotních pracovníků ve Velkých Losinách 1950 (Prague: Zdravotnické nakladatelství v Praze, 1950). 2 For more on the concept, see Ulf Brunnbauer, Die sozialistische Lebensweise: Ideologie, Gesellschaft, Familie und Politik in Bulgarien (1944–1989) (Vienna: Böhlau, 2007). 3 Thomas Lindenberger, “‘Asoziale Lebensweise.’ Herrschaftslegitimation, Sozialdisziplinierung und die Konstruktion eines ‘negativen Milieus’ in der SED-Diktatur,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 31 no.2 (2005): 227–254.

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Research on the topic of prostitution in Czechoslovakia is sparse.4 We know little about policing practices and actions taken by health and social welfare organizations, and even less about the lives of people in prostitution. Regarding the framework for government action, the situation is significantly better thanks to the work of Radka Dudová and Barbara Havelková. Dudová has thoroughly reconstructed legal developments and perceptions surrounding prostitution between 1950 and 2010 while also taking contemporary research into account.5 By extension, in analyzing the regimes of prostitution during both the socialist and republican periods, Havelková has adopted a long-term perspective in order to elucidate what the regimes reveal about dominant conceptions of femininity and ‘correct’ female sexuality.6 My research builds upon these studies and aims to apply its findings to the practices of institutions that dealt with prostitution. In doing so, I am particularly interested in how women who were suspected of engaging in prostitution were disciplined by medical means. This article delves into the hidden, suppressed history of prostitution in socialist Czechoslovakia while outlining a framework for a larger investigation of that blind spot in history on three levels.7 First, I discuss legal developments related to prostitution, including how sex work was subsumed within the 4 There is more research on the GDR. See Steffi Brüning, Prostitution in der DDR. Eine Untersuchung am Beispiel der Städte Rostock, Berlin und Leipzig von 1968 bis 1989 (Berlin: Be.bra, 2020). On Poland, see Barbara Klich-Kluczewska, “Unzüchtiger Realsozialismus. Prostitution in der Volksrepublik Polen,” Osteuropa 56, no 6 (2006): 303–317. In this collection, see Anna Dobrowolska, “Social Pathology or Freelance Occupation? The Debates on Prostitution and Sex Work in State-Socialist Poland”. On Hungary, see in this collection, Priska Komaromi, “Hunters, Hotels and Hungarian Girls: Moral Panic at the Intersection of Prostitution and Tourism under Hungarian ‘Consumer Socialism’”. On the USSR, I refer to Elizabeth Waters, “Victim or Villain? Prostitution in Post-Revolutionary Russia,” in Women and Society in Russia and the Soviet Union, ed. Linda Edmonson (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 160–177; Waters, “Restructuring the ‘Women Question.’ Perestroika and Prostitution,” Feminist Review. No. 33, Autumn (1989): 3–19. 5 Radka Dudová, “Prostitution and Trafficking in Czechoslovakia / the Czech Republic from 1950 until Today. Research Report,” in Bodily Citizenship work package 5, FEMCIT project, (November 2010). 6 Barbara Havelková, European Gender Equality Under and After State Socialism: Legal Treatment of Prostitution in the Czech Republic, Exeter College, accessed November 1, 2019, https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ad0b1fa1-28ca-4400-908b-4b34e08ca064; Havelková, “Blaming all Women: On Regulation of Prostitution in State Socialist Czechoslovakia,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 36, no. 1 (2016): 165–191. 7 This article grows from my larger book-manuscript project “Hüter der sozialistischen Moral: Prostitution und Vigilanzpraktiken in der Tschechoslowakei (1945/48–1989)” which is part of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft’s Collaborative Research Center SFB 1369 Cultures of Vigilance. Transformations – Spaces – Practices, centered at the

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criminal category of ‘parasitism,’ an important social and political construct for understanding state-society relations in socialist Czechoslovakia. Next, I turn to a rare public discussion of prostitution, namely during the 1960s, around the time of the Prague Spring, when articles on commercial sex appeared in both the popular press and scientific publications. The latter are particularly valuable, for they show the growing presence of experts in policymaking in the country since the late 1950s and the role that socialist-era criminology, medicine, and psychology played in shaping the understanding of social misfits and ‘asociality.’ Last, I analyze details from files of the legal proceedings against women suspected of trading sex for money or other goods. With the aid of those cases, I seek to track the agency of the parties involved. Above all, I scrutinize how the representatives of the public institutions involved – police, public prosecutors, and judges – made their arguments. Did they draw upon ideas available in contemporary research? Beyond that, is it possible to grasp the interests and views of the women mentioned in such files? The ‘Parasitism Paragraph’: From the Legal Abolishment to the Denial of Prostitution When Czechoslovakia was founded in 1918, Austrian conventions remained in place in almost every realm of law.8 However, concerning prostitution, the new state broke off all continuity with the regulatory regime of the failed monarchy, and, in 1922, years before many other European states, the Czechoslovak Parliament passed a law banning prostitution. Armed with the law, politicians sought to shut down brothels and direct women working as prostitutes to social institutions and find alternative sources of income.9 These initiatives were closely tied to the first Czechoslovak president Tomáš G. Masaryk (1850– 1937), a liberal-humanist activist against prostitution even before the turn of the century.10 However, in the inter-war period of social crises, this plans to defeat prostitution through social programs had little chance of being realized.

 Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, accessed February  14, 2020, https://www. sfb1369.uni-muenchen.de/index.html. 8 The definitive work on prostitution under the Habsburg rule is Nancy M. Wingfield, The World of Prostitution in Late Imperial Austria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 9 Martin Vlček, Příživnictví v  československém trestním právu (Prague: Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, 1985), 39. 10 Milena Lenderová, Chytila patrola  … aneb prostituce za Rakouska i republiky (Prague: Karolinum, 2002), 8.

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Even though the state had formally taken an abolitionist stance, it continued to use the police to control and surveil prostitutes.11 The legal rulings from the First Czechoslovak Republic remained in place during the Nazi occupation (1938/39–1945) and in the first few years after the war.12 However, the actual practice in dealing with prostitution significantly differed from the interwar period. In the early years following the Communist Party’s takeover, the general obligation to work, enacted in 1945, also served as a means to counter prostitution.13 Violations of the obligation to work could be severely punished, and, for many women who engaged in prostitution, it meant being sent to a forced labor camp.14 Another way of disciplining women convicted of commercial sex was to fine or imprison them for a ‘violation of morality’ under §134 of the new Czechoslovak criminal code, enacted in 1950. Health policy measures such as the large-scale action against venereal disease “Akce PN,” which was implemented between 1949 and 1951,15 also increased the pressure on women engaged in sex work. In sum, throughout the Stalinist period, not only was the legal situation confronting prostitutes ambiguous and confusing, but executive powers also largely tended to ignore the existing laws. A turning point in prostitution policy occurred in 1957, when ‘parasitism’ was entered as criminal offense in the Czechoslovak criminal code, first under §188a and later under §203.16 The so-called ‘parasitism’ paragraph called for sentences between three months and two years as a punishment for those convicted of living off ‘improper’ forms of income. In the original law, prostitution was not mentioned explicitly; but even without being listed, it counted as one among many forms of unproductive, ‘parasitic’ activity, such as gambling, 11 Lenderová, Chytila patrola, 42–61; Wingfield, The World of Prostitution, 251–252. 12 Karel Procházka, “Boj proti prostituce z hlediska aboličního zákona,” Zdravotnická revue 22 (1947): 6–9. 13 For a general overview of labour law see Barbara Havelková, “Pracovní právo,” in Komunistické právo v Československu. Kapitoly z dějin bezpráví, eds. Michal Bobek, Pavel Molek and Vojtěch Šimíček (Brno: Masaryk University, 2009), 478–512, esp. 498–499. 14 Dušan Janák, Tábor nucené práce ve Valticích, in Město Valtice, ed. Emil Kordiovský (Lednice: Nakl. Moraviapress, 2001), 361–376; Jerguš Sivoš, Bez rozsudku! Pracovné tábory, sústred’ovacie tábory a tábory nútenej práce na Slovensku, 1945–1953 (Bratislava: Ústav Pamäti Národa, 2011), 126, 227–231. 15 The so called Akce PN (Action PN = pohlavní nemoci/venereal disease), was a campaign that was accompanied by an increase in police checks on women suspected of working as prostitutes. Anna Falisová and Vojtech Ozorovský, “Venerické choroby na Slovensku v minulosti a efekt “akcie PN”, Historický časopis 69, no. 1 (2021): 99–118. 16 Zákon č. 63/1956, Zákon, kterým se mění a doplňuje trestní zákon č. 86/1950 Sb., § 188a, accessed February 14, 2020, https://www.psp.cz/sqw/sbirka.sqw?cz=86&r=1950.

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money-changing, and failure to work.17 Prostitution was explicitly identified as a form of parasitism in a later version of the law from 1961, under section 203, which outlined a variety of synonyms for parasitism.18 Often referred to as ‘paragraph 203,’ it became the Czechoslovak cipher for parasitism. Sections 188a and 203 should both be viewed within the context of the political transformation modeled on the Soviet Union and led by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia after 1948. The transformation gave rise to a comprehensive restructuring of the Czechoslovak legal and penal system, in which the criminal code was drastically simplified, and new elements such as ‘judges from the people’ were introduced into legal practice.19 Perhaps intentionally, the shift resulted in legal uncertainty and episodes of chaos in the Czechoslovak penitentiary system. With the end of Stalinism, however, efforts were made to create a new form of ‘socialist legality’ and again professionalize and standardize the judiciary.20 The parasitism paragraph is a typical outcome of such postStalinist revisions. On the one hand, it retained significant Stalinist elements due to being vaguely formulated and afforded executive powers plenty of room for interpretation. On the other, it marked the end of an era, because, from then on, it was clear which paragraph and arguments would be applied when prostitution was tried in court. With the repeated revision of paragraph 203 and in combination with other laws, the persecution of prostitution sharpened noticeably. In the 1960s, the state took two steps toward increasing supervision over women suspected of engaging in prostitution. In 1966, the “Law on Care for the Health of People” (Zákon o péči o zdraví lidu) was passed, which mandated gynecological examinations for women apprehended on suspicion of parasitism.21 In 17 Havelková, European Gender Equality, 62. 18 Zákon č. 140/1961 § 203, příživnictví: “Kdo se soustavně vyhýbá poctivé práci a opatřuje si prostředky k obživě prostitucí, hazardní hrou nebo jiným nekalým způsobem, bude potrestán odnětím svobody až na dvě léta” [“Anyone who consistently avoids honest work and obtains a means of subsistence through prostitution, gambling or other unproper means will be punished by imprisonment for up to two years”] accessed February  14, 2020, https://www.ustrcr.cz/data/pdf/projekty/usmrceni-hranice/dokumenty/zakon1401961.pdf. 19 Zdeněk Kühn, “Socialistická justice,“ in Komunistické právo v  Československu. Kapitoly z dějin bezpráví, eds. Michal Bobek, Pavel Molek and Vojtěch Šimíček (Brno: Masaryk Univerzita, 2009), 822–847. 20 Jan Kuklík et al., Dějiny československého práva 1945–1989 (Praha: Auditorium, 2011), chapter 9, esp. 291–295. 21 Of course, gynecological examinations had already been common practice before. With the health law it became mandatory, however, without providing the police with criteria on how to justify a suspicion of prostitution. – Koncepce sociálních služeb (Prague: Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. Press department, 1969), 103.

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1969, lawmakers expanded the definition of ‘social parasitism’ as a criminal offense to encompass individuals who earned only part of their income from ‘improper’ sources. As a consequence, women who held permanent jobs and only occasionally exchanged sex for money were now also liable for criminal prosecution.22 Paragraph 203 remained in force until the end of the socialist dictatorship in Czechoslovakia. Legal experts repeatedly criticized the law’s lack of precision concerning prostitution and argued that without any clear definition, prostitution could not be meaningfully fought.23 At the same time, the law’s imprecise language neatly corresponded to claim that prostitution had been overcome by socialism and, in turn, that devoting a separate law to the topic would be unjustified. Criminal statistics, published annually by the Czechoslovak state beginning in 1968, list the number of individuals convicted of ‘social parasitism’ as an undifferentiated mass, thereby leaving it unclear whether they were found guilty of gambling, lacking work ethic, living off of the income of a partner, or engaging in prostitution.24 The ‘Rediscovery’ of Prostitution in the 1960s At the end of the 1960s, prostitution briefly became a publicly discussed matter.25 Beginning with a series of scientific studies, this development played out in the form of several widely-read newspaper articles that garnered 22 Zákon o přečinech [Law on administrative offenses] č. 150/1969 sb. zákonů, went into effect on 1.1.1970,  § 10 determined that “parasitism” falling into this category could be punishable by imprisonment of up to one year or a fine of up to 5,000 Kčs. See Dudová, Prostitution and Trafficking in Czechoslovakia, 12–13. 23 Otakar Baláš, “Prostituce a boj proti ní,” Socialistická zákonnost XVI (1968): 16–22. In the 1970s and 1980s, primarily Vlček: see Martin Vlček, “K problematice postihu prostituce v Československém trestním zákoně,” Pŕavník CXIV, no. 10 (1975): 923–929; Vlček, Příživnictví v  československém trestním právu. Of the legal dictionaries, only the 1972 edition contains the keyword “prostitution”. It refers to the fact that prostitution is not punished directly but mediated through the parasitism paragraph, prostitution is “not defined in our legal system”, but one can characterize it as “lending the body for remuneration, usually for sexual intercourse”. Jiří Hromada, Zdeněk Madara et al., eds., Právnický slovník Part II, P–Ž (Prague: Orbis, 1972), 659–660. 24 From 1968 (1st edition) until 1989 (22nd edition), the Generální prokuratura ČSSR [Public Prosecutors of Czechoslovakia] in Prague published the Statistická ročenka kriminality. The cases tried on the basis of § 203 were not differentiated in any detail. 25 A central argument for this was the significant increase in prostitution. All actors involved, including the police, cited estimates on growing numbers. The 1969 Social Welfare report states that the police kept a register of the 5,000 prostitutes known to them by name in

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much attention. It culminated in a 1968 meeting of the Parliament, where experts were invited to give presentations on the topic to the Public Health Committee.26 Prostitution’s ‘career’ as a topic of public interest was typical of the post-utopian period after 1956.27 During Stalinism, it had been expected that communism would solve any problem; however, after 1956 politicians faced with the many difficulties in society turned increasingly to science for help, demonstrating the tendency of the era to ‘expertize’ politics.28 Further in keeping with the time, the discussion around prostitution emerged in the context of liberalization during the 1960s, which made it possible to speak of the previously unspeakable. Prostitution was, however, never at the center of the debate; it was a side note in discussions on youth, women, and family. Yet, it became a symbol of a comprehensive social crisis precisely because it was such a taboo topic. If Czechoslovakia was a socialist society, as stated in the 1960 Constitution, how could prostitution spread “like an epidemic,” according to the prognosis of the press?29 When prostitution was mentioned in the 1950s, it was either seen as a relic of the past or as a foreign import.30 In the context of the ‘Prostitution Boom’ reported by the scientific press and in popular media at the end of the 1960s, it was argued that the increasing tourism also brought men on the lookout for cheap sex to the country. However, the focus was directed inward, at Czechoslovak society. Prostitution was the pinnacle of a failure in the Czech lands, and it was assumed that another 4,000 cases went unreported. Koncepce sociálních služeb, 101. 26 Jiří Prokopec, the secretary of the State Population Commission, gave a short lecture on prostitution to the Health Committee on 8 January 1968. It was held under the title “Současná problematika prostituce v ČSSR” and printed in Zprávy státní populační komise: Informační bulletin o populačních otázkách by the Secretariat of the State Population Commission (1968), 1, 35–40. 27 On the post-utopian period after 1956 see Pavel Kolář, Der Poststalinismus. Ideologie und Utopie einer Epoche (Vienna: Böhlau, 2016), especially 27–51. 28 On the ‘expertization’ of politics, see Jiří Hoppe, Markéta Škodová, Jiří Suk, and Francesco Caccamo. “O nový československý model socialismu”. Čtyří interdisciplinární vědecké týmy při ČSAV a UK v 60 letech (Prague: Institute of Contemporary History AV ČR, 2015). 29 Josef Holler, “Nežijeme v ráij. Část druhá: bahno,” Mládý svět 8 no. 13 (1966): 6–9. Like the press, officials talked about increasing numbers of prostitutes but without having reliable numbers. “Předsednictvo ÚV KSČ příjalo 20. prosince 1966 úsnesení k neutěšením stavu problematice boje proti prostituci v ČSSR” [“On December 20, 1966, the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party adopted a resolution on the unhappy state of the issue of the fight against prostitution in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic”], Security Forces Archive, Prague, fond A 7–386, Secretariat of the Deputy Minister of the Interior Jaroslav Klíma. 30 Havelková, “Blaming all Women,” 13.

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development that could not be traced back to the residue of capitalism but rather had its roots in the Stalinist restructuring of society, namely, in women’s changing roles.31 These newspaper articles cannot be read as sources on the history of prostitution; instead, they are more accurately read as part of the discourse on the effects of social change. The social criticism of prostitution is prominent in the reports published in 1968 and 1969 by popular journals like Svět v obrazech (The World in Pictures), Mladý svět (Young World), Vlasta (the Women’s Association magazine)32 or Reportér. These reports are testimonies of the brief phase of journalistic freedom during Prague Spring and the initial months following its end.33 The authors did not shy away from criticizing the state for years of enforced taboos upon negative social phenomena and for failing to fulfill its role in maintaining order. At the same time, they satisfied the voyeurism of their audiences who were unaccustomed to reading stories of sex and crime in the domestic press. In doing so, they sought to distance themselves from sensationalist ‘Western’ reporting by accompanying the scandalous details and, in some cases, salaciously-illustrated, articles with conversations and commentary from experts in the field. This discourse of traditional-values-in-crisis combined with unusually dispassionate portrayals of sexual behaviour outside the norm found resonance among readers. A series of essays by journalist Karel Štorkán in the weekly paper Svět v obrazech in February 196834 was so successful that they were published in a book titled Slečny lehce přístupné (Easy young women), accompanied by interviews with a judge, a lawyer, three psychologists and a psychiatrist, as well as reader responses.35 These stories – which, according to Štorkán, were just “seven from ten thousand” – had simple structures: Most began with young girls who ran away from home, dormitories or asylums to escape to Prague. Once there, they fell with bad crowds, made bad decisions, and landed in the clinic for sexually transmitted diseases in Prague’s Apolinářská street before 31

For a similar anti-Stalinist discourse in Poland and Czechoslovakia, see Zdeněk Nebřenský, Marx, Engels, Beatles. Myšlenkový svět polských a československých vysokoškoláků, 1956– 1968 (Prague: Akademia/Masarykův Institute and Archive AV ČR, 2017), 71–78. 32 Karel Štorkán, “Slečny lehce přístupné,” Svět v obrazech No. 6 (February 13, 1968), No. 7 (February 20, 1968), No. 8 (February 27, 1968), No. 9 (March 5, 1968), No. 10 (March 12, 1968), No. 11 (March 19, 1968), No. 12 (March 26, 1968), No. 13 (April 2, 1968), No. 14 (March 9, 1968), No. 15 (March 16, 1968). Ivan Soeldner, “Láska na prodej,” Mladý svět 24 (1969): 13–20. Jiří Prokopec, “Jak je to u nás s prostituci?,” Vlasta no. 7, February 14, 1968, 6–7. 33 Martin Schulze Wessel, Der Prager Frühling. Aufbruch in eine neue Welt (Ditzingen: Reclam, 2018), esp. 156–167. 34 Štorkán, “Slečny lehce přístupné,” Svět v obrazech. 35 Karel Štorkán, Slečny lehce přístupné (Prague: Středočeské, 1969).

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ultimately ending up in court. Štorkán gave the impression of authenticity (“the names and places are fake, but the facts, unfortunately, are true”) by allowing the young women to tell their own stories and elaborating upon their reports with testimony from witnesses, parents, teachers, friends and landlords. His protagonists come from rough circumstances, alcohol frequently played a role, and even when their families made a good impression from the outside, they were unable to offer emotional stability or a proper work ethic. The girls turn to the sex business out of naiveté or laziness. They share consumeristic greed, excessive partying, and a soft spot for luxury goods in common. Their chances for rehabilitation seem tenuous at best. Young women who fell prey to prostitution, as portrayed in Štorkán’s stories, played a central role in the debates of 1968/69. One other group appeared frequently in the debate: the so-called ‘luxury prostitutes.’ They were considered intelligent and thus difficult to catch, made offers primarily to foreigners and accepted only hard currency or vouchers for the Tuzex foreign currency shops, which is why they were also called Tuzex-slečny.36 This world of high-end prostitution was not portrayed in entirely negative terms: some of these expensive prostitutes were said to be university students who studied foreign languages. The magazine Mladý svět described the women who waited for Western clients as “attractive women at the first glance […] dressed in the most current international fashion” and disposed to offer the men more than Western prostitutes:37 Apparently, they are impressed by the fact that the Prague Tuzex girls do not have the hurried business behavior of Western sex traders, that they are willing to devote themselves to the customer all evening, to entertain him, even to pretend an emotional outburst. And that’s true, they don’t have it at home.38

Despite the fascination with these women, they were seen as the obvious offenders in the situation. With teenagers, the blame was less evident. On an individual level, they could be victims of unfortunate circumstances and 36 An article about juvenile delinquents in Bratislava also mentioned “dolarky” and “bonytútky” (dolarky could be translated with dollar-girls, the neologism bonytútky refers to prostitutky (prostitutes) and the so called bony vouchers for Tuzex stores, which could be used for making purchases at the luxury goods store). V. Dóka, M. Brankovič, A. Bárdoš, L. Košecký, “Analýza trestnej činnosti mládeže v Bratislave za rok 1964,” Československá gynekologie XXXI, no. 8 (1966): 603–605. 37 Ivan Soeldner, “Láska na prodej,” 13–20, 15. 38 Soeldner, “Láska na prodej,” 20. “Zřejmě jim imponuje, že pražské tuzexové slečny nemají uspěchané byznysmenské chování západních obchodnic se sexem, že jsou ochotny věnovat se zákazníkovi celý večer, bavit jej, dokonce předstírat citové vzplanutí. A to se platí, to doma nemají.”.

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thought capable of rehabilitation. But as Anna Dobrowolska has shown in the case of Poland,39 this discourse did not revolve around individuals. Young women were instead treated as emblematic of a moral crisis of society, evident in the trend towards sex at a young age, the high rate of abortion, unstable families and the resulting moral decay among the younger generation. Otakar Osmančík, a criminologist and author of the 1969 pilot study on prostitution I will present in the next section, traced this crisis to policies that had incrementally pushed the family from the center of social life to its periphery. Unprepared for the sociopolitical consequences of the high rate of employment among mothers, he argued, Czechoslovakia had neglected to teach the next generation its values.40 His conclusion was that this problem could only be solved by a “rehabilitation of the family.”41 Barbara Havelková has argued that this popular demand in the 1960s was primarily aimed at women, who should come to terms with their biologically-determined roles as mothers and devote themselves to this task to the fullest.42 Furthermore, the discourse also carried a warning to the daughters, namely, how dangerous it could be to deviate from the right path. If they did not take their work seriously, or hung out with the wrong crowd, or engaged in casual sex, it would be a short route to ‘parasitism’; the step from promiscuity to prostitution was small.43 The open debate on prostitution ended after the cleansing of the public press in 1969 following the defeat of the Prague Spring and the beginning of so-called normalization. The moral panic that came up in these discussions did not, however, disappear. The narrative of the dangerous fate awaiting young women who lacked moral fortitude in ‘prostitutive circumstances’ also appeared in the reporting of the 1970s and 1980s.44 As the next section will show, the academic discourse on prostitution followed a similar development: after the reform period, expert research was only accessible internally within their fields.45 Yet, even though the public presence 39 40

Dobrowolska, “Social Pathology or Freelance Occupation?”. Otakar Osmančík, “Kriminalita a problémy kolem ní,” Reporter 4, no. 16 (April 24, 1969): 11–13. 41 Osmančík, “Kriminalita a problémy kolem ní,” 12. 42 Havelková, “Blaming all Women,” 23–24. 43 However, there were also voices warning young people from confusing promiscuity with prostitution. Jaroslav Bartůněk, “Poznáky k otázce prostituce,” Zprávy populační komise 6, (1967): 28–30; Prokopec, “Současná problematika prostituce v ČSSR”. 44 On the discussions of the 1980s, see Christiane Brenner, “Líné dívky, lehké dívky? “Příživnictví” a disciplinace mladých žen v době normalizace,” Dějiny a Současnost  7 (2013): 19–22. 45 The short research reports from the 1970s and the dissertation in medicine by Březinová from 1981 indicate that the research of the 1960s continued. Alexandra Březinová.

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of scientists working in the field radically decreased, the lenses through which they interpreted prostitution in their analyses remained essentially the same. Prostitution as a “Social Pathology”: The Criminologists’ and Sexologists’ View The first scientific approaches to prostitution in Socialist Czechoslovakia can be traced back to the early 1960s.46 However, the results of this research were not published until the end of the decade. Two research teams, in particular, played definitive roles: The first pair, Karel Nedoma and Iva Šipová, worked at the Institute of Sexology at the Charles University in Prague,47 and the second pair, Otakar Osmančík and Bohumila Vacková, were based at the Criminological Research Institute, then an office under the public prosecutor. Their initial research questions were determined by their respective disciplines. The sexologists, at this time primarily working on sexual deviance, were interested in establishing a psychological and social profile of women

Příspěvek k  sociální zdravotní problematice prostituce jako zdroje pohlavních nemoci. Kandidátská disertační práce (PhD diss., Charles University Prague,1981); Sociální studie o ženách s prostitučním chováním (Správa sociálních služeb NVP [Administration of social services], 1975). This research report, on which scientists dismissed after 1968 had worked, was intended only for “internal use.” 46 Božena Rudlová identifies her unpublished dissertation as the first scientific research on the topic since the interwar period. Božena Rudlová, Problém prostituce z psychiatrického hlediska (PhD diss., Charles University Prague, ca. 1965), 2. In 1963, Rudlová collected data from 100 women who underwent examination in the Apolinářská clinic. Rudlová’s research was conducted in a similar setting to the projects I describe here. Helena Švarcová, however, in an internal research report, lists studies carried out by the Institute of Sexology at the Charles University in Prague as early as 1962. Helena Švarcová, “Problém prostituce v naší společnosti,” Sociální studie o ženách s prostitučním chováním, 9. 47 Šípová and Nedoma published the results of their research from 1963/64 in a series of short contributions to scientific journals. Iva Šípová and Karel Nedoma, “Osobnost socio-sexuálně deprivovaných žen,” Časopis lékařů českých 109, No. 26/27 (1970): 609–613; Šípová and Nedoma, “Heterosexuální vztahy žen s prostitučním chováním,” Československá psychiatrie 68, no. 1 (1972): 23–26; Šípová and Nedoma, “Gynekologicko-zdravotnický profil žen s  prostitučním chováním,” Československá gynekologie 38, no. 6 (1973): 425–427; Šípová and Nedoma, “Sociální a ekonomické faktory v  rozvoji prostitučního chování u žen,” Sociologický časopis 9, no. 1 (1973): 103–106. The last article is particularly interesting; the authors argue that, on the basis of the data they collected, lack of financial means was not characteristic of the prostitutes’ family backgrounds.

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in prostitution, in order to round out their understanding of its “social pathology.”48 In contrast, the criminologists were interested in gaining a broad overview of the forms of prostitution in Czechoslovakia with the explicit aim of mastering it through regulation.49 Despite their different agendas, their research projects overlapped in design, questions, methods, and even findings. Both criminologists and sexologists treated the occurrence of prostitution as a given fact and sought in the first place to define and classify it. Osmančík defined prostitution in technical terms as “repetitive lending of one’s own body to practices which have sexual or erotic meaning.”50 He qualified it from a moral perspective as a “socio-pathological phenomenon  … which contradicts our humanist principles and is incompatible with socialist morality.”51 The researchers further sought to capture the whole spectrum of prostitution in its various forms, including part-time and occasional prostitution, although they largely overlooked male prostitution.52 Because socialist society claimed to have overcome the economic disadvantage and inequality among the sexes which forced women under capitalism into prostitution, the search for the cause of prostitution in Czechoslovakia never referred to societal conditions but focused on the individual level; that is, on the women suspected of prostitution themselves.53 A primary site for research on prostitution was the venereology department of the university clinic in Prague in Apolinářská street. The existence of this place was no secret to the people of Prague – since the interwar period, the term “Apolinářská” had served as a synonym for ‘fallen girls.’54 Here, women were tested or treated for sexually transmitted diseases. 48

49

50 51 52 53 54

The Institute of Sexology, Prague was founded in 1921 and was the first university research institute of its kind. Its history is virtually unexplored, which is due in part to the lack of archival sources. On the research of the female orgasm at the institute, see Kateřina Lišková, Sexual Liberation, Socialist Style. Communist Czechoslovakia and the Science of Desire, 1945–1989 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018). Otakar Osmančík, Zpráva o výsledku pilotáže k  výzkumu prostituce, (Prague: Research Institute for Criminology, 1969); Otakar Osmančík, “K problematice prostituce,” in Péče o společensky nepřizpůsobené občany, Metodická pomůčka pro pracovníky národních výborů – Teoretická část (Prague: Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs of the Czechoslovak Republic, 1972), 192–230. Osmančík, “K problematice prostituce,” 200. Osmančík, “K problematice prostituce,” 197. Karel Nedoma from the Sexological Institute conducted some research on male prostitution. Karel Nedoma, “Homosexuální prostitutce u mladistvých,” Československá psychiatrie 58, no. 5 (1962): 312–314. Osmančík, “K problematice prostituce,” 198–200. The history of Apolinářská has not been written. There is some information on the building in Březinová’s unpublished dissertation from 1981. Březinová, “Příspěvek k sociální zdravotní problematice”.

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Both teams worked with standardized surveys on background, education, sexual biography, and current living conditions. Both also acknowledged that the studies based on interviews with fifty (the criminologists) and approximately a hundred (the sexologists) women were not based on representative populations. They assumed there were groups of prostitutes the police simply would not be able to reach, such as inconspicuous women who earned money from sex alongside regular employment, and luxury-prostitutes,55 whom they viewed in stark contrast to what they depicted as the “lowest level” of prostitution practiced by alcohol-dependent or Roma women.56 In the end, both teams reached value-laden conclusions about women who offered sex in exchange for money, arguing that the ‘typical prostitute’ was a woman from a broken home who had difficulties in school and trouble maintaining steady employment. She was also judged incapable of having stable monogamous relationships and inadequate to raise children.57 In addition to lack of discipline and ability to form meaningful attachments, the experts described these women as having lower than average levels of intelligence as well as a strong tendency towards psychological abnormalities. They defined prostitution as an expression of a serious disorder caused by socialization, but also attributed it to hereditary or acquired (for example, through alcohol abuse) psychological and physical deficits, and thus to a product of a combination of social, biological and psychological factors.58 According to their research, sexuality played a subordinate role, present in the analysis only to the extent that the willingness to have sex without emotional attachment fit the general profile of emotional poverty.59 Osmančík and Vacková identified a factor more important than sexuality for predicting prostitution; according to their research, an insufficient or missing identification with the ‘right’ female role model played a significant role. This deficit was attributed to a dysfunctional relationship to the parents, but above all to the mother.60 In their conclusions, the criminologists and sexologists placed emphasis on different aspects of their research. Osmančík und Vacková from the Criminological Research Institute called on the state to no longer silence the 55 Šípová and Nedoma, “Osobnost socio-sexuálně deprivovaných žen,” 612. 56 Osmančík, “K problematice prostituce,” 20–206. 57 Šípová and Nedoma, “Sociální a ekonomické faktory v rozvoji prostitučního chování u žen”. 58 Lindenberger “Asoziale Lebensweise,” 236. 59 Rudlová diagnosed her subjects as suffering from “abnormal” sexuality, evidenced by frigidity, among other symptoms. Rudlová, Problém prostituce z psychiatrického hlediska, 78, 105. Similar findings in Šípová and Nedoma “Heterosexuální vztahy žen s prostitučním chováním”. 60 Osmančík, Zpráva o výsledku pilotáže k výzkumu prostituce, 123.

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existence of prostitution, pointing to the various negative side effects of this, such as the spread of venereal disease and petty crime. They justified their demands for a more explicit formulation of the law by presenting a survey of opinions conducted among professionals who came into contact with prostitution.61 Some responses to the survey called for better regulation, even mentioning the idea of a “socialist brothel.”62 The sexologists Šípová und Nedoma ascribed to prostitutes a disinterested, asocial attitude and, in so doing, brought the syndrome they defined as “social-sexual deprivation” into closer association with a threat to social peace.63 Based on what we know of their work, it is not too bold to assume that both research teams saw themselves as potential problem-solvers for the state. This speaks to the context of the ‘expertization’ of politics to which their work belonged. Their conclusions also reflect gendered assumptions in socialist Czechoslovakia. Whether through reform and enforcement of harsher laws or through prevention and therapy for sexual deviance, all agreed-upon measures should be taken not against pimps, johns or abusive spouses, but rather against the women in prostitution. ‘Parasitism’ in Court: Two Case Studies from the Period of Normalization The work of the sexologists and criminologists at the Apolinářská clinic help to show the suppression of prostitution and its history following the Prague Spring. So too do court cases involving women accused of prostitution indirectly through overt charges of parasitism. A huge number of local district court case files is kept in the Prague City Archives. From the years between 1969 and 1989, there are many files on the trials of young women accused of parasitism. In this section, I will describe two cases out of approximately fifty that I have gathered so far, although there are more.64 The files are useful for addressing the following questions: how did these women come to the attention of the police, what happened during the investigations, and how did prostitution justify bringing the charge of parasitism against them? Did the accused 61 62 63 64

Dudová, Prostitution and Trafficking in Czechoslovakia, 22. Dudová, Prostitution and Trafficking in Czechoslovakia, 33. Šípová and Nedoma, “Osobnost socio-sexuálně deprivovaných žen,” 611. These documents are held in the Central Registry of the Prague Courts, where a large number are destroyed after a few years. About 10 percent are then given to the Prague City Archive. I was able to use the find books and holdings of Central Registry as well as the holdings in the City Archive. I would like to thank Doc. Dr. Petr Kreuz from the Prague City Archive for his advice.

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have an opportunity to give an account of what happened and to represent their own interests? And to what punishments or forms of ‘improvement’ were these young women sentenced? The first case dated from 1970 and concerned a 21-year-old Slovak woman, appearing here as A. Her case is typical in many respects but differs on one significant point: she was charged not on her own, but together with her partner. She and her boyfriend came to Prague from a small village, following the pattern described in Štorkán’s stories.65 In Prague, she successively entered into employment contracts in several factories and canteens, all of which she gave up after a short time. Initially, she only occasionally supplemented her income through paid sex, but eventually came to meet her growing financial needs, and those of her boyfriend as well, exclusively through paid sexual services. She met clients in the streets and bars of Prague’s Old City. According to her statements, she earned 100 Czechoslovak crowns (Kčs) per meeting, sometimes 200, and estimated her monthly income at 7000 Kčs, five times the amount she would have earned at her first job in Prague as a cleaning woman in a factory canteen.66 The trial file contains several police interrogations and minutes from A.’s judicial interrogation. A. was caught, questioned by the police for the first time at night in September 1970, and was then brought to Apolinářská for a gynecological examination.67 In the first interrogation, she admitted she was forced to ‘go on the street’ by her boyfriend. A few days later, she denied this claim, apparently pressured by her boyfriend to do so.68 A few days later, she repeated her first statement of going against her will. During the main hearing in January 1971, she requested to be interrogated alone and repeated her original claim. The court charged and found the young man guilty of procurement (paragraph 204 in the criminal code)69 and parasitism, sentencing him to one year of imprisonment. A. was sentenced to six months of imprisonment after having been found guilty of “social parasitism” under paragraph 203, but the sentence was suspended due to her advanced pregnancy. In addition, she was given a year of probation (zkušební doba).70

65 66 67 68 69 70

Prague City Archives (AHMP, archiv hlavního města Prahy) A. 1 T 6/71. Vyšetřovací spis č. 711/70, Trestní spis Pv: 1334/70. AHMP, A. 1 T 6/71, unnumbered, Appeal. AHMP, A. 1 T 6/71, no. 26–38, Interrogation minutes September 1, 1970. AHMP, A. 1 T 6/71,no. 16–25, Interrogation minutes from the accused boyfriend. Vlček, “Příživnictví v československém trestním právu,” 56. A suspended sentence could be supplemented by a “trial period” of up to one year during which the person concerned had to prove his/her willingness to integrate into society.

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The second case, from 1985, concerns a 17-year-old girl71 named here as B., who was apprehended by the police in January of that year in Prague because she did not have a valid work stamp in her identity card. The investigation found her parents had reported her missing in November 1984. B. had quit her position in an outpatient clinic, which she had begun after she gave up her secondary schooling, and she had left the apartment she shared with her mother in Prague. In weeks that followed, she slept at friends’ places or stayed with new acquaintances. Many of them, though not all, were men, and B. reportedly had sex with some of them. Because she did not have a source of income, B.’s hosts provided her with food and cigarettes, occasionally paying for drinks if they went out. B. was brought to Apolinářská on January 30 on the justification that sex “with several casual acquaintances” put her at risk for venereal disease. On February 22, B. was released from the clinic. Throughout the duration of her time at the clinic, she was not diagnosed with any sexually transmitted diseases. The court found B. guilty of “social parasitism,”72 but suspended the six-month prison sentence because the accused had cooperated with the investigation and had shown remorse during the interrogations. She was instead sentenced to a year of probation, during which B. had to prove she was capable of living “properly”.73 During these investigations, both women displayed an understanding of their crimes and willingness to improve (B.: “I understand that one cannot live like this”),74 but also sought influence over their statements and to make their own side of the story heard. Though very limited in scope, the court records reveal the agency of the accused women. A. freely admitted to working as a prostitute.75 She satisfied men orally and said that she did not see anything wrong with that because there was no

71

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73 74 75

Concrete conditions could also be associated with this, such as a ban on visiting pubs or participation in work education measures. Zákon č. 140/1961 sb. § 26. Central Registry of the Municipal Court in Prague, Prague District Courts 1985. District Prosecutor’s Office for Prague 6. Vyšetřovací spis, ČVS: VV – 62/85, Trestní spis. Proti ml. B. [Name and date of birth (1967) crossed out] pro trestný čin příživnictví podle §203 tr. zákona. 1 T 67/85. Central Registry of the Municipal Court in Prague, 1 T 67/85. Unnumbered. Judgement from 22.11.1985. The judgment also mentions the positive feedback from the new job that B. had taken up in the meantime as a factor that alleviates the “social danger” of the accused. Pavel Vantuch, Aktuální otázky postpenitenciární péče (Brno: Jan Evangelista Purkyně University, 1982), 45. Interrogation minutes, 23.3.1985, Central Registry of the Municipal Court in Prague, 1 T 67/85, no. 4–14, 4. AHMP, A. 1 T 6/71, no. 16–25, Main hearing minutes 17.3.1971, 2.

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vaginal penetration. A. provided full detail at the hearing: How the exchange took place – from the route to particular places to the act itself, in dark alleyways, sometimes in the client’s car, all the way up to payment. Meanwhile, she successfully resisted the attempts her lawyer made to conduct an examination of her psychological condition.76 Upon learning of her classification as ‘parasitic,’ A. raised an objection on the grounds that much of her absence from work was a result of her pregnancy. The court rejected her appeal.77 She then made a plea to be allowed further residence in Prague. In a handwritten note to the court, A. explained that she would like to return to the Slovak village that she came from in order to find work but that, as a single mother, it would be impossible for her to live there. Describing the rejection she would face from her ashamed parents, A. justified her desire to marry her boyfriend after his release from prison.78 In this “temporary crisis of my life,” she wrote, a “harsh punishment” was not the right solution; “instead I should receive help so that I can overcome the difficulties I now face with my expected child.”79 B. also confessed. She admitted that she stopped coming in to work shortly after starting her position and that she forged a doctor’s note stating she was temporarily unfit to work. She also gave detailed information about the locales where she met new acquaintances. Like A., she also mentioned the streets of Prague’s city center and places such as Berjožka- and the Non-Stop-Bar. Her defense focused on her desire to prove she was not indolent or ‘asocial’ and that she never wanted to be a kept woman. Wherever she stayed and received food and cigarettes, she had made herself useful doing housework. At no point did she receive cash payment. She had never exchanged sex for payment of any kind, because she had always experienced an attraction to the men she stayed with. She expressed regret only once, in the case of a considerably older man whom she had stayed with for a brief period.80 In both cases, the judicial decision was preceded by detailed investigations. They referred first and foremost to the fulfilment or breach of the obligation to work. To this end, the police department reconstructed the individual employment histories in detail, requesting reports from the respective companies that detailed not only basic information but also an assessment of their 76 AHMP, A. 1 T 6/71, no. 52–54. Notes based on telephone conversation, 15.02.1971. 77 AHMP, A. 1 T 6/71, no. 7, Appeal by the Defendant 5.1.1917, no. 8, Decision on the Appeal by the Defendant 13.1.1971. 78 AHMP, A. 1 T 6/71, unnumbered, handwritten letter from 3.3.1971. 79 AHMP, A. 1 T 6/71, no. 16–25, Main hearing minutes, 17.3.1971. – AHMP, A. 1 T 6/71, no. 7, A.‘s Appeal 5.1.1971. 80 Central Registry of the Municipal Court in Prague, 1 T 67/85. Hearing minutes from 30.01.1985, no. 4–114, 8.

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performance and morale. In A.’s case, one of her listed positions proved fictional: The head of recruitment at a company where she had applied for a job had not given her the position, but had offered her proof of work and 100 Kčs in exchange for sex.81 The court explained its judgments on the grounds that the defendants did not “work.” The file reads as follows: In determining the sentence, we considered the danger the two defendants posed to society through their actions, which is mainly due to the fact that they are young, healthy and able to work, fully capable of providing for themselves and starting a happy family together. Instead, they left their place of residence to stay in Prague, where they had numerous opportunities to obtain quite substantial financial means from the above-mentioned actions, and instead chose to live at the expense of society.82

Not working, as described in the above passage, did more than harm one’s individual duty and deprive the state of productive labour. If one person did not work, then the basic consensus of socialist society was put at risk by an individual’s behaviour. The sexual element of the construct of a social identity for women remained in the background. Though it is not visible at first glance, it played an important role. The potentially-infected bodies of ‘prostitutes’ were not the only part of them seen as dangerous. Their purported moral depravity, evident by their engagement in casual sex, was also a concern of the court. The court’s individual assessments used in sentencing deliberations relied on sexuality in their arguments about the women. These assessments were based on the opinions of the local national committees,83 former educators and employers, and – in the case from the 1980s – social authorities, such as the local head of the youth organization and a psychologist. In A.’s case, her abortion in 1969 was evaluated as a negative expression of loose sexuality.84 B. was questioned extensively about the nature of her relationships with men, and the court ultimately found her to have a “normal sexuality,”85 despite frequently changing partners. 81 AHMP, A. 1 T 6/71, Main hearing minutes from 17.3.1971, 3. 82 AHMP, A. 1 T 6–17/1971, unnumbered, Sentence. 83 AHMP, A. 1 T 6–17/1971, no. 56–57, 58-5962. Central Registry of the Municipal Court in Prague, 1 T 67/85, no. 42–48. 84 AHMP, A.  1 T 6–17/1971, no. 26–38. Witness statement of the mother. AHMP, A.  1 T 6–17/1971, no. 62 Personality assessment by the police in A.’s home village. AHMP, A. 1 T 6–17/1971, no. 68–70 Proposal for corrective steps. 85 Central Registry of the Municipal Court in Prague, 1 T 67/85, unnumbered, Appeal from 3.6.1985, In the text of the appeal, B. is described as having “A normal private life with several different partners.”

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It is not clear whether the resolution of this question was at the root of B.’s stay in the inpatient venereology ward at the Prague University Clinic.86 The files do not provide any information about the three weeks she spent there. In both cases, the defendants were comparatively young. Since judicial reform in 1950, socialist Czechoslovakia no longer had a separate juvenile criminal law. However, the courts agreed on the principle of pedagogical rehabilitation for youth crimes.87 In both cases, the defendants received probation with the goal of ‘education’ – both were tasked with proving their aptitude for a ‘normal’ life; one through motherhood, the other through work. On the surface, these cases may seem to have come to a mild end, given the fact that months of absence from work was often met with imprisonment.88 Considering the entire procedure, however – from the humiliating practice of repeated gynecological examinations, to the involvement of one’s social circle in the deliberations and sentencing, to the threat of consequences for any further ‘conspicuous behaviour’ – the disciplinary action against these young women seems enormous. Although prostitution was not formally a crime, but rather a form of so-called ‘social parasitism,’ the investigators went to great lengths to provide a detailed image of these young women’s sexual morals and concrete sexual experiences. The role of gender in this respect is clear; the young men underwent no such investigation. In both cases, which I have presented here, men who had had sexual intercourse with the accused were called to court as prosecution witnesses. One of them had evidently paid for it. This fact was in no way discussed.

86

Central Registry of the Municipal Court in Prague, 1 T 67/85, no. 38. Letter from the Prague Police 6 to the Venereological Department Apolinářská ulice 4, Prag 2 refering to the reasons for the accused B.’s stay: “The above mentioned person ran away from home from 14.9.1984 to 30.1.1985 [in the original incorrectly listed as 1984]. In this time, she lived with several strangers who she had sex with. For this reason, there is suspicion that the above named could be infected with a venereal disease.” 87 According to Pitselka, Válková and Walter, this was lip service; in comparison to the FRG, ČSSR sentenced young people under 24 to prison much more frequently. Angelika Pitsela, Helena Válková and Michael Walter, “Mit und ohne Jugendstrafrecht: Sanktionsunterschiede zwischen der Tschechoslowakei und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in den achtziger Jahren,” Zeitschrift für die gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaft (1992): 865(291)-891(317). See also Christiane Brenner, “Harte Hand, schwacher Staat? Der Umgang mit Jugendkriminalität in der sozialistischen Tschechoslowakei (1970–1989),” in Ordnung und Sicherheit, Devianz und Kriminalität im Staatssozialismus. Tschechoslowakei und DDR 1948/49–1989, eds. Volker Zimmermann and Michal Pullmann. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 253–277. 88 Vlček, Příživnictví v československém trestním právu, 80.

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Conclusion In the 1960s, Czechoslovak scientists and journalists compelled the state to address prostitution. As one of the experts involved argued, the problem had not been solved; instead, it had grown considerably, “precisely because its existence had been ignored for years.”89 However, the demand to define prostitution legally and to criminalize it explicitly went unfulfilled. Instead, measures were adopted in the 1960s to increase pressure on women suspected of offering sex for money: In 1966, gynecological exams were made mandatory for all women apprehended under suspicion of ‘parasitism.’90 What could be considered a matter of medical care was in fact an intrusion of privacy and a measure of control exercised over women who did not live according to specific standards set by the state. In addition to the state’s extended reach into the lives of individuals, the state criminalized lesser forms of ‘parasitism,’ including prostitution, in 1969 and thus made clear its intentions to punish violations of social norms across the board. This development can be seen in the context of a gradual shift in state repression that began in the 1960s and continued (interrupted by the purges during the early Normalization period) in the 1970s and 1980s. While open persecution of political ‘enemies’ was characteristic of the early state-socialist time, efforts to discipline social deviation became much more important after 1968. In court, these violations were addressed indirectly through the language of work.91 Because criminal statistics did not clarify exactly how the violation of one’s duty to work occurred, the public could not get a picture of how widespread prostitution actually was. The socialist state’s self-image was one that prized work above all else; not working, working irregularly, or working ‘improperly’ all became evidence of being asocial. Because there were no ‘objective’ reasons for such behaviour, Czechoslovak scientists and politicians traced the causes of this ‘social pathology’ to the individual and milieu. Criminologists, sociologists, and sexologists sought to prove ‘parasitism’ was caused not by low wages or material need, but rather by dysfunctional family

89 Prokopec, “Jak je to u nás s  prostituci?,” 7. “Domnivám se, že prostituce nabyla u nás takového rozsahu právě proto, že po dlouhá léta se tajil sám fakt její existence.” [I believe that prostitution has acquired such a scale in our country precisely because for many years the very fact of its existence has been hidden.] 90 Vlček, Příživnictví v československém trestním právu, 55. 91 This discourse makes an implicit separation between “work” and “prostitution”. In socialist society focusing on the productive economy there was no room for any such concept as “sex work.”

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structure and a poor work ethic, often passed down by parents.92 For women in this construction of the asocial milieu, bad work ethics were identified with bad sexual morals and the line between casual sex and prostitution was blurred. The state seemed to treat young women found guilty of parasitism with forgiveness and care. Thus, on a symbolic level, it emphasized the distinction between failed actual parents and successful state-as-parents.93 De facto, as illustrated by the two court cases, the state intervened significantly in the accused women’s most private matters. Additionally, even the comparatively mild sentence of probation could have long-lasting implications for the lives of those involved, because the cadre files which accompanied every person throughout their professional life documented absences and problems with work ethic.94 Both young women in these cases tried to escape being labeled as asocial. They rejected the charge of shying away from work and having sexual intercourse without feelings – or in A.’s case, ‘real’ sex for money. The needs of the accused women and their request for support received only a brief mention and, poignantly, the question of whether women who worked as prostitutes deserved any protection or empathy received absolutely no attention in the public discourse. These women were seen as threats to society, general health, and good morals. Following this logic, protection of society was the top priority, not help for women engaging in prostitution; this latter topic remained ignored. Public discourse also largely failed to address men, both pimps as well as clients. Dudová und Havelková make a convincing case that men’s sexual needs, which they could pay for if necessary in order to be satisfied, were interpreted as ‘natural,’ whereas the willingness of the women who would satisfy them was classified as pathological.95 A.’s case illustrates 92 Kriminalita mládeže. Studie o mladistvých delikventech. Criminological Research Institute at the General Prosecutor’s Office. (Prague: SEVT, t. ST 1, 1968), 169. With the participation of Otakar Osmančík and Zdeněk Švancar. In this volume, the emergence of juvenile criminal personalities is associated with the work ethic of parents – and of course with failure at school, incomplete families and alcohol. 93 Christiane Brenner, “Život na úkor společnosti”: Příživnictví jako nástroj disciplinace mládeže v socialistickém Československu sedmdesátých a osmdesátých let,” Marginalia Historica 3, no. 2 (2012): 96–104. 94 On the topic of cadre files, see Marie Černá, Jaroslav Cuhra and Matěj Spurný, “Kaderarbeit,” Bohemia 53, no. 2 (2013): 283–286.Accessed at https://dx.doi.org/10.18447/ BoZ-2013–3866. On the different ways of approaching the information listed in the files, see Marie Černá, “Bilder der (Un-)Zuverlässigkeit: Kadergutachten und Kaderpraxis in der Tschechoslowakei 1948–1989,” Bohemia 53, no. 2 (2013): 304–322. Accessed at https:// dx.doi.org/10.18447/BoZ-2013-3868. 95 Dudová, “Prostitution and Trafficking in Czechoslovakia,” 24; Havelková, “Blaming all Women,” 21.

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this gender bias in an especially demonstrative manner: the fake employer she had sex with in exchange for money was not described as a client, nor as a man who had signed a false certificate, but rather as a witness for the prosecution. To be ‘asocial,’ as it was constructed in socialist Czechoslovakia, included many things. It can be assumed that, in the case of women, the diagnosis of social deviance was often automatically associated with sex. We need concrete research on how women who did not follow the ruling sexual norms – not limited to but including offering sex for money – were made into targets in the fight against the ‘enemies’ of society. To gain a more comprehensive insight into the reality of sexual services for money in socialist Czechoslovakia, this will first require a more extensive study of archival sources. There are also huge gaps in our knowledge on how state officials dealt with these women. The state’s approach to ‘deviants’ was contradictory. From the 1960s onwards, at the level of discourse, emphasis was placed on prevention and therapy with the goal of social (re-)integration. Conversely, this analysis has demonstrated that women who made money by selling sex were considered dangers to society. The question of how the state fought this danger leads us to science and medicine as key areas for inquiry. Although expert opinions on prostitution can be reconstructed, the related practices remain to date unknown. The venereology departments situated on Apolinářská street come up in every text on prostitution in Prague, in recounted memories, novels and newspaper reports. Researchers who dealt with prostitution collected their data there.96 Their procedures, as well as the relation to the neighboring Institute of Sexology with interned women, have not been researched.97 Since it is unclear where the archive of this institution has gone, it will be difficult to close this knowledge gap. For my further research, the reports submitted in court proceedings by experts from the Institute of Sexology will help to learn more about their work. What will be more important is to hold interviews with former sex workers on their experiences. Finally, we must ask what these practices of marginalization can tell us about socialist rule and everyday life in Czechoslovakia. Michal Pullman and Pavel Kolář’s research provides an important context for this investigation. 96

97

What little information there is to be found on Apolinářská can be found in: Březinová, “Příspěvek k sociální zdravotní problematice,” 75–78; Rudlová, “Problém prostituce z psychiatrického hlediska,” 14. Kapr describes the intake process for young women thoroughly in: Kapr, “O prostituci z pohledu sociologa,” Reportér 12, March 27, 1969. For the GDR, there is a study on sexualized violence against women suspected of prostitution. The topic was also taken up by the media in Germany. Florian Steger and Maximilian Schochow eds., Disziplinierung durch Medizin. Die geschlossene Venerologische Station in der Poliklinik Mitte in Halle (Saale) 1961–1982 (Halle (Saale): Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2015).

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They argue that after 1968, socialist Czechoslovakia exercised violence on the ‘margins’ of society in order to pacify the majority population. Thus, the state could demonstrate its ability to ensure social peace and order more effectively. Violence against marginalized groups – including prostitutes under the amorphous group of the asocial – was not perceived as unjust because most people distanced themselves from its victims; the concept of the ‘respectable citizen’ was defined in part by this demarcation.98 Thomas Lindenberger and Sven Korzilius have shown similar exclusionary practices in the GDR, characterized by the combination of the German tradition of social racism with the Soviet example of fighting ‘parasites.’99 As to former Czechoslovakia, questions arise about continuity from the socialist dictatorship to the present. There are indications of these continuities in the running debates in the Czech and Slovak Republics since the 1990s on the implementation of a prostitution law that labels women in prostitution once more as threats to ‘respectable’ majority society.100

98

Pavel Kolář and Michal Pullmann, Co byla normalizace? Studie o pozdním socialismu (Prague: Lidové noviny, 2016). Primarily in the chapter “Klid k práci,” 60–99. 99 Korzilius and Lindenberger establish continuities from the NS period. Sven Korzilius, “Asoziale” und “Parasiten” im Recht der SBZ/DDR. Randgruppen im Sozialismus zwischen Repression und Ausgrenzung Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Rechts der DDR, 4 (Vienna: Böhlau, 2005). 100 Barbara Havelková, “Prostitution Law and Policy in the Czech Republic,” in Assessing Prostitution Policies in Europe, eds. S. Jansen and H. Wagenaar (London: Routledge, 2014). See also chapter 5, “Regulierung unter Druck: der tschechische Fall” in Die Verwaltung der Prostitution. Eine vergleichende Studie am Beispiel deutscher, polnischer und tschechischer Kommunen, eds. Rebecca Pates, Daniel Schmidt (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2009), 155–211.

Notes on Contributors Kim Kristin Breitmoser (M.A.) studied history and religious studies at the University of Hamburg, has worked in the museum education sector and is currently a scholarship holder at the Gerda Henkel Foundation. She is working on her doctorate about prostitution in former Hanseatic cities of northern Germany during the 19th century. She has worked on different projects at the department for European History of the Early Modern period at the University of Hamburg and is currently part of the interdisciplinary research group “Gewalt-Zeiten”, which deals with the temporal dimensions of violence. Christiane Brenner studied modern history in Lyon, Munich, Berlin and Prague. Since 1998 she is a researcher at Collegium Carolinum Research Institute for the History of the Czech Lands and Slovakia and the editor of the journal Bohemia Bohemia – Journal of History and Civilization in East Central Europe. Most of her research is dedicated to the history of Post-1945 Czechoslovakia. During the last years, she has worked on youth, gender and sexuality in socialist societies. Since July 2019 she is part of the SFB (Collaborative Research Center) “Cultures of Vigilance” at Munich Ludwig-Maximilians-University with her project “Guardians of Socialist Morality: Prostitution and Vigilance Practices in Czechoslovakia (1945/48–1989). Tobias Bruns studied history as well as interdisciplinary anthropology at the universities of Tübingen, Freiburg and Bologna. In 2022, he earned his PhD at the University of Marburg with a thesis on the security culture of the German Empire, which has been funded by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation. In 2017, he was a visiting research associate at Wolfson College at the University of Cambridge (UK). Bruns was a research assistant at the chair of contemporary history at the University of Marburg and the Collaborative Research Centre / Transregio 138 “Dynamics of Security”, where he contributed to a project on the securitization of aging.

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Anna Dobrowolska is Max Weber Fellow in the Department of History and Civilisation at the European University Institute in Florence and Visiting Fellow at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. She holds a DPhil in History from the University of Oxford and her research concentrates on the history of sexuality, visual culture, and gender under state socialism. Her first monograph, Zawodowe dziewczyny. Prostytucja i praca seksualna w PRL [Professional Girls. Prostitution and Sex Work in State Socialist Poland] (2020), explored the history of commercial sex in Poland between 1945 and 1989. Currently, she is working on a second monograph in which she explores the history of state-socialist sexual revolutions through case studies such as striptease shows, nudism, and pornography. Sonja Dolinsek is a historian working on the politics of prostitution and anti-trafficking in the 20th century with a focus on the politics of prostitution after the abolition of state-regulation. She is currently working as a research associate in Contemporary History at Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg and has previously worked at the “Digital Humanities” (Kulturen der Digitalität) chair of the Department of Media Studies at Paderborn University. She has taught courses in the fields of global history, histories of gender and sexualities, crime and labour histories at Humboldt-University Berlin, Free University Berlin and Leuphana University. With Siobhán Hearne she co-edited the Special Issue “Prostitution in twentieth-century Europe” for the European Review of History 29(2). Stipica Grgić is a Research Associate at the Croatian Institute of History’s Department of Contemporary History. He is a member of the research group Researching emotions in the (re)construction of diaspora identity: Croats in Australia and New Zealand 1945–1991, project financed by the Croatian Science Foundation. His research focuses on social, political and everyday history of Croatia and neigbouring countries in the first half of the 20th century. Priska Komáromi holds a BA in History from the University of Cambridge and an MA in History from the Humboldt University in Berlin. She has also studied at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. She is a PhD student at the Department of History at Humboldt University in Berlin. Her research focuses on gender, sexuality and sex work in state-socialist Hungary, with an emphasis on

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masculinities and transnational intimate encounters between the 1960s and late 1980s. Alongside her academic pursuits she is raising a small human and co-runs an erotic fiction writing group and zine. Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska is affiliated with the German Historical Institute Warsaw and the Institute of Contemporary Culture at the University of Lodz (Poland). She published, among others, Bilder der Normalisierung. Gesundheit, Ernährung und Haushalt in der visuellen Kultur Deutschlands, 1945–1948 (jointly with Anna Labentz, 2017). Her other publications include contributions to The Public Historian, Memory Studies, or German Studies Review. She is member of the Executive Committee of the Memory Studies Association and Ambassador Scientist of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Poland. Mirjam Schnorr M.A., studied history and philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, where she also was a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Philosophy. In her PhD thesis, she investigated the everyday life and different experiences of women working as prostitutes and their pimps during the Third Reich. Currently, she is a research assistant at Fritz Bauer Institute in Frankfurt am Main. There she is working on a project about the systematic plundering of Frankfurt’s Jewish population between 1933 and 1945. Alexandra Skedzuhn-Safir trained as an art conservator in Florence/Italy for works in stone and ceramics. Later she focused on the conservation of architectural surfaces, working among other sites at the Neues Museum in Berlin. She received her BA in the conservation of architectural surfaces at the UAS in Hildesheim (HAWK), her MA in World Heritage Studies and her PhD (Dr. phil.), both at the Brandenburg University of Technology (BTU) Cottbus-Senftenberg. Since 2012 she is a lecturer in architectural conservation at the BTU. Her interest lies in trans-disciplinary approaches to heritage protection. Further areas of research include marginalisation in heritage discourse, and methods of heritage interpretation. In her post-doctorate research project she explores the significance of odours at heritage sites. Keely Stauter-Halsted is Professor of History and Hejna Family Chair in the History of Poland at the University of Illinois in Chicago, where she serves as Director of Graduate

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Studies and co-directs programming in Polish Studies. Her teaching and research examine issues of ethnicity, gender, and class in East Central Europe. Stauter-Halsted has published on topics ranging from peasant nationalism to Polish-Jewish relations, prostitution and human trafficking. She is the author of two monographs, The Nation in the Village: The Genesis of Peasant National Identity in Austrian Poland (2001) and The Devil’s Chain: Prostitution and Social Control in Partitioned Poland (2015). Most recently, Stauter-Halsted has turned to the study of refugees and forced migration in the Polish Second Republic immediately following World War I. Judit Takács is a Research Professor at the Centre for Social Sciences, Budapest. She graduated from History and Cultural Anthropology at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, completed an M.A. in Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam, holds a Ph.D. in sociology (2002), a Diploma Habilitationis (2011), and the Doctor of Science title (2019) provided by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Her recent publications include “Paradoxical Right-Wing Sexual Politics in Europe” (co-edited with C. Möser and J. Ramme), “Resisting Genderphobia in Hungary” (published with K. Fobear and S. Schmitsek in Politics & Governance) and “How to Conserve Kertbeny’s Grave? A Case of Post-Communist Queer Necrophilia” (in Conservatism and Memory Politics in Russia and Eastern Europe). Stefan Wünsch received his Ph.D. in history from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2018 with a dissertation on the interrelation between medicine and prostitution: Das erkrankte Geschlecht. Medizin und Prostitution im Berlin des 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhunderts (“The diseased sex/gender.” Medicine and prostitution in 19th and early 20th century Berlin. Würzburg, Könighausen & Neumann 2020). He is currently research fellow at the department of rehabilitation sciences (Humboldt-Universität) and works on the history of special education in Germany. His publications include “Käthe Hagedorn – the invisible phenomenon of the pedophile-desiring woman” (in: plurale. Zeitschrift für Denkversionen 7 (2008)); “Agnes Hacker – a female physician at the Berlin vice squat police” (in: Die Ariadne 62 (2012)).