Prostitution in Germany is legal, as are other aspects of the sex industry, including brothels, advertisement, and job offers through HR companies. Full-service sex work is widespread and regulated by the German government, which levies taxes on it. In 2016, the government adopted a new law, the Prostitutes Protection Act, in an effort to improve the legal situation of sex workers, while also now enacting a legal requirement for registration of prostitution activity and banning prostitution which involves no use of condoms. The social stigmatization of sex work persists and many workers continue to lead a double life. Human rights organizations consider the resulting common exploitation of women from Eastern and Southeastern Europe to be the main problem associated with the profession.
History Middle Ages to Confederation (1815) Sex work in historically German lands has never been outlawed and has been described since the Middle Ages. Since the 13th century, several German cities operated brothels known as Frauenhäuser ("women's houses"); P. Schuster: Das Frauenhaus. Städtische Bordelle in Deutschland (1350–1600), Paderborn 1992 the practice of sex work was considered a necessary evil, a position already held by Saint Augustine (354–430). Some municipalities actively encouraged it and far from existing on the margins, sex workers were often honoured guests, who maintained domestic order as an outlet and lesser evil to such things as adultery and rape. The city also gained tax revenues from the prostitutes.
Emperor Sigismund (1368–1437) thanked the city of Konstanz in writing for providing some 1,500 workers for the Council of Constance which took place from 1414 to 1418.
Sex workers were more vigorously persecuted beginning in the 16th century, with the start of the Reformation and the appearance of syphilis. In 1530, Charles V ordered the closure of brothels throughout the German Holy Roman Empire.
Section 999 of the 1794 General State Laws for the Prussian States determined that "dissolute female persons who want to do business with their bodies ... would have to go into the whoredom houses tolerated under the supervision of the state".
The Confederations (1815–1871) Beginning in the 19th century, sex workers in many regions had to register with police or local health authorities and submit to regular health checks to curb venereal diseases; the so called Regulation System.
The so-called Bremer Regulations of 1852 stated that prostitution was "not a trade in the true sense". By this distinction between prostitution and other trades, immorality of prostitution was defined in law.
German Empire (1871–1918) In Imperial Germany (1871–1918) attitudes to sex work were ambivalent. While sex work was tolerated as a necessary function to provide for male sexuality outside of marriage, it was frowned on as a threat to contemporary moral images of women's sexuality. Therefore, state policy concentrated on regulation rather than abolition. This was mainly at the municipal level. The Criminal Code of 1871 prohibited brothels and "commercial fornication". In the 1876 version, prostitution was only punishable if the woman worked outside police supervision. State regulation at the time created an atmosphere which defined what was considered proper, and what was proper feminine sexuality.
Controls were particularly tight in the port city of Hamburg. The regulations included defining the dress and conduct of prostitutes both inside and outside the brothel, thus making the occupation define their lives as a separate class of women on the margins of society.
At the beginning of the 20th century, prostitution was considered "harmful to communities". Nevertheless, there existed or originated in the 20th century, various brothel and red-light districts such as Helenenstraße in Bremen (from 1878), Linienstraße in Dortmund (from 1904), Stahlstraße in Essen (from about 1900), Rampenloch in Minden (from 1908), Im Winkel in Bochum (from about 1912), and the Flaßhofstraße in Oberhausen (from 1910 and 1963). It is estimated that in 1900 there were 50,000 women working in BerlinFriedrich Lenger. European Cities in the Modern Era, 1850-1914. BRILL, 2012. . page 238] (population 1 December 1900: 1,888,848).
Weimar Republic (1918–1933) In Weimar-era Germany the economy collapsed due to the loss of the First World War and the imposition of war reparations at the Treaty of Versailles. As a result, the middle class lost their savings and the working class were unemployed. The Republic ended up printing money to pay its bills which lead to hyperinflation in 1923. The outcome of all of this was that women, including the millions of war widows, turned to prostitution. Licentiousness and streetwalking were common in this period and Weimar Berlin is famed for its decadence.
On a national scale, prostitution was officially proscribed, but within various locales, polices tolerated prostitutes if they were in state registry. Prostitutes were to have compulsory medical examines for STDs, banned from areas of large public gathering, and were required to give up personal freedoms of private residence, travel, and denying unwarranted search under the German moral police, Sittenpolizei. Unregistered prostitutes arrested for soliciting, or otherwise were not given the same legal protection or voice as average citizens, and due process was not practiced.
The Law for Combating Venereal Diseases was adopted in 1927, which decriminalized prostitution thus undoing the state-regulated system, Reglementierung.
Nazi era (1933–1945) During the Nazi era, street based sex workers were seen as "asocial" and degenerate and were at times sent to concentration camps, especially to the Ravensbrück camp.Auf einem vergessenen Lager im Lager, taz, 5 February 2007. The Nazis did not entirely disapprove of sex work though and instead installed a centralized system of city brothels, military brothels (Wehrmachtsbordelle), brothels for foreign forced laborers, and concentration camp brothels.
During the Second World War, the German Wehrmacht established about 100 Wehrmacht brothels in the occupied territories, including France, Poland, Italy, and Norway. Lothar-Günther Buchheim described his impressions from Brest: "If a large ship had arrived, the hookers simply laid there between sailors." Military prostitution was regulated, "Only a permit from the military command brothel allowed you to visit. Always use a condom (rubber protection). For the German soldiers there was a disinfectant syringe in the urethra."
Between 1942 and 1945, camp brothels were installed in ten concentration camps, including Auschwitz. Himmler intended these as an incentive for cooperative and hard-working non-Jewish and non-Russian inmates, in order to increase the productivity of the work camps.New Exhibition Documents Forced Prostitution in Concentration Camps Spiegel Online, 15 January 2007 Initially the brothels were staffed mostly with former sex worker inmates who volunteered, but women were also put under pressure to work there. In the documentary film, Memory of the Camps, a project supervised by the British Ministry of Information and the American Office of War Information during the summer of 1945, camera crews filmed women who stated that they were forced into sexual slavery for the use of guards and favored prisoners. The filmmakers stated that as the women died they were replaced by women from the concentration camp Ravensbrück.Memory of the Camps, Frontline, PBS
None of the women who were forced to work in these concentration camp brothels ever received compensation, since the German compensation laws do not cover persons designated as "asocial" by the Nazis.
In a famous case of espionage, the Nazi intelligence service SD took over the luxurious Berlin brothel Salon Kitty and equipped it with listening devices and specially trained sex workers. From 1939 to 1942 the brothel was used to spy on important visitors.
German Democratic Republic (GDR 1945–1990)
After World War II, the country was divided into East Germany (German Democratic Republic) and West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949–90). In East Germany, as in all countries of the communist Eastern Bloc, full-service sex work was illegal and according to the official position, it did not exist. There were high-class sex workers working in the hotels of East Berlin and the other major cities, mainly targeting Western visitors; the Stasi employed some of these for spying purposes. Street-based workers were available for the pleasure of visiting Westerners, too.
Federal Republic of Germany (BRD 1945–2001) In West Germany, the registration and testing requirements remained in place but were handled quite differently in the regions of the country. In Bavaria, in addition to scheduled Sexually transmitted disease (STD) check-ups, regular tests for HIV were required from 1987, but this was an exception. Many sex workers did not submit to these tests, avoiding the registration. A study in 1992 found that only 2.5% of the tested workers had a disease, a rate much lower than the one among comparable non-sex workers.B. Leopold, E. Steffan, N. Paul: Dokumentation zur rechtlichen und sozialen Situation von Prostitutierten in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Schriftenreihe des Bundesministeriums für Frauen und Jugend, Band 15, 1993. (German)
In 1967, Europe's largest brothel at the time, the six-floor Eros Center, was opened on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg. An even larger one, the twelve-floor building now called Pascha in Cologne was opened in 1972. The AIDS scare of the late 1980s had an effect on the business, and the Eros Center closed, as well as several other brothels in Hamburg.A Red-Light District Loses Its Allure, The New York Times, 14 May 1988Willi Bartels ist tot, Spiegel Online, 5 November 2007. The Pascha continued to flourish, and has evolved into a chain with additional brothels in Munich and Salzburg.
Anything which led to the "promotion of prostitution" (Förderung der Prostitution) remained a crime until 2001, even after the extensive criminal law reforms of 1973. This placed operators of brothels under the threat of potential legal action. Most brothels were, therefore, run as a bar with an attached but legally separate room rental. Many municipalities built, ran and profited from high rise or townhouse-style high-rent Dirnenwohnheime (lit.: "whores' dormitories"), to keep street-based sex work and pimping under control. Here workers sold sex in a room they rented by the day. These establishments, called "Laufhäuser" in Johns' jargon are now mostly privatized and operate as Eros Centers. Even before the 2001 reform, many upmarket sex workers operated in their own apartments, alone or with other women. Luxurious country houses, called "FKK-Sauna-Clubs" are the higher-priced end of prostitution in Germany. There, women and men pay the same entrance fees ranging from about €50 to 100 and usually include meals and drinks and the sex workers negotiate their deals with the individual clients, thus avoiding the appearance of pimping ("Zuhälterei"). Illegal variations on that business model, like "Flatrate-Clubs" and "Pauschalclubs" also exist and advertise openly in daily newspapers and the Internet. These establishments charge an "all-you-can handle" fee of about €75 to €90.
Before the 2002 prostitution law, the highest courts of Germany repeatedly ruled that sex work offends good moral order (verstößt gegen die guten Sitten), with several legal consequences. Any contract that is considered immoral is null and void, so a sex worker could not sue for payment. Sex workers working out of their apartments could lose their leases. Finally, bars and inns could be denied licenses if sex work took place on their premises.