1945

Prostitution in Berlin and Hamburg

Historically, prostitution was not illegal in the German-speaking lands of Europe, where it was defined as the exchange of sex for money between a client and a female prostitute. Records of brothels, or ‘women’s houses’ (Frauenhäuser) go back at least as far as the thirteenth century, and in places like Berlin and Hamburg prostitution was widely considered a necessary, if morally dubious, activity. German municipalities even tacitly encouraged prostitution, seeing it as a way of preventing what were considered the more problematic activities of rape and adultery. Although attitudes towards prostitution hardened with the Reformation and the emergence of the venereal disease, syphilis, in the sixteenth century, a highly localized and relatively professional trade continued to operate quietly. The village prostitutes were well known to their clientele but relatively invisible.

Related Subject(s): Migration ; Women and Gender Issues
Countries: Germany
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