Prostitution in Germany
[3] Human rights organizations consider the resulting common exploitation of women from Eastern and Southeastern Europe to be the main problem associated with the profession.
Since the 13th century, several German cities operated brothels known as Frauenhäuser ("women's houses"); [4] 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.
[9] 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).
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[13] under the German moral police, Sittenpolizei.
[17] 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.
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.
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").
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.
In 2004, the Turkish gang leader Necati Arabaci was sentenced to 9 years in prison for pimping, human trafficking, assault, extortion, weapons violations and racketeering.
[27] His gang of bouncers controlled the night clubs in Cologne's entertainment district, the Ring, where they befriended girls in order to exploit them as sex workers.
[29] In 2004, the large FKK-brothel Colosseum opened in Augsburg, and police suspected a connection to Arabaci's gang, which owned several similar establishments and was supposedly directed from prison by its convicted leader.
The court quashed the charges, arguing that the prostitution law of 2002 created a regular employer-employee relationship and thus gave the employer certain rights to direct the working conditions.
[31] In early 2005, the media in Great Britain reported that a woman refusing to take a job as a sex worker might have her unemployment benefits reduced or removed altogether.
In this case, the agency apologized for the mistake, stating that a request for a sex worker would normally have been rejected, but the client misled them, describing the position as "a female barkeeper."
[33] In March 2007, the brothel "Pascha" in Cologne announced that senior citizens above the age of 66 would receive a discount during afternoons; half of the price of €50 for a "normal session" would be covered by the house.
[44] In March 2006, the president of the German football federation turned around and agreed to support a campaign named "Final Whistle – Stop Forced Prostitution".
)[54] According to Susanne Bleier Wilp of the Association for Erotic and Sexual Services Providers lobby group in Berlin, 80% of the prostitutes working in Germany at the time were foreign, mainly from Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, and Ukraine.
[57][58] The Berufsverband erotische und sexuelle Dienstleistungen [de] ('Professional association for erotic and sexual services') published a new hygiene concept for sex workers.
Single men pay a flat-rate entrance charge of about €80 to €150, which includes food, drink and unrestricted sexual activity, with the requirement that these are performed in the open in full view of all the guests.
In addition, sex shops and newsstands sell magazines specialising in advertisements of prostitutes ("Happy Weekend", "St Pauli Nachrichten", "Sexy" and many more).
[76][better source needed] This law also applies to Germans traveling abroad, to combat child prostitution occurring in the context of sex tourism.
[77] The neighboring city of Bonn collects a nightly sex work tax of six euro from street prostitutes in the Immenburgstrasse by vending machines identical to German parking meters.
Several high-profile, respectable citizens turned out to have been among her customers, a fact on which the media based insinuations that higher social circles might be covering up and obstructing the search for the real murderer.
[99] As head of the Hells Angels Spanish chapter, he is accused of forming a criminal organisation, promoting illegal prostitution, drug trafficking and money laundering.
[102] André Schulz, head of the German Criminal Investigation Association warned in July 2016 of "an escalation of turf wars between enemy biker gangs in Germany".
The report states that victims are often unwilling to testify against their oppressors: the only incentive they have to do so is the permission to remain in the country until the end of the trial (with the hope of finding a husband during that time), rather than being deported immediately.
In 2003, German CDU politician Michel Friedman, popular TV talk show host and then assistant chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, became embroiled in an investigation of trafficking women.
The conservative parties in the Bundestag, while supporting the goal of improving prostitutes' access to the social security and health care system, have opposed the new law because they want to retain the "offending good morals" status.
Alice Schwarzer rejects all prostitution as inherently oppressive and abusive; she favors a legal arrangement similar to the situation in Sweden, wherein 1999 after heavy feminist lobbying a coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and leftists outlawed the buying but not the selling of sexual services.
