Managing commercial sex in West Germany, 1950s-1980s

Martin, Annalisa Daniela (2022) Managing commercial sex in West Germany, 1950s-1980s. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.

Abstract

This thesis examines the management of commercial sex in West Germany between the 1950s and the 1980s through the comparison of Cologne, Hamburg and West Berlin. Various interlocking understandings of commercial sex prevailed ⎯ as a health issue, a public order issue, as crime, or as work ⎯ and these understandings structure the thesis thematically. It explores both varying policies for managing commercial sex but also their impact in practice ⎯ how measures were developed and negotiated at the individual level ⎯ and draws out a wide range of actors, including police officers, city administrators, welfare workers, women who sold sex, their clients, and city residents. It argues that local-level variations and contradictions make it essential to broaden the gaze to examine laws and regulations in their implementation. It places developments in the context of post-war labour regimes, city-planning concerns, and increased globalisation. The thesis illustrates that the negotiation of older, repressive measures to manage commercial sex stretched past the initial post-war years to play out over the 1960s and 1970s, despite state-regulated prostitution being outlawed. It also questions overarching narratives of legal and sexual liberalisations in West German society. The thesis exposes the importance of source and perspective choices and highlights the impact of differing archival remnants on the stories we can tell.

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