Selling Sex in the Reich: Prostitutes in German Society, 1914-1945

by Victoria Harris

Selling Sex in the Reich focuses on the voices and experiences of prostitutes working in the German sex trade in the first half of the twentieth century. Victoria Harris develops a nuanced picture of the prostitutes' backgrounds, their reasons for entering the trade, and their attitudes towards their work and those who sought to control them, as well as of their clients and the wide variety of other players within the wider prostitute milieu. Public responses to the issue of prostitution are revealed through the motivations of the law enforcement agencies, social workers, and doctors who increasingly attempted to manage and contain prostitutes' movements and behaviour and to scientifically categorize them as a group.

Prostitution can help recast our understanding of sexuality and ethics, teaching us much about how German society defined itself through its definition of who did not belong within it. In addition, common conceptions of the relationship between the type of government in power and official attitudes towards sexuality are challenged. For, as Harris shows, the prevalent desire to control citizens' sexuality transcended traditional left-right divides throughout this period and intensified with economic and political modernization, producing surprising continuities across the Wilhelmine, Weimar, and Nazi eras.

234 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2010

Reviews

[Thubten Palmo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was hoping it was going to be more about the Nazi brothels - it seems that that material hasn't been translated into English yet - but it was more statistical information (such as from police and court records) coupled with stories of women who engaged in sex work. It is very interested though, I especially enjoyed learning about how they worked with leftist newspapers to publish pieces advocating for their rights, as well as how the ideal situation they envisaged was so different to what sex workers want now; rather than freedom and integration, they wanted to live in their own communities even if it meant they didn't have freedom of movement. The author managed to explore the circumstances that constrained their choices while also exploring their agency. It's a small book but very dense, and one that people with a specific interest in women's history, especially in Europe, will appreciate. It's positively meticulous.

[Thubten Palmo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was really hoping this would focus more on selling sex under the Nazi regime but it's more about the period just prior (and we can certainly understand why). It works both as a sort of reference book showing broad trends in approaches to sex work, using data extrapolated from police reports primarily, but also has individual case studies that are especially gripping. Unfortunately due to the nature of the beast we only get brief glimpses. There is very little about sex work in the interwar and WW2 period published in English so I'm very grateful this book exists. Having said that, the author is actually Victoria Harris? So I don't know what's going on with this entry

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finally done reading this. Now I have to start working on the paper for this...I feel like I would've enjoyed this much more if I wasn't so rushed. The material was interesting and the sources well-organized, but it felt too complex for my liking. Of course this is a monograph and the reader should have a decent background of the context before diving straight in, but there were things (laws, codes, etc) that the author just expected you to know before hand that you probably wouldn't as a first year history major.

[Taylor Waters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect secondary source for the paper I was writing.