No visitor doing the town in Paris, Rome, Barcelona, Hamburg, Vienna, Budapest, Antwerp, or Marseilles in pre-World War II Europe could avoid traversing these notorious “Red” or “Chinese” districts. Depending on the current political climate, their integration into the local culture, and financial boon to the civic coffers, each of these Zonas varied considerably in size and public toleration. To a great degree, they defined the secret and cosmopolitan life of the city. And among them, Pigalle (in Paris’ colorful Montmartre quarter) bustled with the most naughty panache, Ooh-la-la fashion, and Bohemian picaresque charm. One could honeymoon there.
Only Berlin, among the great metropolises, lacked a Strich or Zona Rosa.
“Berlin Is Becoming a Whore”
A 1792 statute (with 24 clauses) from the time of Friedrich II gave rise to Berlin’s exceptionalism in all matters sexual. In keeping with strict Prussian decorum, no brothel quarter could be legally sanctioned within the city proper. Commerce in sex was declared illegal but—according to the confusing edicts—female and male prostitution itself was to be placed “under government surveillance” (in effect, authorized). The unintended consequence was whimsically clear to the inner-city inhabitants and the newly-arrived Napoleonic authorities: by default, unregulated street vice and whorehouses surfaced everywhere in city (although they were most visible in the Friedrichstadt and the areas just north of it).
Sex for hire was stated to be unlawful but, bafflingly, also technically permitted. The city administrators were of several minds in dealing with this judicial conundrum. Whoring was, through the Wilhelmian era, alternately tolerated, then banned, then yet again “placed under surveillance.” No matter what was decreed, however, prostitutes and the citizenry who engaged their services always found ingenious ways to circumvent the murky codes. Only two sanctions were consistent: 1) Berlin refused to allot a legal district for the practice of harlotry—the “Mediterranean” solution, and 2) public solicitation for sex was strictly prohibited.
A relatively small number of prostitutes—around 4,000 in 1914—were granted Kontroll-cards, which subjected them to monthly inspections by eight vicedoctors, or Pussy-Pressers. This allowed the certified sex-workers to maintain their vocation on the Line (which in Berlin was anywhere). How they were supposed to drum up business in outlying or unfamiliar quarters was solved with inimitable Berlin logic: because streetwalkers could only be arrested for verbal solicitation, an elaborate gestural and dress code quickly arose. Customers could recognize the compliant goods instantly by their characteristic packaging. In other words, whores would promote themselves by looking like whores.
The problem, unfortunately, became acute in the Weimar period when prostitute fashion was widely imitated by Berlin’s more virtuous females. For instance, one historical badge of shame for Strich-violators, short-cropped hair, became the common emblem of the Tauentziengirl (a variety of Berlin streetwalker)—at least for a year or two. Then in 1923, the short pageboy coif, or Bubikopf, achieved universal popularity as the stylish cut for trendy Berlinerinnen.
Prostitutes had to change and update their provocative attire constantly in order to retain a legal means of solicitation. Dress also communicated sex practice. Boot-Whores near the Wittenberg Platz, for example, advertised their services pedalogically through a semaphore-like language. Black, green, scarlet, red, and brown leather footwear promised different mise en scènes of sexual torment and debasement (i.e., green boots and gold shoelaces meant an evening of enslavement with a scatological conclusion; red-on-maroon denoted flagellation and discipline; and so forth). Naturally only devoted aficionados could decipher such specific messages with confidence. Other potential clients had to buy special primers, where Berlin’s complex street semiotics were thoughtfully decoded for the uninitiated.
Topology of the Sex Trade
Altogether, there were eleven or twelve major sex zones in Berlin during the Twenties, none of them “officially” delineated, but each with distinctive attractions and an overall licentious atmosphere. The most conspicuous was called the “Alex,” a ten-block slum centered around the Alexanderplatz in Berlin North. Site of the lowest-grade whores in the city (Class Three Kontroll-Girls, Chontes, and Gravelstones) as well as the central police station and a luxurious brothel for straight women, the Alex contained at least 320 houses of ill repute. Only a dozen or so resembled tranquil maisons de tolérance of the Parisian variety. The rest were essentially fuck pads, where street prostitutes serviced their clients. The sex was quick and cheap. In an “Hour Hotel,” the John paid about one dollar for the use of the room and 35 to 75 cents for the Kontroll-Girl. At the 200-plus “Transient-Quarters,” or mini-brothels, money (usually in the dollar range) was paid first to the Kupplerin (house madam) and then the Flea was directed into a bare room for a ten-minute transaction. Hygiene levels were notoriously un-Germanic. The wash basins in a typical Quarter were emptied only once when the madam closed in the early morning; towels and linens sometimes went unchanged for days.
Innocuous storefronts in the alleyways around the Alex and coal cellars also doubled as Transient-Quarters. One celebrated ice cream parlor on Mehnerstrasse transformed into a handjob factory precisely at ten o’clock in the evening. (A jaunty travel writer suggested that the hum from the freezers must have acted as a powerful stimulant for Berlin’s hardcore cold fetishists.) The whole operation was finally busted when a local Kontroll-Girl complained to a sympathetic Bull (vice-officer) that her brood of children was spending far too much idle time at the all-night confectionery.
The Friedrichstadt beckoned with more elevated temptations. A mile-square downtown precinct, compromised of federal ministry buildings, “grand” hotels, state-funded museums, revue-houses, and high-rise compounds for financial and publishing conglomerates, the Friedrichstadt doubled as a tawdry Luna Park when the workday concluded. Between five o’clock tea and three in the morning, this was home to hundreds of Nepp-Lokals, strip clubs, gay Dielen (bar-lounges), massage parlors, greasy Wurst restaurants, and the Linden-Passage, a dilapidated arcade lane where two to three hundred Doll-Boy(underage boy prostitutes) posed before hesitant Sugar-Lickers (gay pederasts). Hardfaced Minettes applied their psychodramatic skills in top-floor rooms of pensions and tourist hotels.