This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Without cookies your experience may not be seamless. In the later years of the Weimar Republic, public officials grappled with the overt expression of female sexuality and struggled to redefine prostitution in light of new public health legislation.
Berlin was, in fact, one of the only cities in the Weimar Republic to pay for its citizens to have access to private physicians, making it possible for prostitutes and individuals with lesser means to maintain a modicum of privacy. At least in the German capital, the number of men who voluntarily visited clinics for VD testing or treatment reached nearly 20, within the first years after the passage of the RGBG, and medical officials noted marked improvement in venereal health.
On the grounds that the women were disturbing the peace, and on the mere suspicion that they might pose a threat to public health, the police officers brought the women to the precinct for questioning and forwarded their names to the main health office. Several months later, after an investigation of the matter, representatives from the health office responded to the police, not to express their gratitude, but rather to issue a stern reprimand. Despite the fact that all four women openly admitted to the police that they made their living as prostitutes, this provided no proper basis for detaining them, as a result of the recent passage of the RGBG.
In fact, even though one of the four women was indeed registered with the health office and undergoing treatment for venereal infection, there was no reason for the police to suspect that the women constituted a threat to public heath. Ladies and gentlemen, there is no more prostitution according to the law, and there are also no more witch hunts.
Consequently, young women can stand together on the street as much as they want. Just as the RGBG inspired debate within social reform and political circles in Berlin, it also empowered prostitutes to exercise their rights as female citizens.
