This book is especially remarkable from the fact that it contains “complete and candid biographies of the best-known prostitutes in Berlin,” an idea which has recently been revived, for example, in W. Hammer’s “The Life-History of Ten Public Prostitutes in Berlin” (Berlin and Leipzig, 1905).
Very valuable official material is, finally, to be found in a third work on prostitution in Berlin, written by the celebrated syphilologist F. J. Behrend.[264] It begins with a careful history of the police regulations regarding prostitution in Berlin, then discusses the consequences of the abolition of the Berlin brothels in the year 1845, and proceeds to demand new measures and regulations for the control of prostitution and for the prevention of syphilis in Berlin. As a collection of material, the book is of considerable value.
Little known, but thoroughly original, is the work of the Hamburg physician, Dr. Lippert, on prostitution in Hamburg.[265] Blaschko even fails to mention it in the bibliography at the end of his own work, presently to be described. Lippert adduces numerous and interesting new contributions to our knowledge of “the many-headed hydra, the colour-changing chameleon,” of prostitution. After an introductory sketch regarding the historical development of prostitution in Hamburg, he gives a “characterization of the present moral condition of Hamburg,” embodying important information regarding the number of brothel prostitutes and street-walkers, the topographical distribution of prostitution and of brothels, the secret houses of accommodation, the remarkable decline in the number of marriages, the relationship between legitimate and illegitimate births, and the number of drinking-saloons and dancing-halls; and he goes on to describe with more detail these individual factors of prostitution, and especially the opportunities for prostitution. The third chapter contains an extremely interesting physiological and pathological description of the Hamburg prostitutes. According to Lippert, the principal motives of prostitution are “idleness, frivolity, and, above all, the love of finery.” He rightly lays especial stress upon the last-named cause, which, in the more recent scientific investigations regarding the causes of prostitution, has, unfortunately, been too much neglected. Then follow data regarding the age, nationality, class, and occupation of prostitutes. We learn that as early as the date of this book of Lippert’s the greatest number of public prostitutes had originally been maidservants (p. 79), not girls of the labouring classes. Thus the fact that prostitutes recruit their ranks chiefly from the servant class is not, as recent writers assert, exclusively the consequence of the increasing mental culture of the modern proletariat, but is most probably rather connected with the freer configuration of the amatory life among the labouring classes, where the nobler form of “free love” has long been dominant. From the very nature of the case, this must lead to a limitation of the supply of prostitutes from this class. The chapter closes with an elaborate description of the physical and mental peculiarities of the Hamburg prostitutes, and of the diseases observed in them. In the fourth chapter the various classes of prostitutes are considered more closely—the brothel prostitutes (with an exact description of the celebrated brothel streets of Hamburg), the prostitutes living alone, the street-walkers, the “kept women,” the large group of secret prostitutes. There follow in an appendix interesting accounts of the public places which are related to prostitution; of prostitution in the Hamburger Berg and in the suburb of St. Pauli; and of the rescue work of Hamburg.
A very good account of prostitution in Hamburg is also found in a book contemporary with that of Lippert, entitled “Memoirs of a Prostitute, or Prostitution in Hamburg” (St. Pauli, 1847). This work, which is now extraordinarily rare, resembles the book which recently gained such celebrity, the “Tagebuch einer Verlorenen” (“Diary of a Lost Woman”), by Margaret Böhme, in that it was edited by a Dr. J. Zeisig, professedly after the “original manuscript.” As usual, it has all happened before!
In the preface to his book, Lippert remarks that, since prostitution in Berlin and in Hamburg has now been adequately described, it was desirable that an analogous book should be compiled regarding Vienna, in order that we might have the necessary comparative statistics of “the three principal towns and principal factors of German prostitution.”
The actual account of prostitution in Vienna did not, however, appear till forty years later, in the year 1886. Still, as early as 1847 the book of Dr. Anton J. Gross-Hoffinger was published, describing exclusively the conditions of prostitution in Austria, and naturally chiefly concerned with conditions in Vienna.[266] In my opinion, this book has an epoch-making significance, because therein we find asserted for the first time, with all possible emphasis, that the institution of coercive marriage is the ultimate cause of prostitution, to which all the other causes are subsidiary. In no other book do we find so painful a description, drawn with such astonishing clearness, of the horrible conditions resulting from the artificial preservation of the official and ecclesiastical coercive marriage, which was really based upon economic conditions peculiar to the remote past. The two first sections, “Woman the Slave of Civilization” and “Woman in her Degradation,” are the most frightful accusations of conventional marriage. On pp. 190 and 191 the author formulates in fifteen paragraphs a law of marriage reform, which has a very close resemblance to the previously described ideas of Ellen Key. A perfect classic is the chapter on servant-girls (pp. 226-284), unique in its thoroughness, and affording an admirable description of the legal, moral, and economic relationships of domestic service.
“The great army of domestic servants,” he writes, “constitute the ever-ready reserve force of prostitution. Daily from this reserve are drawn new recruits for the regular service, and daily the vacant places in the reserve are once more filled.”
Gross-Hoffinger, in 1847, came also to the conclusion that in “free love” or “free marriage” was to be found the only salvation from the misery of prostitution.
The comprehensive work of Schrank upon prostitution in Vienna[267] is distinguished by an abundance of interesting isolated observations, and these are especially to be found in the earlier historical portion. The second part is occupied with the administration and hygiene of prostitution in Vienna. The work gives an exhaustive account of Viennese prostitution down to the year 1885.
Prostitution in Leipzig was described in three chapters of a general work on prostitution, published in the year 1854.[268] The titles of these three chapters are: “Moral Corruption in Leipzig”; “Tolerated Prostitutes and Tolerated Houses in Leipzig”; “Tolerated Prostitutes in Leipzig: their Morals, their Customs, their Hygienic Condition, their End.” Very interesting is the statement of the author that of the 3,000 maidservants in Leipzig, one-third were engaged in secret prostitution.