A young man begs 30 marks from a lady. “Sacher Masoch,” Post Office, Köpenickerstrasse.
Even fetichistic advertisements sometimes appear, such as the following, from a shoe fetichist:
A young man of means buys for his private collection elegant shoes, which have been worn by leading actresses, or by ladies of high rank.
9. Handbills.—In large towns these are distributed by persons standing at the street corners, and usually relate to restaurants with women attendants. One example will suffice:
The Restaurant of the Good-Natured Saxon Girl.
The attendants at this restaurant are young and pretty girls from Saxony; Miss Elly waits at the bar. Piano-playing and singing. Your kind patronage is requested by The Young Hostess.
“Chiromantists,” magnetopaths, and other charlatans, advertise themselves by means of street handbills. In the Latin countries, and more especially in Paris, true “brothel guides” stand at the street corners, and conduct the passers-by to improper dramatic representations, or provide for them children for fornicatory purpose, or invite them to homosexual intercourse, etc.
The third form under which the sexual life makes a public appearance is that of the great scandals and sensational occurrences with a sexual background, which are discussed by the press. I allude here, without attempting completeness, to murders and suicides arising from jealousy, from rejected love, or from love unsuccessful for some other reason—occurrences which afford sufficient proof that individual falling in love in our own time is just as violent and passionate as it was formerly; further, to abduction and seduction; to divorce scandals and divorce proceedings; in general, to all law-court proceedings relating to sexual offences; to duels dependent upon erotic motives; to family tragedies upon a similar basis; to the great procuress trials; to the discovery of secret sexual clubs and of erotic orgies; to revelations from nunneries and from secular institutions; to the exploits of swindlers, who very frequently make use of sexual passion in others to assist them in their pursuit of plunder, etc. Examples of all these varieties of scandals and sensational occurrences are found day by day in the newspapers. Very frequently, on account of the very nature of sexual psychology, they exercise a suggestive influence, so that we often hear of similar occurrences at brief intervals. If we assume the existence of psychical contagion, there is no doubt that these sensational newspaper reports play a far greater part therein than the whole of the so-called erotic literature.
[765] Cf. the valuable historical and critical monograph of Professor Wilhelm Ebstein, “Charlatanry and Quackery in the German Empire” (Stuttgart, 1905).