Contrary to most research on prostitution, my aim is not to find traces of Rather, I will look at the ways in which shifts in the attribution of agency to prostitute women informed discourses on prostitution and sex work in postwar Germany — a period virtually unexplored in historical research on prostitution.
The structure of the paper is based on a tentative periodization of the history of the public debate on prostitution from the s through the s. In particular, I have identified three main periods. The first period spans from the early s to the mid s, when a conservative and moralistic discourse on prostitution dominated the field and identified prostitute women as a danger for the social, moral and political integrity of German society.
In the years from to the public debate shifted towards a more liberal conception of prostitution. In particular, prostitute women were represented either as workers or as permanently lustful women. The idea of prostitute women as workers is based on the idea of prostitute women as economic agents. Against this backdrop, journalists and lawyers began to reclaim the recognition of prostitution as work. Similarly, the idea of the lustful prostitute woman is based on the assumption of a strong sexual agency.
Even narratives of sexual abuse never led to discredit their activity as forced or unchosen. When in the late s various feminist discourses entered the arena, the discourse on prostitution and prostitute women changed abruptly.
Employing feminist vocabulary, they depicted themselves as emancipated women unjustly ostracized by society and victimized by other paternal feminists. They reclaimed to be seen as women capable of sexual, economic, moral and political agency. On the other end of the debate, radical feminists introduced the idea of the prostitute as victim as well as the idea of female migrants as being forced — or trafficked — into prostitution.
