GERMANY — Domenica Niehoff was German’s most famous prostitute. When she passed away in February, the outspoken advocate for sex worker rights was not forgotten. Indeed, one friend chose to honor her with a custom-designed tombstone. Unfortunately, the cemetery in question will have nothing to do with the monument.As officials of the Ohlsdorf Cemetery’s Garden of Women put it, it’s just “too slutty.”
Niehoff is the first prostitute to take her eternal rest within the grounds of Ohlsdorf Cemetery – and apparently an homage to her 48-inch bust is just more than the residents can be expected to endure.
Friend and illustrator Tomi Ungerer is most famous for his work on Flat Stanley, a popular children’s book. For Niehoff’s stone he selected two rounded pieces of pink marble to memorialize the infamous body parts in question.
Alas for Ungerer’s artistic sensibilities, it’s those pink slabs of marble that have cemetery officials seeing red.
Ungerer, who memorialized his friend in life via his book Guardian Angels of Hell, believes that Niehoff would have loved the design.
“She was not ashamed of herself,” he said of the activist whore who died from lung condition complications related to diabetes.
Although the cemetery may not want to remember Niehoff’s line of work, prostitutes in Germany will hopefully never forget it, since it led to legalization of prostitution in 2002.
While participating in what would be her last interview during the summer of 2008, Niehoff observed that “What I have accomplished is that more about prostitution is discussed. That it won’t be whispered about as much. That girls can honestly say, ‘I was in the milieu, but now I want out.’ Those who landed here earlier didn’t come out again.”
