BERLIN, GERMANY — For the first time in its eight-year history, Germany’s legal prostitution industry is feeling the crunch of hard times.Frankfurt’s oldest brothel, FKK Sudfass, closed. The new owner of the building plans to convert the property into a hotel.
One Berlin brothel has begun offering an “all-inclusive” service that includes girls, drinks and food for 70 euros. Others have come up with their own “stimulus packages” that offer discounts or upgrades.
“We’re in trouble,” Isabelle, owner of Berlin’s Belle Escort brothel, told Agence France-Presse. “I’d estimate that we have at least 20-percent less people coming here.”
Monika Heitmann, who for 20 years has worked for a prostitute support network in Bremen, said it’s not surprising the brothels are suffering. Consumers’ expendable income is way down worldwide. Of course that’s going to have an effect on “recreation,” she noted.
“If customers can’t even afford to spend money on housing, food and cars, then how can we expect them to spend money on sex?” Heitmann told AFP. “Thirty years ago prostitutes were really dedicated to their work,” but now economic hard times are forcing inexperienced, unwilling women into the sex trade because they can’t find jobs anywhere else.
Also creating problems for working girls is the general notion that everyone must provide more for less in order to earn the business of the people who have money to spend.
“There are a lot of women who come here and just don’t know how to get on,” Heitmann told AFP. “The crisis means that customers want more service for less money. They’re becoming pushy and even blackmailing the ladies.”
Unlike in the U.S., the sex industry in Germany has solicited federal aid seriously. Taking a cue from the automotive and banking industries, a spokesman for the erotic industry’s trade association earlier this year told the federal government “economic aid would be judicious.”
Part of the problem with that proposal is that prostitution, while legal, is not licensed. Therefore, there are few statistics about how many women work in the industry and how much money they make — or don’t make.
“Firstly, prostitutes don’t legally have to be registered, and secondly, who defines who is a prostitute?” Berlin Research Institute for Social Science and Women’s Studies Professor Barbara Kavemann asked.
