Beasts in Human Clothing? Pimps, Moral Panics and the German Underworld

Abstract

‘A few weeks ago’, complained harbour worker Herr Pahlke to a local newspaper in 1920, several Hamburg Morals Police (Sittenpolizei) officers ‘came into my home intent on taking my wife… to the station’ on suspicion of illegal prostitution. ‘My wife’, he continued, ‘who was still in bed and at the time had her period, was taken to the police station as she was — in her nightshirt with specks of blood up its back.’¹ An area resident who did not know the couple told the newspaper that Else Pahlke’s sartorial condition was far worse — she was dressed in only a shirt ‘with big blood stains on the back’, as well as a ‘blouse that was not closed and some tights that were not fully pulled up’.² Only after an hour of being forced to sit in the station in this state did a more conscientious officer cover her with his jacket and take her back home to get some proper clothes. But her mistreatment continued. She was returned to the station and forced to submit to a medical examination before being released without charge. Indignant, Herr Pahlke concluded that ‘the women and girls of Hamburg should be highly interested in the way that this case is resolved’ and that he would be pressing charges against the police for his wife’s ‘improper treatment’.³