Sex workers from Hamburg’s historic red-light district, persecuted under Adolf Hitler, are now on Herbertstraße, a notorious street in Germany’s second-largest city that remains off-limits to all but prostitutes and their clients. He decided to erect his own monument.
Few, even residents, know that it was the Nazis who erected the world-famous gates around the rows of “houses of pleasure” to humiliate sex workers while discreetly continuing their commerce.
Responding to calls from church leaders, community activists and local women working in the sex industry, the St. He called for the list to be expanded to include women. He barely survived Auschwitz.
The monument, which organizers hope to complete by November, will Stolperstein “Stumbling Stones” – small brass plaques placed in cities and towns across Europe commemorating individual victims of the Holocaust.
The marker is embedded in the ground at the entrance to a busy boulevard still lined with brothels and sex shops, and also includes a QR code in memory of the women of St. Pauli whose fates are known.
Sieghard Wilm, pastor of the Lutheran church for which the area is named, said he has worked with residents and enlisted the support of local sex workers to launch a project aimed at “a dignified memorial.” told the Guardian.
“Millions of people visit St. Pauli, and every day many tourists stand in front of Herbertstrasse and take pictures. I knew that the Nazis had put up the gates, so I always thought about that. “I found it ironic,” he said.
Wilm called it “terrible” and “a gross contradiction” that the famously liberal district had previously explicitly recognized sex workers as a group of Nazi victims. He wants to remove the stigma against these “long forgotten” women and make them “visible” to all.
Herbertstrasse, a narrow alley near the Reeperbahn, began life in the 19th century as a sleazy destination for local men and sailors on shore leave. Just 60 meters long, the debauched paradise remains a seedy spot for pub crawlers and weekend stags.
The opaque metal gate, marked with a No Women and Under 18s sign in German and English since the 1970s, prevents prying eyes and has been featured on countless Instagram feeds. Rubberneckers who trespass have been known to be bombarded with water balloons and have insults thrown at them from upper floor windows.
However, the fence was erected by Hamburg. Gaureiter, In 1933, he was a local Nazi Party leader when the sex trade on Herbertstrasse was denounced as a “community sin and disgrace.”
From March to May 1933, Nazi officers arrested 3,201 “fornicators” in Hamburg, Der Spiegel reported. Of these, 814 people were detained.
At the time, prostitution and striptease were officially banned, but shutting down St. Pauli’s burgeoning sex industry proved impossible, so authorities decided to hide it from view of passersby. I made peace with it.
Women locked up in prison in the 1930s and 1940s were still targeted by the Nazis as “female antisocial elements.” Many were imprisoned and deported to concentration camps. Researchers say some were forced to undergo sterilization or driven to suicide.
Historian Frauke Steinhäuser says tracing individual stories is difficult given the taboos surrounding sex work then and now.
She told Der Spiegel that she wanted to highlight someone with a background like Gotthardt, who was born in 1912 into a poor family and worked as a prostitute since her teens.
Amid widespread repression under the Nazis, the Gestapo arrested Gotthardt for failing to undergo mandatory testing for sexually transmitted diseases. Although she went underground, she was later captured and sent to Ravensbrück and then to Auschwitz.
Forced to work in an extermination camp, she attempted suicide multiple times. Her fellow Jewish internees accused Ms. Gotthard of mistreatment, and after the war she was tried and convicted in Poland.
By the time she was released, her boyfriend Johanna “Otto” Coleman, whom she had known from her time at Herbertstrasse, had already passed away.
The bill approved in Hamburg with bipartisan support allocates 5,000 euros for the monument, QR code and inauguration ceremony. Mr Wilm said his initiative aims to raise a further €15,000 to complete the project, which includes carrying out further historical research.
Industry representatives say there are currently an estimated 250 people offering sexual services for money on Herbert Street. Prostitution is legal in Germany. Campaigners say cut-price offers and a sex tourism boom have fueled rampant human trafficking since trade liberalization in 2002, leading to the country being dubbed “Europe’s biggest brothel”. ing.
