Julia Roos.  Weimar through the Lens of Gender: Prostitution Reform,
Woman's Emancipation, and German Democracy, 1919-33.  Ann Arbor
University of Michigan Press, 2010.  viii + 314 pp.  $70.00 (cloth),
ISBN 978-0-472-11734-5.

Reviewed by Katie Sutton (University of Melbourne)
Published on H-Histsex (August, 2011)
Commissioned by Timothy W. Jones

Reexamining Weimar Germany via the Politics of Prostitution

The key achievement of Julia Roos's meticulously researched _Weimar
through the Lens of Gende_r lies in the way the author takes what
seems at first glance a quite narrow historical issue--the regulation
and legal status of prostitution in 1920s Germany--and opens this up
to explore such central historiographical questions as the perceived
"crisis" or "failure" of Weimar democracy, the strength of the
interwar German women's movement, and the rise of National Socialism.
By demonstrating not only how the reform efforts of Weimar female
emancipists challenged the misogynist basis of state-regulated
prostitution, but also how the subsequent backlash against these
reforms helped to mobilize antidemocratic sentiments that ultimately
contributed to the weakening of the republic, Roos's work succeeds in
highlighting the integral importance of gender as a causal factor in
Weimar "crisis" and change.

The book consists of five main chapters, moving from the
nineteenth-century origins of Germany's system of regulationism--a
paradoxical arrangement whereby prostitution was officially illegal
yet tolerated under police and medical supervision, and which placed
restrictions on streetwalkers' mobility, place of residence, attire,
and public behavior--through to the debates and legal reforms of the
Weimar era that form the core of the analysis. It concludes with an
examination of how conservative reactions to these reforms
contributed to the solidification of Nazi power. At the center of
Roos's study is the Law for Combating Venereal Diseases (Reichsgesetz
zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten, RGBG), passed in February
1927 following years of debate involving a broad spectrum of
political parties, church and morality associations, and female
emancipists. The RGBG dramatically altered streetwalkers'
tolerated-yet-illegal status by repealing regulationism and
decriminalizing prostitution in towns with populations over 15,000,
as well as introducing measures to prevent the spread of venereal
disease, such as obligatory medical treatment for infected
individuals, female and male. It thus "abandoned the misogynist lie
of woman's exclusive responsibility for the spread of STDs" (p. 3),
and although falling short of full decriminalization, constituted a
major victory for the bourgeois women's movement and left-wing social
reformers alike.

Of particular significance for historians is Roos's reevaluation of
the significance of Weimar feminism, which has frequently been
dismissed as anti-individualist, maternalist, and largely
ineffective. Roos puts forth a "more complicated" narrative (p. 134),
which simultaneously acknowledges middle-class feminists' support for
certain repressive measures, including the surveillance and sometimes
punitive treatment of (mostly working-class) prostitutes in the
interests of social hygiene, while also recognizing their
achievements in improving prostitutes' rights in the face of harsh
police controls. As well as abolishing regulationism, this included
the replacement of the authoritarian "morals police" with
welfare-oriented programs for "endangered girls" and the
establishment of a female policing service, leading Roos to conclude
that "Weimar feminists were more successful at challenging
established gender hierarchies and advancing women's rights than
historians have often claimed" (p. 133). Her work thus contributes to
a broader trend within recent Weimar historiography toward
emphasizing positive developments in women's status at this period,
which also includes Kathleen Canning's reassessment of women's
citizenship as a major break in German political history, Atina
Grossmann and Cornelie Usborne's research into feminists' role in the
abortion and sex reform movements, and cultural historians' emphasis
on the ruptures in gender relations symbolized by the sexually and
financially independent "New Woman."[1]

The first chapter uses feminist analysis to identify some of the key
factors driving the 1920s push for reform, including prostitutes'
lack of legal protections--compounded by the exploitative practices
of the morals police--and regulationism's misogynist reliance on the
moral double standard. While concerns about "venereal pollution"
heightened support for police surveillance during the war, several
developments in the early Weimar period helped to initiate change,
with the abolitionist Social Democrats (SPD) becoming a party of
government, and women's enfranchisement forcing even the bourgeois
parties to reconsider their pro-regulationist stance. Chapter 2 moves
in the direction of social history, using petitions, letters, and
streetwalker periodicals to examine regulationism's impact on
prostitutes' lives. Here careful analysis of statistical and archival
materials allows Roos to dispute contemporaries' reactionary
statements concerning the astronomical rise in commercial sex--claims
that continue to be reproduced even in recent representations of the
"Golden Twenties," such as the _Legendary Sin Cities_ (2005)
documentaries.

The reform efforts of bourgeois feminists are the focus of the third
chapter where, as outlined above, Roos highlights the repressive
aspects of maternalist feminist policies, but also demonstrates how
outrage over regulationism's misogyny helped to radicalize many
abolitionists against broader examples of gender inequality. The
fourth chapter investigates the differing ideological and strategic
approaches of the two major left-wing parties of 1920s Germany, the
SPD and the Communist Party (KPD), finding that while the SPD's
strong identification with the welfare state led it to support the
replacement of regulationism with public welfare programs, the KPD
insisted that the abolition of the entire capitalist system was the
only means of fighting women's sexual slavery, whether in the form of
bourgeois marriage or prostitution. The final chapter addresses the
late-Weimar conservative backlash, highlighting the many different
positions on regulationism within the spectrum of right-wing
politics. These ranged from blatant antifeminism and authoritarianism
in the police and bureaucratic services, to the opposition shown by
many religious women, at least initially, to regulationism's embrace
of the double standard. Finally, Roos's conclusion traces the
resurgence of regulationism under Nazi rule, with racialized controls
on prostitution seen as necessary to protect "the prerogatives of
heterosexual Aryan males" (p. 220).

It is somewhat unfortunate that Roos's focus on "gender" fails to
address the situation of male homosexual and transvestite
prostitutes, whose placement outside of regulationist structures
might have added an extra dimension not only to her analysis of the
misogyny underlying this system, but also to the examination of
debates surrounding moral pollution and decay, where her focus is
almost entirely on discourses surrounding the promiscuous
heterosexual woman. This omission is surprising given that Roos
refers at various points to the writings of sexologist Magnus
Hirschfeld, one of several homosexual rights activists at this period
whose work also addressed the plight of male prostitutes. This is,
however, a small criticism of what is, on the whole, an outstanding
piece of historical scholarship, characterized by nuanced analyses of
archival sources and exhaustive coverage of the secondary literature.
Roos's study represents an important contribution to both Weimar and
gender history, highlighting the radical improvements that 1920s
reforms had on prostitutes' status within society--at least
temporarily--as well as how these "remarkably tolerant" (p. 213)
policies provoked reactions that, in undermining support for Weimar
democracy, contributed to the demise of the republic itself.

Note

[1]. Kathleen Canning, "Claiming Citizenship: Suffrage and
Subjectivity in Germany after the First World
War," in _Gender History in Practice: Historical Perspectives on
Bodies, Class and Citizenship_ (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2006), 212-37; Atina Grossmann, _Reforming Sex: The German Movement
for Birth Control and Abortion Reform, 1920-1950_ (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1995); Cornelie Usborne, _Cultures of Abortion in
Weimar Germany_ (New York: Berghahn, 2007), and_ The Politics of the
Body in Weimar Germany: Women's Reproductive Rights and Duties_
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992). Numerous scholars have emphasized the
social and cultural rupture marked by the Weimar-era "New Woman"; see
for example the edited collection _Women in the Metropolis: Gender
and Modernity in Weimar Culture_, ed. Katharina von Ankum (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1997); and Richard W. McCormick,
_Gender and Sexuality in Weimar Modernity: Film, Literature, and "New
Objectivity"_ (New York: Palgrave, 2001).

Citation: Katie Sutton. Review of Roos, Julia, _Weimar through the
Lens of Gender: Prostitution Reform, Woman's Emancipation, and German
Democracy, 1919-33_. H-Histsex, H-Net Reviews. August, 2011.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=32817

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
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