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232 .
Prostitution in Vienna in the Nineteenth Century
Markian Prokopovych*
University of Birmingham, UK

Historical background
Vienna, the Habsburg capital and a Catholic stronghold, has a long history of measures against
prostitution which, apart from serving as a model for other regions of the Empire, were also strongly
shaped by the imperial court and the clerical elite. The first systematic — though unsuccessful —
attempts to eradicate prostitution date back to the late eighteenth century and the rule of Empress
Maria Theresa. In 1752, the empress established what would become known as the Chastity Committee
(Keuschheitskommission, also Keuschheitsgericht and Zuchtgericht), an institution that was dedicated
exclusively to issues of prostitution, extramarital sex, objectionable behaviour and homosexuality
among the citizens of Vienna. At that time, particularly tough measures were introduced that dealt
with prostitutes in tandem with other undesired groups such as tramps, vagabonds and women
living in common-law marriage. The story of the expulsion of all the prostitutes apprehended in
Vienna (some estimates spoke of as many as 3,000 women) and their deportation down the Danube
to Temesvár in the Banat region in the Balkans between 1744 and 1768 is legendary and often cited
in literature on the history of prostitution in Central Europe. The result of such harsh measures
was the opposite of that desired: prostitution continued to thrive. While her son, Emperor Joseph
II, abolished the Chastity Committee along with a number of other historic public punishments
for prostitutes such as public shaming, wearing of chains and the cutting of hair, the majority of
the earlier laws forbidding prostitution remained in force and, until the middle of the nineteenth
century, prostitution remained within the juristiction of criminal law.

Josef Schrank, author of Die Prostitution in Wien in historischer, administrativer und hygienischer
Beziehung (Prostitution in Vienna from the historical, administrative and hygienic perspective, 1886)
reported an unprecedented spread of prostitution during the 1848 revolution and particularly drastic
measures against it that were introduced in the years of the follow-up reaction in the 1850s–1870s.
The ministerial decree of 30 December 1850, for example, requested the police not only to take
prostitution into consideration, but also to tackle public health concerns that were connected to it. In
1873, the first comprehensive regulatory legislation was introduced and, consequently, prostitution
became the prerogative of the morality police (Sittenpolizei). From that time onwards prostitutes
were legally requested to register and undergo regular medical examinations. Practically until 1911,
when the first attempts to reform the regulatory system were introduced, the general tendency had
been to maintain strict control over registered prostitutes operating in brothels and other tolerated
establishments and ruthless elimination of the illicit sex trade via police action, detention and
expulsion. It took another 10 years until the prohibition of brothels was finally passed in 1921.

*
I would like to thank Nancy M. Wingfield for her useful comments on the earlier draft of this article.
 City Introductions

Prostitution traditionally thrived in the city centre, along the Gürtel (outer ring), the banks of . 233

the Vienna canal and the Danube, in the Prater as well as in the suburbs. New areas for the sex trade
developed in the late nineteenth century in more upper-class spaces and in the immediate proximity
of the bourgeois residential districts. Of particular alarm was the Prater promenade, a place for Sunday
strolling amongst respectable society, analogous to the Ringstrasse in the inner city, as well as the section
of the Gürtel linking the middle-class inner suburb Mariahilf (Mariahilfer Gürtel) with a particularly
notorious section of the 15th district, the so-called Schmelz. A military exercise ground used only
occasionally, Schmelz became an area for criminal gangs and the prostitution networks that they ran.
Outside the Old Town, the Prater and the Schmelz, particularly dense were the areas of Spittelberg
and Getreidemarkt. Other locations in the suburbs, in particular Favoriten, Simmering and Laaerberg,
the so-called Fünfkreutzertanzlocale or 5-kreutzer dance halls existed, too, but it is clear that most of
them were very central and that the policy for the removal of prostitution from central districts was
unsuccessful. In 1904, 430 women were convicted of “covert” prostitution in Vienna, whereas some
estimates spoke of as many as 30,000 covert prostitutes.

Owing to the proximity of the imperial court and traditional presence of the aristocracy, Vienna
also had socially much more diverse prositution networks that were not limited to the poor and the
underclass. The local dialect used a number of terms to distinguish between different groups involved in
the sex trade in distinct locations, from the exclusive Kokotte (cocotte) to the lowest niedere Dirne (lowly
whore). While cocottes (also known as Lorettes and Demimondäne) operated in prestigious theatres,
bars, balls and the races, Besseren (the better ones) were to be found in coffee houses, transient hotels
and only rarely on the street. One of the most exclusive open-air locations was Volksgarten, the public
park. By contrast, the majority of the rest worked on the street and catered for socially distinct groups
of men from the middle and the working class. The latter were further distinguished by additional
names such as Prodahure (Prater whore), blade Nelli (fat Nelly), Asphaltschwalbe (asphalt swallow),
Randsteinschwalbe (curbstone swallow), Benzingretl (petrol Gretel) and finally Nafke (from the Yiddish,
defining both a prostitute and a female card player) in Jewish and Kurva in Slavic neighbourhoods.
Pimps were usually referred to as Strizzi (from the Czech stryc, uncle), but also Peitscherlbub (whip boy).
Another commonly used term was Deckl (cover) meaning the identity card of a prostitute.

Between 1900 and 1911, there existed another, less stygmatized form of prostitution, the so-called
Diskreten (discreet prostitutes, also called Geheimen (secret) and Winkeldirnen (corner whores)). Among
those were also many dancers and waitresses, who practised the sex trade largely invisible to the public
eye. They did not have permission to roam the streets, were not required to register for an identity
health card, but were obliged to undergo regular medical checks. Sex could be bought “discreetly”
in select dance establishments (dance schools as well as dance pubs), transient hotels and dosshouses
(so-called Absteige and Stundenhotels), shops that functioned as fronts (especially the first ground-floor
tenants of the recently constructed tenement houses); baths, art studios and theatres, and finally on the
street. It was common for flower girls, or Blumenmädchen, who were equally the subject of great works
of fin-de-siècle literature and of ridicule, to be involved in some aspect of the sex trade, as well. Many
of Vienna’s famous suburban wine taverns, Heurigen, were also prostitution locations.

Within the “discreets”, Schrank distinguished between “gallant ladies” (gallante Frauen), women
in manual work, female factory employees and domestic servants as those who were involved in the sex
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234 . trade in addition to their regular employment — usually to compensate for meagre earnings in their
main professions. Domestic labour, especially domestic servants, constituted a significant number
of the urban labour force in late nineteenth-century Vienna and a large migrant female labour force
(especially many Czech and Jewish women) was employed at home, either as domestic servants or in
the city’s large garment industry. The fact that a large proportion of prostitutes specifically came from
domestic service is repeatedly stressed in the literature. At the same time, given that it is difficult to
trace their activity in the sources available, there is little evidence of their topographical distribution
on the map of the turn-of-the-century metropolis.

In Vienna, there was also a significant overlap of sex trade territories into ghetto areas and other
places notorious for poor migrant residents at the turn of the century. The district of Leopoldstadt
in Vienna, traditionally a place of concentrated Jewish residence and poverty, was notorious for the
proliferation of both prostitution and petty criminality. Similarly, there was Neulerchenfeld and
its surroundings, traditionally a place of extremely mixed residence, poverty and cheap bars, where
prostitution thrived especially along Lerchenfelderstrasse and Thaliastrasse. Yet it is significant that
major areas in the inner city that were traditionally associated with prostitution in the medieval
and early modern period remained remarkably enduring. Even after the major restructuring of
Vienna that brought into existence the circular street Ringstrasse and significantly altered residential
patterns in the city, most of the inner city locations for the sex trade were still there in the early
twentieth century. As Nancy M. Wingfield (2007) has recently demonstrated, the scandal around
the 1906 Regine Riehl trial revealed that “respectable” bourgeois areas such as Alsergrund were also
locations of highly secretive and, at the same time, prosperous brothels, which were protected by
connections within the police and the political elite. It also revealed the dark underworld lurking
behind respectable facades that involved severe maltreatment of prostitutes by the madams, as well
as a number of issues pertinent to nationalism and the “Jewish question” in the imperial capital city.

Societal reaction and legislation against prostitution

Vienna as an intellectual centre had historically strong traditions of misogyny, which were clearly
manifested in the ideas of the two leading figures of the fin de siècle, Sigmund Freud and Otto
Weininger. The latter went as far as to claim that “great men” (presumably like himself ) had always
“preferred women of the prostitute type”. Strongly influenced by the work of Italian criminologist and
psychiatrist, Cesare Lombroso, on the now discredited theory of the hereditary nature of criminality and
by consequence also of prostitution, Weininger distinguished between the two “types” of women, the
mother and the prostitute, at the same time removing, however, the historically positive connotation of
the mother. For Weininger, any woman who enjoyed sex for its own sake rather than for reproduction
was essentially a prostitute. Such ideas were very persuasive in fin-de-siècle Vienna, and the increasing
presence of women in the public sphere seemed to only have strengthened them. At the same time, the
spread of prostitution in Vienna as a consequence of urbanization resulted in an entirely new genre,
or cult, of prostitute (Dirnenkult) at the turn of the century that derided the supposed asexuality of
“normal” middle-class women. In addition to the profound discord in the degree of sexual experience
expected from men and women before marriage in a bourgeois society, and Freud and others’ belief
in men’s much stronger sexual desires and needs, the social and ideological preconditions for the
blossoming of prostitution were thus in place even in the early twentieth century.
 City Introductions

In Vienna, attempts at introducing regulatory norms and legislation against prostitution were . 235

for decades strongly opposed by the clerical elite that saw it as a policy “legalizing the whores”. As a
consequence of urbanization, the turnover of prostitutes between different establishments and cities
within the Monarchy and beyond was also comparatively high. In that situation, prostitutes remained
one of the most heterogeneous and elusive urban groups. Prostitution was very actively discussed; at
the same time, regulationism clearly predominated as a policy within government circles. The police
regulation of 6 February 1873, for example, clearly delineated under which conditions prostitution would
be tolerated in comparison with the earlier 1850 decree: in it were specified definitions of the tolerated sex
trade, registration mechanisms, health certificates as well as the jurisdiction of the morality police. Only
prostitutes in possession of health cards who would undergo regular (every third day) examinations would
be hitherto tolerated. Those found to carry venereal diseases would be dispossessed of their health cards
and stationed in one of Vienna’s three hospitals — or expelled from the city. The so-called “vagabond law”
(Vagabundengesetz) of 1885 introduced tougher punishments for illegal prostitution, up to forced labour
in specifically designed establishments. Specific areas of the central First District were set to be controlled
by detectives of the morality police operating in plain clothes.

A further 1894 police decree forbade prostitutes from enticing their clients through shop doors in the
side streets, which had the simple consequence of bringing prostitution onto the street. Further restrictions
included prohibition of the practising of the sex trade in several districts at the same time (1896); the
establishment of further forced labour institutions for those convicted of covert prostitution (1898); police
surveillance and medical inspection of all women suspected of working as prostitutes including dancers
and waitresses and official recognition — and regulation thereof — of tolerated brothels (1900); setting
limits on the number of women to be inspected per police doctor and the establishment of the Central
Office for Tackling the Trafficking of Women (Zentralstelle zur Bekämpfung des Mädchenhändels) and the
so-called “Office of the agents of the morality police” within it (Büro für sittenpolizeiliche Agenten, 1905–
1907); setting limits to the minimal age of 18 and curbing the jurisdiction of the morality police (1911).

Whereas the number of controlled prostitutes significantly increased before and especially during
the First World War, it is also clear that clandestine prostitution proliferated owing to a complex set of
economic and social issues accentuated by the war. By the last years of the First World War and influenced by
developments in Germany, a new consciousness of “social dangers” associated with prostitution especially
in terms of the spread of infectious and venereal diseases in the army developed in Austria-Hungary. That
resulted in renewed vigour in attempting to eliminate prostitution in the immediate aftermath of the war.
The health cards were replaced by special identity cards in 1920 and brothels were finally prohibited in
1921. At the same time, however, women were obliged by the conditions of the post-war social contract
to give place to returning veterans in the job market, which resulted in the unprecedented spread of
female unemployment in Central Europe and elsewhere. As a consequence, many more women than
before became involved part-time in the sex trade. A 1923 report by the government of Austria states, for
example, that more than 51 per cent of covert prostitutes in Vienna were unemployed.

Attempts to understand prostitution from the social perspective and to deal with it in a more
complex and comprehensive manner were in Vienna largely limited to the feminist movement. In 1892,
social democratic feminist writer and journalist, Adelheid Popp, founded the Arbeiterinnenzeitung (female
worker) newspaper that argued for the right of women to work as well as their free choice in family,
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236 . lifestyle and their role in the public sphere. A year later, in 1893, feminist social reformers, Auguste Fickert
and Rosa Mayreder, founded the Allgemeiner Österreichischer Frauenverein (Austrian women’s association),
which published its own pro-reform biweekly Dokumente der Frauen between 1899 and 1902 that
positioned itself strongly against the prevailing misogyny. Like many of their generation, Mayreder
and other Viennese feminists were propagating full emancipation of women which the collapse of the
Habsburg Monarchy in 1918 seemed to be promising. Strongly opposing prostitution, they refused,
however, to condem it on moral grounds and advocated, instead, for the reformulation of sexual and
family relations to conform to new modern standards as well as for full sexual education for both boys and
girls, which they somewhat naively believed would make prostitution obsolete.
 City Introductions

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