Red light district

The red light district of Frankfurt am Main at night

Entrance to the Nuremberg red light district at the Frauentormauer

The red light district is a social environment, a milieu that can be found in the environment of the sex-oriented trade, such as prostitution , and often has its focus in a red light district . Like the term red light, the term is usually used as a synonym for sex work and the sex industry in a negative way.

Components

The Reeperbahn in Hamburg at night

In addition to the prostitutes, the red light district includes the owners, operators and employees of brothels , striptease bars and partly of sex shops and table dance bars, pimps , human traffickers , partly also dealers , fences , etc.

Larger chains in the field of films and accessories, such as the company founded by Beate Uhse with the eponymous Sexversand and Orion , have managed to commercialize sex outside of the red light milieu. In the area of table dance bars , companies like the Hamburg “Dollhouse” are trying to follow the same path in order to develop new groups of customers. By differentiating it from prostitution, the company should appear more serious and thus also appeal to visitors who feel repulsed by the red light district.

The term “red light district” is usually associated with criminal behavior (e.g. drug trafficking , human trafficking , blackmail ). The battle for supremacy is a competition between indigenous groups, ethnic groups, and rocker groups like the Hells Angels . In Germany, by organized crime spoken.

In 2011, Peter F. Müller shot the documentary film We were the Miljö about former Cologne “red light kings” .

See also

• Prostitution by country
• Prostitution in Germany

literature

• Ariane Barth: In the red light. The explosive life of Stefan Hentschel . Ullstein Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-548-36769-0 . (The "brothel king" Stefan Hentschel tells about his life - a realistic depiction of the Hamburg red light district by an insider.)
• Nora Bossong : Red light . Report. Hanser, Munich 2017. ISBN 978-3-446-25457-2 .

Web links

Wiktionary: Red light district  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

1. ^ Red light and organized crime article from Die Kriminalpolizei (journal of the police union), June 2011 edition.
2. ^ Cologne milieu: Crash of the red light kings Kölner Stadtanzeiger, June 6, 2011.
3. ↑ See review: Nora Bossong on prostitution: A woman penetrates spiegel.de, February 22, 2017.