Anna Kratz (brothel operator)

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Anna Kratz born Sainer (born on June 26, 1861 in Cysta , Kralowitz district , Bohemia ; died after 1937 ) ran a brothel in Bayreuth .

"Weinhandlung Anna Kratz" in Wörthstraße 48½, built in 1904

In the city's population registers, Anna Kratz is named as a businessman or a privateer . From 1892 to 1898 she ran her first brothel in what is now Leuschnerstrasse. In 1903 she returned to Bayreuth, took over the establishment again and in 1904 moved into a new building not far from the first house. From the outside, the building was declared as "Anna Kratz Wine Shop". The brick house was in the immediate vicinity of the royal infantry barracks at that time and was also visited by festival guests and parts of the civil male population. With her manners and her sense of order, Anna Kratz managed to gain the trust of the authorities, at least temporarily. Anna Kratz campaigned for the interest of the Bayreuth audience by driving an open horse-drawn carriage through the city and presenting the new girls. There are many legends in Bayreuth about the work of the city-famous Anna Kratz.

prehistory

The public treatment of the topic of sexuality was largely taboo until the mid-1960s. The Bayreuth city historiography is almost completely silent about this.

Since the entire urban, ecclesiastical and manorial files were destroyed in flames when the city was destroyed by the Hussites in February 1430, nothing about “love for sale” has survived from the time before. Nevertheless, the history of prostitution in Bayreuth can be traced back at least to the late Middle Ages . That it was actually practiced at the time can be proven, for example, at the Council of Constance (1414–1418). Around 1500 "prostitutes" had traveled there to keep the church and secular dignitaries happy. At the Council of Basel in 1431, 1,800 prostitutes are said to have satisfied the delegates.

The first known Bayreuth “free daughter” was an Agnes, who was put on record in Nuremberg in 1491 . Despite all the open-mindedness and acceptance of medieval society towards prostitutes, their place was also at the very edge of society. The "whores" were counted among the "dishonest people" without honor or reputation. They shared the lowest level of dishonest professions with the executioners, and the children who were “dishonest” usually remained that way their entire lives. Executioners and whores therefore often entered into a professional alliance, and the executioner was often responsible for looking after the city brothel.

The “street whores” who offered their services on the street were among the “scraps” of Bayreuth's medieval society. The “lust whores” of the women's shelter were a little more respected. In 1457, a brothel was first mentioned in the town, which had almost 2000 inhabitants at the time. Visiting the "Frawen-Hawß" was only allowed to unmarried men. It was forbidden for Jews because, from the point of view of the Church, sexual intercourse between them and Christians was heresy .

The Frawenhaws brought the city purse year after year income, the so-called "Frawenzinß" tax of the brothel. As in many cities, it was located near the city ​​wall , in Bayreuth initially in changing houses on Frauengasse, which for this reason still bears this name. Its location can be proven precisely for the first time in 1520. On the occasion of his move with his court from Kulmbach to Bayreuth, Margrave Kasimir asked the city administration to provide him with a brothel. For this purpose, the city fathers bought a house near the town hall, which burned down in 1611, on the lower market. The tax register of 1686 shows that under Margrave Christian Ernst "a whore with a child" had to pay a special tax of 30 kreuzers for a feared war case .

It cannot be proven whether there was prostitution in the two public “bath rooms” . From the 17th century onwards, no brothels can be found in the archives. It was not until April 1892 that a “public house” was documented again in the city.

In 1746 the margravial body of law Corpus Constitutionum was published , which also regulated questions of sexual intercourse in the Principality of Bayreuth . The rulers "by God's grace" punished harmless amusements like the "evening dance" with heavy fines. The penalties for “illegitimate” sexual acts were severe: fines, caning, pillory , imprisonment, cutting off ears, expulsion from the country, and the death penalty. Ordinary "fornication" was usually "only" punished with bodily harm such as whipping. Margrave Friedrich III. let "woman-person seized in fornication" [en] 1745 "lead through the streets of the city harnessed in the whore cart".

When it came to the "whoring" of their soldiers, all margraves blamed the women exclusively. Christian Ernst decreed in 1699 that legal actions by pregnant prostitutes should be dismissed "without pardon". They should “have no hope of supporting the child”, marriage vows made in this way are “null and void”. It was not until Prussia took over the Principality of Bayreuth that soldiers were able to marry “common prostitutes” from 1792 onwards.

During the Biedermeier period (1815 to 1848) there was a climate of repression, denunciation, resentment and intolerance. The authorities organized a kind of hunt for the “daughters of the night”, and although some political and social constraints were relaxed at the end of the Biedermeier period, this hardly affected sexual tutelage. In 1847 the "lust whore" Adeline Gebhard was flogged for "immoral lifestyle" and imprisoned for four months. In 1909, 18-year-old Magdalena Messerer from nearby Creußen was imprisoned for eight days for industrial abuse . After all, in 1868 an advertisement in the Bayreuther Tagblatt praised “25 splendid photographs of groups of women in charming positions, including the most piquant tableaux”.

In 1871 Richard Wagner chose Bayreuth as the location of his planned festival and had his opera house built on the Green Hill . The first performance took place there on August 13, 1876. The infrastructure of the city, which at that time had 22,000 inhabitants, collapsed with the first rush of guests from all over the world. The complaints were u. a. miserable quarters, overcrowded inns, inflated prices and the lack of rental cabs . The lack of a brothel was also criticized. The officially “traveling wine merchant ” Josef Kratz from Litschkau in Bohemia was already among the many thousands of tourists at the time of the second festival season in 1882 .

Anna Kratz's first brothel

On April 7, 1892, Anna Kratz from Litschkau registered her new main residence in the Bayreuth “residents' bureau” at Kasernstrasse 23½. She and her mother-in-law had moved into the rear building there the day before; her husband, Josef, who was one year older, first gave the address at 8 Kanzleistraße. On April 10, 1892, the Kratz family's first local brothel opened in Kasernstrasse.

At that time, customs had already relaxed a little, and Bayreuth postcard publishers outbid each other with depictions of naked figures from Wagner operas. Above all, the sorceress and whore Kundry from Parsifal , who Wagner had imagined "lying naked like a Titian Venus ", was shown in provocative poses. The Bayreuth authorities tacitly tolerated the establishment of the brothel. Apparently the time was ripe for such an institution: The social reformers wanted to get prostitutes off the streets with “barracked prostitution” and give them a decent job in a “tidy” house. In addition, health surveillance would be facilitated and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases contained . However, the decisive factor was probably the fact that the authorities had been taken by surprise by Kratz's surprise coup.

At his request, Mayor Theodor von Muncker received information from the Bohemian district office of Saaz on April 20, 1892 that Anna Kratz was from the k. u. k. District court in Karlovy Vary was sentenced to 14 days of strict arrest, aggravated with 4 fasts, for keeping disgraceful whores and matchmaking, and was “a whore herself”. Her husband was also "punished twice for pimping while living with his wife". On April 23, Muncker ordered immediate police surveillance of the new establishment, but on the basis of the restaurant ordinance. The "merchant's wife" Kratz had announced the trade in wine, beer and mineral water in closed bottles. The surveillance was supposed to check whether beverages were being sold “for immediate consumption at the place”, since then “a company requiring a concession ” would exist. On December 28th, 1893, the observation was stopped because "the Kratz'schen married couple ... [gave] wine and beer for immediate consumption only to those people who visit the prostitutes living with them".

After a “free prostitute” was picked up in the green area of ​​the Central School (today's Graserschule) in June 1892, opponents of “barracked prostitution” also tended to believe that an establishment like the “Kratz wine shop” had its advantages - especially Anna Kratz apparently ran her establishment in perfect order. As a rule, three girls offered their services there, who were changed at irregular intervals. Before they could officially take action, they had to go to the police and ask “for approval in the local city”. The authorities of the previous whereabouts confirmed the self-reported data of the newcomer and inquired at the Reich Justice Office about previous convictions. An examination for venereal diseases was carried out at the district doctor. In the case of underage prostitutes, which were girls under 17 years of age according to the files, the parents had to be notified.

At the end of November 1896, the brothel began to turn its fate. Two of the former girls reported ill treatment and undeclared work. The Kratz couple surprisingly said goodbye to the city in early June 1898, thus evading the police investigation and settling at Pirnaische Strasse 61 in Dresden . Shortly before, on June 2nd of that year, the " privateer " Joseph Kratz had sold the house, which after renaming the street, now had the address Wörthstrasse 32, to the "merchant's wife" Johanna Söllner from Dresden.

Ms. Söllner continued to run the brothel as the “Weinhandlung Söllner”. In June 1900 Joseph Kratz bought the property back and leased it to the couple Lorenz and Johanna Reichlmeier from Halle an der Saale . The two began operating the brothel in September 1900. In the meantime, the barracks district had emerged in the immediate vicinity , and there were soon complaints about disturbance of the peace and gross nonsense, caused mainly by drunk soldiers, but also by the brothel keeper himself. Therefore, the residents demanded that the establishment be relocated. In February 1904 Reichlmeier received the permit to build a new brothel in Wörthstrasse 48½ (today Leuschnerstrasse 48).

Anna Kratz's return to Bayreuth

Former Kratz'sches house on the Upper Quellhof

In 1903 the now divorced Anna Kratz reappeared in Bayreuth and began, apparently with the consent of the magistrate, to build a house near Gut Oberer Quellhof in what is now the Birken district . Contrary to the widespread outrage, the legal advisor and second mayor Albert Preu did not consider the existence of two brothels in the city to be problematic. The government of Upper Franconia did not share this view, and the eldest of the location complained: "The construction of brothels in the immediate vicinity of barracks must ... be countered at all costs". Kratz's neighbor Baron Albrecht von Reitzenstein, the owner of the Oberer Quellhof, finally knew how to prevent the intended use. In 1906 she was forced to sell the building at a lower price to the Ida Schmidt'sche Infirmary Foundation.

Before the prostitutes had moved into the new building on Wörthstrasse, Reichlmeier sold both houses to Anna Kratz for a total of 65,000 marks. In November 1904, the military authorities complained that the new brothel was "only 150 paces away from the barracks". Mayor Leopold von Casselmann , however, considered the location to be suitable and successfully advocated a temporary toleration of the establishment. On July 7, 1905, however, Kratz was instructed “to look for a perfect place to move the brothel as soon as possible, but at least within two years”.

In the autumn of 1907, Casselmann and Preu applied to the Royal Bavarian War Ministry in Munich "respectfully obediently" to maintain the brothel at the previous location. Ms. Kratz had given the city magistrate "the possibility of complete suppression of street prostitution." The brothel owner had tried seriously, but in vain, to find a place to relocate her business. It was emphasized that, in contrast to Reichlmeier, Kratz understood "to always maintain order in their operations and to keep excessive people out of their economy". Casselmann traveled personally to Munich and obtained a postponement until March 1909.

For this reason, after several of her proposals met resistance, Kratz decided to purchase three pieces of land next to her first brothel building. The residents protested there too. Casselmann appeased that since “die Kratz”, who even had a telephone connection to the police station set up in order to be able to notify the police immediately in the event of disturbances and the like, “held the brothel”, “not once ... there had been scandals given ". In response to allegations of insubordinate behavior by the prostitutes in public, Kratz said: "My wives were not allowed to leave the home without my supervision ...". You have "had 14 windows walled up so that the women cannot always see the barracks and the street".

In October 1909 the military authorities inquired about the progress of the transfer. At the beginning of December, Kratz leased the brothel to the Leitermeier couple, who had previously operated a brothel in Hof . Theodor Altenbach from Mannheim succeeded them in April 1911, and the following June the military authorities again reported. In April 1912, Anna Kratz announced that she wanted to give up her business entirely due to a chronic illness and leased it to the Schreiner (1912) and Lichtinger (1913), and in June 1913 to Anna Heber, previously managing director of a brothel in Leipzig . In the course of mobilization at the beginning of the First World War , the magistrate ordered the immediate closure of the brothel at the request of the military on August 18, 1914.

Third attempt

In February 1915, Anna Kratz submitted an application to the magistrate for the first time to reopen her “pub”, which was refused. Only a further attempt on January 17, 1917 brought the desired success with some delay. This time too, Kratz, who spent the war years in Bohemia, leased the brothel. The first tenant was Mathilde Chroust from Drahowitz near Karlsbad from September 1917 , and Anna Heber took over the business again in March 1919. On June 4, 1920 Anna Kratz finally announced “that she was doing this on her own property in Wörthstr. 48½ run the brothel set up there myself ”.

One of the first violations of the rules on record was the prohibited "administration of alcohol" in early October 1920. Beverages ”, this violation of the trade regulations was punished with a fine. The investigating detective attested the brothel operator "otherwise, a good repute". The next day, Kratz called the police at around one o'clock in the morning because 40–45 young men were rioting in the house because "they were not given drinks". As a result of these incidents, the city administration asked the administrations of Regensburg , Augsburg and Hof how police surveillance of the brothels was being carried out there and whether the distribution of drinks and food was tacitly tolerated. The previous regulation remained: regular checks by the police, no distribution of drinks, no closure of the establishment after the police hour .

In December 1920, Albert Preu, meanwhile mayor of the city, suggested the closure of the brothel and the conversion of the building into a residential building. The doctors in charge spoke out against it, as “a rapid increase in the number of sexually transmitted diseases” was to be expected through secret prostitution. The city council agreed with this view, but formulated a declaration of commitment, which Anna Kratz signed the following February. It contained ten items, six of which related to the health of the prostitutes, but e.g. B. also the prohibition to employ foreigners or girls under the age of 18 years.

The first differences arose in the autumn of 1920 when Kratz refused to pay the hospital treatment costs for a sexually ill prostitute. In June 1921 she accepted what she believed to be an unjustified request after threatening to close her establishment within 14 days. In 1922, the Protestant dean Karl Wolfart called for a crusade against Bayreuth's Den of Sin No. 1. It is outrageous that “the brothel is so popular”. “Young people ...”, meant primarily students from higher education institutions, “went in and out there; big carousing parties would be held there ”. This was contradicted by the police leadership. The hospital senior doctor, the district doctor and the on-site doctor warned against the brothel being closed because the expected increase in "street whoring" would encourage the spread of venereal diseases. Inquiries from the city administration in Nuremberg , Würzburg and other cities showed that they shared the doctors' view.

On November 21, 1922, the government of Upper Franconia started a survey of the number of brothels in the administrative district, following an instruction from the Bavarian State Ministry. The answer from the Bayreuth city administration was: "A brothel with four prostitutes is operated here". She also announced that it had been ordered to close on July 1, 1923. This date seemed too generous to Dean Wolfart, but his renewed pressure to accelerate the measures in December had no consequences. However, on January 26, 1923, all Bavarian police authorities received an order from the ministry that all brothels were to be “closed with effect from May 1, 1923 at the latest”. Anna Kratz was informed of this on February 7th. On May 1, the government of Upper Franconia made sure that the closure order was being carried out, and on May 18, the police office confirmed: “The brothel is closed”.

On May 25, 1923, the city council determined that “two registered prostitutes” were still living in the Kratz'schen house, but this was not objectionable, as “there was no longer any brothel-like operation”. That it still existed is evident from a police report from December of that year of hyperinflation , which mentions sexual intercourse for 60 billion marks. On June 7, 1924, Anna Kratz asked in vain at the police station, "May two more girls be written to her for the duration of the festival". At her own request, she was confirmed in May 1925 that she no longer ran a brothel in the city. She makes "only use of the permitted option ... to accommodate up to two prostitutes." On behalf of the city council, Lord Mayor Preu confirmed to the government of Upper Franconia that "two girls who are commercially available for fornication" lived in the house. At the same time he instructed his administration to “avoid the term“ brothel ”for the house mentioned“ in future in all official reports and files ”.

In November 1927 the attorney general stated that in Bayreuth “the minist. Resolution of 01/26/23 ..., according to which brothels may no longer be tolerated because they have not been implemented ”. In his statement on this, Preu mentioned that the two prostitutes were “very popular with men”. The current facility, however, differs from a “regular brothel”. The girls are not dependent on the homeowner, "no fornication money" is collected from Ms. Kratz, the girls have "freedom in going out and about. in clothes ”. Lounges for the guests are no longer available, there is no permitted or even tolerated business operation. "Eliminating the condition would only promote the health-threatening waitress prostitution". The Upper Franconian District President Otto von Strössenreuther suspected, however, that Kratz had only converted their business "in order to benefit from the prostitute's trade in another way". The high pension price forced the girls to work intensively in their trade. The "attitude of a house boy" and the fact of the daily preparation of food and drinks in the middle of the night suggest that "a disguised brothel operation on the part of Ms. Kratz, at least a promotion of the fornication business of the prostitutes". The criminal proceedings initiated by him were discontinued.

The Bavarian Minister of the Interior, Karl Stützel , launched a new initiative in February 1930 to “fight the prostitute”. However, he mainly referred to street prostitution and thus helped the Kratz house to a kind of fornication monopoly. In October of that year, another case against Ann Kratz was stopped on the grounds "It could not be established that Ms. Kratz runs a brothel-like business". At the end of October 1934 she was put on record again when she was accused of having had a suitor pay her and also received a bottle of wine; this incident also had no consequences. In 1938 the civil status and operational commencement register for the house on Wörthstrasse recorded six residents, in addition to Anna Kratz, who is now 77, a caretaker, a caretaker and three subtenants. In that year she left the city for good and returned to her old home in Oberleutensdorf .

No photos of Anna Kratz were found, the place and date of death are not known.

Others

In 1933 the National Socialists started with the claim of a "moral and moral renewal of the German people". In 1937, however, the Reich Police Chief Heinrich Himmler declared in front of SS group leaders: “We will be generous in the field [of prostitution] until we can no longer do it, because one cannot, on the one hand, want to prevent the whole youth from migrating to homosexuality and, on the other, everyone Block the way out ". Therefore, the former Kratz'sche brothel continued to exist until shortly before the end of the “Third Reich” .

On April 8, 1945, the building was destroyed by an aerial bomb during an attack by the US Air Force on the barracks district .

Remarks

  1. ↑ The house that her husband bought in 1892 was outside the built-up area in a side path off Kasernstrasse (today Rathenaustraße), today's Leuschnerstrasse

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Kurt Herterich : Southern Bayreuth . Ellwanger, Bayreuth 1996, ISBN 978-3-925361-26-5 , pp. 89 .
  2. ^ Wilfried Engelbrecht: Prostitution in old Bayreuth . Bayreuth slow motion, Bayreuth 2014, ISBN 978-3-9809625-1-3 , p. 11 .
  3. ↑ a b Wilfried Engelbrecht: Prostitution in old Bayreuth , p. 21 ff.
  4. ↑ Wilfried Engelbrecht: Prostitution in old Bayreuth , p. 24 f.
  5. ↑ a b c d Wilfried Engelbrecht: Prostitution in old Bayreuth , p. 14 ff.
  6. ↑ Wilfried Engelbrecht: Prostitution in old Bayreuth , p. 28 ff.
  7. ↑ Wilfried Engelbrecht: Prostitution in old Bayreuth , p. 43.
  8. ↑ Wilfried Engelbrecht: Prostitution in old Bayreuth , p. 31.
  9. ↑ Wilfried Engelbrecht: Prostitution in old Bayreuth , p. 36 f.
  10. ↑ Wilfried Engelbrecht: Prostitution in old Bayreuth , p. 44 f.
  11. ↑ Wilfried Engelbrecht: Prostitution in old Bayreuth , p. 51.
  12. ↑ Wilfried Engelbrecht: Prostitution in old Bayreuth , p. 68.
  13. ↑ Wilfried Engelbrecht: Prostitution in old Bayreuth , p. 72.
  14. ↑ a b c d Wilfried Engelbrecht: Prostitution in old Bayreuth , p. 74 ff.
  15. ↑ Wilfried Engelbrecht: Prostitution in old Bayreuth , p. 81.
  16. ↑ a b Wilfried Engelbrecht: Prostitution in old Bayreuth , p. 89 ff.
  17. ↑ a b c d e Wilfried Engelbrecht: Prostitution in old Bayreuth , p. 106 ff.
  18. ↑ a b c Wilfried Engelbrecht: Prostitution in old Bayreuth , p. 124 ff.
  19. ↑ a b Wilfried Engelbrecht: Prostitution in old Bayreuth , p. 158 ff.
  20. ↑ a b c Wilfried Engelbrecht: Prostitution in old Bayreuth , p. 167 ff.
  21. ↑ a b Wilfried Engelbrecht: Prostitution in old Bayreuth , p. 194 ff.
  22. ↑ a b Wilfried Engelbrecht: Prostitution in old Bayreuth , p. 200 ff.
personal data
SURNAME Scratch, Anna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sainer, Anna (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Brothel operator in Bayreuth
DATE OF BIRTH June 26, 1861
PLACE OF BIRTH Cysta , Kralowitz District, Bohemia
DATE OF DEATH 20th century