‘The Chronicle Must Tell How It Once Was’: Commercial Sex and Pimping in the Chronicle of Hamburg’s Postwar Vice Police

Abstract To ‘pass on a bit of recent history’, members of Hamburg’s vice police, or Sitte, gradually assembled a six-volume chronicle covering the period 1945 to 1982. The authors documented promotions, retirements, joint trips and work parties, but they also recorded the work of the department, illustrated through case notes and commentary on pimping, prostitution, pornography, drug use, paedophilia and incest. This article examines the treatment and depiction of commercial sex and pimping from the 1950s into the early 1980s. Central here is an investigation of the portrayals of ‘pimp’ violence towards women who sold sex, viewed alongside allusions to and evidence of police violence. A further focus is the presentation of and relationship with women who sold sex in Hamburg, with particular reference to police commentary regarding their race, sexuality and gender identity. The article also explores descriptions in the chronicle of so-called ‘transvestite’ prostitution. The authors of the chronicle repeatedly allude to sexual liberalization in West German society at large. Their entries are crafted with a reader in mind as they relate the actions of officers and subjects to changing views on sexuality. This article thus also analyses police engagement with processes of sexual liberalization and the implications for the role of the vice police in West Germany.