Since the corona lockdown in March, business has also stood still for Natalie Zimmermann-Bauer. She runs brothels in Wrzburg and Kitzingen and paints dark scenarios.
The red lamps are off. Commercial sex was hit by the corona lockdown in March with long-term effects. While the majority of the companies can hope for further easing, the business in brothels, apartments and on the street will stand still for a long time. What can have serious consequences for many, mainly Southeast European prostitutes, between illegal underground work and homelessness.
“Paid sex doesn’t go away just because it’s banned. The need is still there,” Natalie Zimmermann-Bauer tries to describe what drives her tears into her eyes. It operates two brothels in Kitzingen and Wrzburg under the name “Magic Mouse House”. In official German, their corporate model is commercial room rental. This is common practice in the milieu, which includes around 400,000 prostitutes nationwide, including unreported cases, of which only around 250 are officially in Lower Franconia. Full-time, permanent prostitutes with their own studios can only be found in the metropolitan areas.
No short-time rule, no emergency aid
The women, mostly from Romania, who normally offer their services legally in the rooms of the two “magic mouse” houses on their own account and legally, are not employees. Ergo, there is no short-time rule for them and thus, unlike for colleagues who are socially insured in Germany and therefore entitled to Hartz IV, there is no money from the state. They shouldn’t hope for Corona emergency aid. “If you do not have a company, you do not have a company number, there is no entitlement,” says Johannes Hardenacke, press spokesman for the Lower Franconia government, referring to the special regulation currently starting for artists.
Thomas Assenbrunner, press spokesman for the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs in Munich, emphasizes that living expenses cannot be included in the liquidity bottleneck, which is crucial for immediate aid: “A liquidity bottleneck exists if the ongoing income from the business operations is not likely to be sufficient to cover the liabilities to be paid in the following three months from the commercial material and financial expenses, for example commercial rents, leases or leasing expenses. ” But these prostitutes have no business expenses.
Photo: Michael Bauer
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Another problem: The sex workers are not allowed to live in the daily rented work rooms, which the law prohibits on the basis of the prostitute protection law of 2017. Natalie Zimmermann-Bauer, who has entered the milieu as an entrepreneur, sees the consequences: “The women go to the big cities and work illegally on the street. On terms you wouldn’t want your biggest enemy to have. ” Everything that was obtained on rights was in ruins. “Where there were 1000 suitors before Corona, there are now 100 who don’t care. And they haggle over them. The women undercut each other, for 30 euros or less they do everything. Really everything, even without protection. Just for some money for a cheap night and to get food, otherwise they sleep on the park bench. “
Without money and return ticket
Self-employed prostitutes from Eastern Europe usually work in a kind of shift operation, explains the owner of the brothel and describes the typical process: The women travel without money and return tickets and always change cities, which allows the brothel operators to have variety on site. After three or four weeks, they go back home, mostly to support the family financially. Many, adds Zimmermann-Bauer, would have caught the corona restrictions freezing cold: no money, no accommodation and no options for going home.
“The women undercut each other, for 30 euros they do everything. Really everything, even without any protection.”
Brothel operator Natalie Zimmermann-Bauer on prostitutes stranded in Germany–
Manuela Ghring from the Kassandra counseling center in Nuremberg also knows this. “Officially there are no homeless prostitutes” but the undisclosed figure is not manageable. In the meantime, the official requirements have been softened, and overnighting in brothel rooms is tolerated on the urgent recommendation of the professional associations and the women’s ministries of the countries. Only this information has not reached many foreign women. And brothel operators like Natalie Zimmermann-Bauer often lack contact information for women.
Health concepts cannot be implemented
Ghring emphasizes that no woman would have contacted her with the intention of wanting to work on the street despite the ban. “But we know that it is the case. Only: there is nothing we can do about it.” The Kassandra employee is out on the street as a street worker, throwing information sheets about the new right of residence into the mailboxes of well-known addresses from the milieu. But she has no idea how to get prostitution back into a controllable framework: “I spoke to the health department. But: How do you want to implement hygiene concepts in an industry that lives from physical contact in which a face mask is unthinkable ? “
Photo: Boris Roessler
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A question that Zimmermann-Bauer also poses. The Niederbayerin, who lives in Wiesentheid, is at a loss: “You could offer something on a small scale. With two women per house who prove quick tests every week and receive a maximum of five clients a day.” It is difficult to control, “but as it is now, it is out of control. Mutual trust would be the only key so that these women could participate in society again.” Only: Trust will hardly be the basis for loosening the restriction.
If necessary, switch to a pension company
The 47-year-old is herself a victim of the corona crisis. They have not yet received the 5000 euros in emergency aid, but the monthly rent for the house in Kitzingen continues to amount to 3000 euros per month. And the credit for the house in Wrzburg, which she had only bought a few months ago. “We are the last to open again. I ticked off the year 2020.” For the worst predictions that normal brothel operations could not continue in 2021, Zimmermann-Bauer only has a daring plan B: switch to pension operations.
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