I thought it was leagal in Germany, the brothels are anyway.
Atlantis (brothel)
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Atlantis was one of the largest German brothels, located in an industrial area of Altenstadt, some 30 km north-east of Frankfurt am Main. It was opened in the fall of 2000 and was closed by authorities in March 2004 because of charges of large-scale tax evasion, pimping and trafficking in women. It was reopened in October 2004, but closed again a few days later; after protracted legal proceedings, the brothel was finally closed down.

The brothel was a converted spa, with indoor and outdoor pools, jacuzzi, three saunas, professional massage parlors, and a free bar (serving only non-alcoholic beverages). Pornographic movies are shown on several TV screens. Men walk around wrapped in towels, women are nude (enforced by house policy). The working women and men both paid the same daily entrance fee of 65€.

About 30-60 women sold sexual services. The standard price was 50 euros for half an hour of sex which normally included french kissing, oral sex without a condom and sexual intercourse with a condom. The money was paid directly to the woman, after the act. She got to keep it all; the brothel itself was financed from the entrance fees alone.

This is the legal framework on which this brothel as well several other German brothels base their business model. They present a facility where consenting men and women can meet each other, what takes place between them is their business and the club supposedly has nothing to do with it. The club however sets up and generally enforces a price structure and house rules, with disputes settled by club management.

A woman can expect to average about 200€ a day after the cost of the entrance fee. Legally, the women have to pay taxes on this amount, but few do since it is a cash-only business.

There were early and late shifts, and women generally worked 3-6 days a week. They are free to come and go as they please, within the shift structure.

Atlantis had an attached hostel where women could stay for 15 euros per night, sharing a room with three others.

There are no pimps on the premises, but some of the women have pimps or boyfriends who take a cut of their money and who pick them up after their shift ends at 4am. Some of these pimps use other women in the club to spy on their women in order to gain a good estimate of their earnings.

The majority of the women working in Atlantis were foreigners, mainly from Eastern Europe, the Caribbean, South America, Thailand, and Africa. Some of them lack legal work permits, and this is why the police occasionally carried out raids in Atlantis. Prostitution itself is legal in Germany, so the legally resident prostitutes and the customers face no consequences during these raids (except embarrassment), unless they carry illegal drugs.

Mandatory health checks for registered prostitutes have been abandoned by the German government since January 1, 2001, but Atlantis required regular STD and HIV tests from the working women.

In March 2004, police raided Atlantis and closed the club. Some 17 women were arrested for immigration violations. Two operators of the club were arrested under charges of tax evasion, pimping and trafficking in women; a third operator who was not present at the club during the raid fled to Spain and was arrested there soon after. A policeman was also arrested: he is accused of having informed the Atlantis management of police raids ahead of time.

As of 2005, there are three other clubs in Germany that operate like Atlantis and have a similar size: FKK Oase and FKK World, both located in the area north of Frankfurt am Main, and Artemis in Berlin (opened in Fall 2005). The two Frankfurt clubs have different owners; ownership of the Berlin club is unclear. Several dozen comparable but smaller clubs exist all over Germany. They are typically advertised as "Sauna clubs" or "FKK clubs" ("FKK" abbreviates the German Freikörperkultur which means "free body culture" or nudism). The first of these clubs was opened in Hennef near Bonn in the 1980s; the model is apparently based on the Brazilian brothels known as termas.

Most German brothels operate quite differently.
Prostitution in Germany
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A prostitute in Germany, 1999Prostitution in Germany is legal and widespread. In 2003, the government changed the law in an effort to improve the legal situation of prostitutes. However, the social stigmatization of prostitutes persists, forcing most prostitutes to lead a double life. Authorities consider the common exploitation of women from Eastern Europe to be the main problem associated with the occupation.

Contents [hide]
1 Forms and extent of prostitution
2 History
3 Politics
4 Legal situation
5 High profile crimes and scandals
6 Sources and external links



[edit] Forms and extent of prostitution
Studies in the early 1990s estimated that about 150,000 - 500,000 women and some men work as prostitutes in Germany. The prostitutes' organization puts the number at 400,000, and this is the number typically quoted in the press today. From other studies, it is estimated that between 10% and 30% of the male adult population have had experiences with prostitutes.

Street prostitution. ('Straßenstrich') Regular street prostitution is often quite well organized and controlled by pimps. Some prostitutes have a nearby caravan, others use the customer's car, still others use hotel rooms. With the recent economic problems, in some large cities "wild" street prostitution has started to appear: areas where women work temporarily out of short-term financial need.

Eros centers. ('Bordell, Laufhaus') An eros center is a house or street ('Laufstraße') where women can rent small one-room apartments for some 80-150 Euro per day. They then solicit customers from the open door or from behind a window. Prices are set by the prostitutes; they start at 30-50 Euros for short-time sex. The money is not shared with the brothel owner. Security and meals are provided by the owner. The women may even live in their rooms, but most do not. Minors, and women not working in the eros center are not allowed to enter. Eros centers exist in almost all larger German cities. The most famous is the Herbertstraße near the Reeperbahn in Hamburg. The largest brothel in Europe is the eros center Pascha in Cologne, a 12 story building with some 120 rooms for rent and several bars.

Pascha brothel, Cologne, 2006Escort services. (Begleitagenturen) Escort services, where you hire a girl for "entertainment" or companionship - followed by sex - exist in Germany, but are not nearly as prevalent as in the U.S.

Bars. In bars, women try to induce men to buy expensive drinks along with the sexual services. Sex usually takes place in a separate but attached building. Prices are set by the bar owner, and the money is shared between the owner and the prostitute.

Apartment prostitution. (Wohnungspuffs) There are many of these advertised in the newspapers. Sometime run by a single women, sometimes by a group of roommates and sometimes as safehouses for traffickers.

Partytreffs and Pauschalclubs are a variation on partner-swapping swing clubs with paid prostitutes in attendance, as well as 'amateur' women and couples who get in without paying the flat-rate charge of about 80 to 120 euros that men pay, including food, drink and unlimited sex sessions, with the added twist that these are performed in the open in full view of all the guests.

FKK and Sauna Clubs the four to five-star establishments of the business, but not much more expensive, or sometimes even cheaper due to intense competition among the numerous clubs concentrated in North-Rhine-Westphalia (=NRW: Cologne, Duesseldorf) and Hesse (Frankfurt). These are brothels formatted after the typical German nudist resorts and public saunas that have existed from times immemorial as 'Frei-Koerper-Kultur-Anlage', 'Nacktstrand' and 'Badehaus'. As such the emphasis is more on wellness and relaxation than on 'nightlife': the establishments open before noon, everbody is naked and many offer park-like outdoor areas, swimming pools, whirlpools, saunas, therapeutic massage services, porno cinemas, dining rooms, private and public 'play rooms', bars ect. Both, clients and service providers pay an admission charge of from 35 to 65 euros, including use of all facilities, food and drinks (some do not allow alcohol or smoking). Prostitutes charge anywhere from 25 to 100 euro for a 20 to 60 minute pleasure session and get to keep it all. Proponents of legal prostitution hold this business model up as example for an ideal working environment for the women.


[edit] History
German prostitution was officially mentioned and lauded for the first time during the Council of Constance in the 12th century, was legalised and regulated in the 1920s to control venereal diseases (STDs). Prostitutes had to be registered with local health authorities and submit to regular STD tests.

During the Nazi era, street prostitutes were seen as degenerate and were often sent to concentration camps. Several of these camps, including Auschwitz, contained brothels, to reward wardens and cooperative inmates, and prostitutes were forced to work there.

After WW2, the country was divided into East Germany and West Germany. In East Germany, as in all countries of the Communist Eastern Block, prostitution was illegal and according to the official position it didn't exist. However there were high-class prostitutes working in the hotels of East Berlin and the other major cities, mainly targeting Western visitors; the Stasi employed some of these for spying purposes. -- Street walkers and female taxi drivers were available for the pleasure of visiting 'Wessies' or 'Westprinzen', too.

In West Germany, the registration and testing requirements remained in place but were handled quite differently in the various regions of the country. In Bavaria, in addition to scheduled STD check-ups regular HIV tests were required since 1987, but this was an exception. Many prostitutes did not submit to these tests, avoiding the registration. A study in 1992 found that only 2.5% of the tested prostitutes had a disease, a rate much lower than the one among comparable non-prostitutes. The compulsory registration and testing was abandoned in 2001. Since then, anonymous, free and voluntary health testing has been made available to everyone, including illegal immigrants. Many brothel operators require them.

Anything done in the "furtherance of prostitution" (Förderung der Prostitution) remained a crime until 2001, even after the extensive criminal law reforms of 1973. This put the operators of brothels in constant legal danger. Most brothels were therefore run as a bar with an attached but legally separate room rental. -- However, many municipalies built, ran and profited from high rise or townhouse-style high-rent Dirnenwohnheime (= whores' dormitories), to keep street prostitution and pimping under control. These are now mostly privatized and operate as Eros Centers. -- In 2001 a one page law sponsored by the Green Party was passed by parliament that made most aspects of prostitution and promoting it legal. Only pimping and trafficking remained illegal.


[edit] Politics
The coalition of Social Democrats and the Green Party that ruled until late 2005 attempted to improve the legal situation of prostitutes in the years 2000-2003. These efforts have been criticized as inadequate by prostitutes' organizations such as HYDRA, which lobby for full normality of the occupation and the elimination of all mention of prostitution from the legal code. The conservative parties in the Bundestag, while supporting the goal of giving prostitutes access to the social security and health care system, have opposed the new law because they want to retain the "offending good morals" status.

The churches run several support groups for prostitutes. These generally favor attempts to remove stigmatization and improve the legal situation of prostitutes, but they retain the long term goal of a world without prostitution and encourage all prostitutes to quit.

Alice Schwarzer and her branch of feminism rejects all prostitution as inherently oppressive and abusive; they favor a law like that in Sweden, where the ruling Social Democrats outlawed the buying of sexual services but not their selling.


[edit] Legal situation
Prostitution is legal in Germany, though it doesn't quite have the same status as a regular occupation. Income from prostitution is taxed at a slightly higher rate than income from normal occupations. Prostitutes even have to charge VAT for their services, to be paid to the tax office. In practice, prostitution is a cash business, and taxes are almost never paid and rarely enforced.

Since 2001 prostitutes and brothels are allowed to advertise. Many newspapers carry daily ads for brothels and for women working out of apartments. Many have websites on the Internet. In addition, sex shops sell magazines specializing in advertisements of prostitutes.

Early in 2005, it was reported that a woman refusing to take a job as a prostitute might have her unemployment benefits reduced or removed altogether [1]. A similar story appeared in mid-2003; a woman received a job offer through a private employment agency. In this case however, the agency apologized for the mistake, stating that a request for a prostitute would normally have been rejected, but the client mislead them, describing the position as "a female barkeeper" [2](German). To date, there have been no reported cases of women actually losing benefits in such a case.

Every city has the right to zone off certain areas where prostitution is not allowed (Sperrbezirk). The various cities handle this very differently. In Munich, street prostitution is forbidden almost everywhere within the city limits, in Berlin it is allowed everywhere, and Hamburg allows street prostitution near the Reeperbahn during certain times of the day. In most smaller cities, the immediate city center as well as residential areas are declared off-limits.

The only city in Germany with an explicit prostitution tax is Cologne. It was initiated early in 2004 by the city council ruled by a coalition of the conservative CDU and the leftist Greens. The sex tax applies to striptease, peep shows, porn cinemas, sex fairs, and prostitution. In the case of prostitution, the tax amounts to 150 euros per month and working prostitute, to be paid by brothel owners (the eros center Geestemünder Straße owned by the city is exempt). Containment of prostitution was one explicitly stated goal of the tax.

Foreign women from most countries can obtain a three-month tourist visa for Germany without problems. Many of them then work in prostitution. This is technically illegal, as the tourist visa does not include a work permit. MubIF


[edit] High profile crimes and scandals
There was a murder of six persons in a brothel in Frankfurt am Main in 1994. The Hungarian couple managing the place as well as four Russian prostitutes were strangled with electric cables. The case was resolved soon after: it was a robbery gone bad, carried out by the boyfriend of a woman who had worked there.

In 2003, Michael Friedman, popular TV talk show host and assistant chairman of the German Jewish community, became embroiled in an investigation of trafficking in women. He had been a client of several escort prostitutes from Eastern Europe who testified that he had repeatedly taken and offered cocaine. After receiving a fine for the drug charge, he resigned his posts.

Also in 2003, well-known artist and art professor Jörg Immendorff was caught in the luxury suite of a Düsseldorf hotel with seven prostitutes (and four more on their way) and some cocaine. He received 11 months on probation and a fine for the drug charges. He attempted to explain his actions by his "orientalism" and his terminal illness.

These cases were only deemed noteworthy because they involved murder and drug trafficking. Generally whore-mongering by celebrities and public figures is not viewed as very titillating by the German public and largely ignored by the media, the general attitude being: "So what, it's only sex...". On the contrary, followers of the German boulevard press will often find pictures of male and female celebrities (including foreign ones) posing happily with naked prostitutes in FKK clubs. Name pop bands have performed at the Cologne Pasha brothel's disco. All the major FKK-clubs have been 'exposed' in positive newspaper stories due to their effective public relations efforts.