Cabarets, Clubs in Hamburg’s Red-Light District Falling on Hard Times

In the garish apartments of what once was the Eros-Center cabaret and bordello, immigrants from Eastern Europe shuffle along the hallways in kerchiefs and worn leather caps.

On Grosse Freiheit, the renowned row of rowdy nightclubs that launched rock stars like The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, burned-out light bulbs and faulty neon signs serve now only to advertise the creeping neglect that afflicts one of the world’s most famous red-light districts.

Along this glitzy strand once called “The Most Sinful Mile in the World,” the clubs and pubs and peep-shows hanging on to life with a dwindling clientele are furnished with tattered banquettes and wobbly tables and darkened by windows smudged with ages of tobacco smoke.

AIDS Fears Cited

Beset by AIDS fears, unemployment and a booming X-rated videocassette market, Hamburg’s famed Sankt Pauli district has fallen on the hardest times of its colorful 150-year history.

In the early 19th Century, the no-man’s land between the rival ports of Hamburg and Altona welcomed the boisterous brood of sailors and riggers scorned by fashionable city centers.

But the image of outrage worn for years with pride has decayed, leaving Sankt Pauli in much the same state of decline as other entertainment quarters past their prime.

Today the traces of a long life of excess appear like wrinkles on a face that has not aged gracefully.

Blinking colored lights from the surviving sex shops and discos illuminate the litter and grime as clearly as the prostitutes bundled in pastel-colored ski-suits against the brisk winds off the Elbe.

Curious Carousers

Estimated to number about 2,000, or half the number a generation ago, the women take languid draws off cigarettes or sip coffee from foam cups while surveying a motorized stream of carousers and curious.

“In the last years, because of unemployment and AIDS and a general reduction in the money available for this kind of entertainment, Sankt Pauli has seen a progressive decline and is unlikely to recover from it,” said Hans Dittrich, chief of the Davidwache police station that stands guard at Spielbudenplatz (Funhouse Square).

In some ways Sankt Pauli’s loss has been Hamburg’s gain, as the departure of many prostitutes and purveyors of pornography has made way for more legitimate businesses and resulted in a decrease in assaults, killings and other serious crimes, Dittrich said.

Assaults on Decline

“We still have 10 or 12 purse-snatchings or unarmed assaults each month, but the trend has been one of decline,” the police official said in an interview. “I would characterize Sankt Pauli now as one of the safer areas of the city. Tourists have no need to fear leaving their cars here and walking around for a look at what used to be unique.”

The region’s reputation now draws more gawkers than stalkers, a trend that frustrates the economy of Sankt Pauli while maintaining its bustling appearance by night.

Sankt Pauli veterans complain that the area with its famous Reeperbahn strip survives today merely as a tourist attraction.

“Why would a guy want to sit in a cabaret and have to pay hundreds of marks to drink champagne when he can rent the same thing on a videocassette and watch it at home?” said Edwin Ross, who for 33 years has painted nude murals and signboards for Sankt Pauli’s sex theaters. “The only people here now are first-time visitors who remember a Reeperbahn that no longer exists.”

“It’s unfortunate we cannot stay open at night when the women who come here out of curiosity are looking into our windows,” said Eva-Maria Roepke, operator of a designer lingerie and cosmetics store on the Reeperbahn.

Outlets Must Close

West German law dictates that sales outlets must close by 6:30 p.m. on weekdays and stay open for only a few hours on Saturday mornings.

Roepke’s shop has been hard-hit by the closure of Eros-Center, one of the region’s two largest houses of prostitution.

“There used to be 600 girls around the corner, but now there are only immigrants who have no money to spend on goods like these,” she lamented, gesturing toward the skimpy and shimmering nightclothes adorning the walls.

Eros-Center owner Wilhelm Bartels told the magazine Der Spiegel when he shuttered the sprawling sex shop last year that “AIDS has finished off Sankt Pauli.”

While the health threat has cut deeply into the volume of sex trade in the region, the economy has followed with a devastating finishing blow.

8% Unemployed

West Germany suffers from an 8% unemployment rate, and the nature of the merchant marine has shifted over the last two decades to a fleet made up more often of married family men than the single sailors and stevedores of the past.

A nationwide liberalization 20 years ago made prostitution legal between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m., injecting a degree of regularity and even legitimacy into the ancient profession.

Precinct chief Dittrich said prostitutes have formed self-help groups that work with state officials to offer social security benefits to those willing to pay taxes on their income and to educate young women about health risks like the acquired immune deficiency syndrome virus.

The aura of acceptability has taken some of the mysticism out of what the Germans used to call Tingeltangel , a European forerunner of honky-tonk.

Appealing Alternatives

With the departure of most of the major sex theaters here have come a number of alternatives appealing to a broader public, like the Caribbean beat of Sam Brasil’s live music club and Hamburg’s leading discotheque at Kaiserkeller, where The Beatles introduced their music in the early 1960s before crossing the street to play at the Star Club, where they rocketed to international fame.

The Broadway musical “Cats” has drawn crowds at the Operettenhaus since 1985, and a sprawling carnival covers the grounds of Heiligengeistfeld (Spirits’ Field) three times each year, including during the busy November-December Christmas season.

Some Sankt Pauli merchants, however, are skeptical of the region’s chances for saving itself.

“Our best days are over,” said Ross, the 63-year-old erotic painter known to his neighbors as the Rubens of the Reeperbahn.

Ross’ work reflects the evolution of the district and some merchants’ efforts to ride with a changing tide. Ross said most of his business now is in painting signs for doughnut shops and discos or making portraits from photographs to be hung in private homes.

“There’s no more business with cabarets,” said the artist who came here in 1955 from East Germany, where he earned his living painting model workers and Communist giants like Marx, Engels and Lenin.

The daytime scene attests to a grim economic future, with streets empty of all but derelicts and discarded fast-food wrappers wafting in the curls of breeze brushing the curbstones.

“You can’t make this into a Moulin Rouge, with fancy shows for which you have to pay 20 or 30 dancers,” said Ross. “For Sankt Pauli those days are unfortunately in the past.”