Earth Spirit, Victim, or Whore?: The Prostitute in German Literature 1880-1925

In the late 19th century, beginning with the writings of the so-called Naturalists, the figure of the prostitute started to appear with unprecedented frequency in German and Austrian literature, particularly in the works of many lesser writers. This work examines the correlation between the literary prostitute and the real prostitute, whose numbers also vastly increased at this time as a result of Germany’s belated industrialization.