The World of Prostitution in Late Imperial Austria is a timely contribution to a growing body of literature on prostitution in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century eastern Europe. Recent works by Keeley Stauter-Halsted, Laurie Bernstein, and Philippa Hetherington, among others, have examined the debates surrounding prostitution and its regulation, as well as the so-called international White Slave Trade, migration, and ethnic identities, in the context of Poland, Russia, and Galicia. In this volume, Nancy Wingfield extends this discussion to encompass all of Imperial Austria. Focusing on the last years of the Monarchy, Wingfield examines both tolerated and clandestine prostitution, emphasizing sex workers’ voices and their agency. Ultimately, Wingfield argues that not only was women's involvement in the sex trade fluid throughout this period, but Austrian officials, and society at large, remained committed to the imperfect system of regulation and the police surveillance of prostitutes.
Wingfield frames her narrative around the 1906 trial of brothel owner Regina Riehl. The trial addressed a variety of criminal activity, but the greatest public outcry centered on the maltreatment of prostitutes. As a result, the trial reinforced the need for police supervision of prostitution, even as regulation systems were being challenged and disbanded in other European states. Indeed, Austrian regulators believed that tolerated brothel prostitution, by subjecting women to regular medical inspections, could better control the spread of venereal disease. After 1906, Austrian regulators sought to improve the regulation system by monitoring prostitutes’ living conditions and raising the minimum age to register in a brothel, with little opposition to police surveillance from civic organizations or medical professionals. Wingfield also traces the application of regulation policies outside Vienna, noting regional and local variations in provincial capitals, industrial centers, resorts, and rural areas. She finds that regulation remained ineffective in fighting against venereal disease while reinforcing the popular view of prostitutes as victims needing to be saved.
Wingfield attempts to contradict this image of sex workers as victims by exploring the lives and experiences of both tolerated (registered) and clandestine prostitutes throughout the Monarchy. Relying on archival police records of regulated brothels and criminal cases involving prostitutes, Wingfield finds that prostitutes in late Imperial Austria came from a variety of religious and ethnic backgrounds, moving in and out of prostitution as their circumstances dictated. She argues that brothels provided support for a range of women who worked in them at different life stages. Furthermore, she highlights the economic importance of prostitution and situates clandestine prostitutes solidly within the working class. These women sometimes had more freedom than other working-class women, but frequently fell victim to crimes, as the cases of murdered prostitutes starkly illustrate.
Finally, Wingfield examines Imperial Austrian discussions about sex trafficking, positing that anxiety about migration and anti-Semitic concerns regarding Jewish involvement in trafficking and prostitution, combined with police warnings and public discussions, actually fueled the panic surrounding the White Slave Trade. Nevertheless, she emphasizes that there was generally little public outcry regarding women migrating for sex work within or near Austria, as most of these women were already registered as prostitutes. Austrian authorities expressed anxiety about sex trafficking and participated in international efforts aimed against it, but Wingfield questions the basic validity of the trafficking premise by asserting that prostitutes were often not innocent victims of forced sex migration. Although Wingfield touches on the multiple issues involved in the international sex trade, her discussion of the gendered nature of migration from and within the Monarchy leaves room for further investigation. Wingfield extends her narrative through the end of the Monarchy by discussing the intersection of prostitutes and venereal disease during World War I. She highlights the expanded surveillance and attempted control over women's and men's bodies during wartime and suggests that an obsession with prostitution and venereal disease contributed to the chaos of the home front.
Wingfield provides a broad overview of the dynamics of prostitution and its regulation at the end of the Austrian Monarchy that reiterates and reinforces many of the themes currently discussed in the literature on prostitution and sex trafficking in the region. While she examines the agency of sex workers to some extent, Wingfield's major contribution is in her assessment of the durability of Austria's police regulation system and the state's commitment to surveillance. The World of Prostitution thus reveals a pattern of development that contrasts with the experience of regulation in other European contexts. This volume will interest scholars of gender, migration, and the surveillance state in fin-de-siècle eastern Europe.
