Prostitution in der DDR (2020)

The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) is "a clean state," its then leader, Socialist Unity Party head Erich Honecker once said. "It has unshakable ethical standards of decency and morality." Honecker was talking, in this case, about prostitution. The practice was was outlawed in 1968 under Paragraph 249 of the penal code, which referred to it as a "criminal refusal to take part in socialist life." And to enforce the crackdown, the party looked to the Stasi, East Germany's secret police force, which had 91,000 full-time staff and twice as many unofficial informants.