Reeperbahn

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Reeperbahn

A sexshop on the Reeperbahn.
Postal code	20359, 22767[1]
Location	Hamburg, Germany
Owner	The Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg

Prostitutes are standing in front of a building for sex in the street of Reeperbahn.

Entrance to Herbertstraße; red sign to the right of the gate reads "No entrance for juveniles under 18 years of age and women". The large cigarette ad reads literally, "...For more foreplay."

Inside Herbertstraße

Two prostitutes are negotiating with client.

Pinoy bar in the red-light district.

The Reeperbahn is a street in Hamburg's St. Pauli district, one of the two centres of Hamburg's nightlife and also the city's red-light district. In German it is also called die sündige Meile (the sinful mile).

[edit] Name

The name Reeperbahn comes from the old Low German word Reep meaning "a heavy rope for a ship"; in former times the street was a ropewalk where these ropes were produced for the nearby harbour.

[edit] The street, and its side streets

The street is lined with restaurants, night clubs, discotheques and bars. There are also strip clubs, sex shops, brothels, a sex museum and the like. The Operettenhaus, a musical theatre, is also located at the Reeperbahn. It played Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats for many years, after that Mamma Mia!, an ABBA-musical, and now "Ich war noch niemals in New York", featuring hit songs by Austrian singer/songwriter Udo Jürgens. There are other theatres at the Reeperbahn (St. Pauli Theater, Imperial Theater, Schmidts Tivoli) and also several Cabarets/Varietés.

A famous landmark is the Davidwache, a police station located on the South side of the Reeperbahn at the cross street Davidstraße. Street prostitution is legal during certain times of the day on Davidstraße. The Herbertstraße, a short side street of the Davidstraße, has prostitutes behind windows waiting for customers. Unlike De Wallen, the red-light district in Amsterdam, it is closed off with a large gate and juveniles and women are not allowed in. Despite the sign which says women are not allowed to enter the street, it is not officially prohibited, only strongly discouraged by the police. The prostitutes in the Herbertstraße are known to be hostile to those who enter with no intention of paying for sex, "just for a look", even throwing perfume-filled condoms at women.

The Große Freiheit ("Great Freedom") is a cross street on the North Side with several bars, clubs and a Catholic church. In former years, several sex theatres here (Salambo, Regina, Colibri, Safari) would show live sex acts on stage. As of 2007^[update], the Safari is the only live sex theatre left in Germany.^[2] The popular table dance club Dollhouse now takes the place of the Salambo. Hotel Luxor, Hamburg's oldest brothel that had operated on this street for 60 years, was closed in 2008.^[2] The street's name comes from the fact that Catholics were allowed to practice their religion here at a time when this district did not yet belong to Hamburg; they were forbidden from doing so in Protestant Hamburg proper.

In 1967, Europe's largest brothel at the time, the six-floor Eros Center, was opened on the Reeperbahn. It was closed in the late 1980s amidst the AIDS scare.^[3][4]

At a major trial during 2006/2007, ten members of the "Marek Gang", which controls brothels on and near the Reeperbahn, were charged with pimping. The judge rejected the charge of forming a criminal gang and handed out suspended sentences: the men had started relationships with young women in local discotheques in order to recruit them to work in their brothels, an illegal practice if the women are under 21 years of age; some men had also abused some of their women.^[5]

Due to the problems with prostitution and the high crime rate, in 2007 the Senate of Hamburg enacted a ban on weapons in the Reeperbahn area. The only other such area with a weapons ban in Hamburg is the Hansaplatz, St. Georg.^[6]

The St Pauli Preservation Society decries the ongoing gentrification of the area. Several old-timers blamed the decline of the Reeperbahn's prostitution and pornography businesses on the rise of discotheques and cheap bars that attract teenage customers.^[2]

[edit] The Beatles

In the early 1960s, The Beatles (who had not yet become world-famous) played in several clubs around the Reeperbahn, including the Star-Club, Kaiserkeller, Top Ten and Indra. Stories about the band's residencies, onstage and offstage antics are legendary; some stories are true (on a dare, John Lennon played a song set in his underwear, while George Harrison replied by playing a later set with a toilet seat around his neck), others inflated (the band urinating in an alley as nuns walked past was told rather differently later). A fellow musician, Ted "Kingsize" Taylor, made a crude tape recording of their last New Year's Eve show, at the Star-Club in December 1962; a cleaned-up version of the tape was later released as an album, later characterized by Harrison as "Awful."

Famously John Lennon is quoted: "I might have been born in Liverpool - but I grew up in Hamburg".^[7]

In memory of this time a Beatles-Platz is build at the cross of Reeperbahn and Große Freiheit.^[8]

[edit] Movies, songs, etc.

The popular 1944 movie Große Freiheit Nr. 7 tells the story of a singer (played by Hans Albers) who works in a Reeperbahn club and falls in love with a girl played by Ilse Werner. Hans Albers and Heinz Rühmann played in the 1954 movie Auf der Reeperbahn nachts um halb eins ("On the Reeperbahn half past midnight", after an Albers' song from the 1944 movie). The title song is popular to this day and can often be heard in, or in connection with, St. Pauli.

In 1958, Trinidadian calypso artiste, Lord Invader recorded a track entitled My Experience On The Reeperbahn. It recalls a time when he was conned by a transvestite. You cannot tell a man from a woman. I was a man dancing hand in hand with a man dressed as woman on the Reeperbahn.

Reeperbahn is a 1978 song by Udo Lindenberg, to the tune of Penny lane, lamenting the decay of the entertainment there.

Reeperbahn is the name of a Swedish 80's band. The Finnish artist Irwin Goodman has made a song and an album called "St.Pauli ja Reeperbahn". The street is also mentioned in the Elvis Costello song "Human Hands", in Van Morrison's song "Heavy Connection" and in the Midnight Oil song "Mountains of Burma". The punk band The Toy Dolls has a song titled "Caught up the Reeperbahn", first released on their 1993 album "Absurd-Ditties".

"Reeperbahn" is the name of a track from the Christian rock group Model Engine's CD "The Lean Years Tradition".

On May 14th, 1998, The Smashing Pumpkins played a free concert on the street, drawing so many people that some were forced to watch from the roofs of the newsstands.

Tom Waits' 2002 release Alice contains a track called "Reeperbahn."

Australian pop-punk band The Hard-Ons have a song called "Don't Fear The Reaperbahn" on their 2007 album Most People Are Nicer Than Us. Its title is a play on the Blue Öyster Cult song "(Don't Fear) The Reaper".

The folk singer Dan Bern's album/book, "World Cup: a sort of travel diary," features a song called "Reeperbahn". It references the street's prostitution as well as the association with the Beatles.

[edit] Pubs, discotheques, shops

• Aftershave (Funk/House/Black)
• Angie's Nightclub (Soul/Jazz/Livebands)
• Beat Club
• Café Keese
• Change (Gay)(Electronica)
• China Lounge (House) website
• Cobra Bar
• Condomerie Hamburg (shop) website
• Docks (Trance/Latin/RnB/Mixed) website
• Cult Club (70s, 80s, Classics) website
• Darkside Boutique (Fetish Shop) website
• Dollhouse (Strip Club) Info
• Echochamber (Reggae/Dancehall/Electro)
• Erotic Art Museum
• Funky Pussy Club (HipHop/R&B) Info
• Frida B (Mixed)
• Große Freiheit 36 (Mixed) website
• Grünspan (Mixed/Livebands) website
• Halo website
• Hasenschaukel website
• Kaiserkeller (rock/indie/alternative/crossover) (belongs to Große Freiheit 36)
• King Calavera (PunkRock´n´Roll, Alternativ, Independent, Rockabilly, Ska) website
• La Cage (House/Techno)
• Las Vegas Jackpot (Casino)
• Lounge (House/Soul/Latin/Lounge) Info
• LOVE Club (House, Jaava Electronica, Hip-Hop, R&B) [1]
• Mandarin Kasino (HipHop/RnB/Funk/Soul/Reggae/Livebands) Info
• Molotow (Livemusic/Clubnights/Rock) website
• Mojo Club (now located Mandarin Kansino) (Blackmusic/Groove/Soul/Jazz)
• Nachtlager (rock/indie/alternative/crossover)
• Pacha (House) website
• Panoptikum (waxworks) website
• Purgatory (Bar) website
• Rutsche (Dancehall/Techno/Pop/Rock) website
• Schmidts Tivoli (Theater) website
• Sexy Angel (Sex Shop and Cinema) website
• Sexy Devil (Sex Shop and Cinema) website
• Sexy Heaven (Sex Shop) website
• Soundgarden (Pop/Rock/Electro/Techno/Oldie)
• Superfly (House/HipHop/Mixed) website
• Thomas Read (House/Pop/R&B, Irish Pub) website
• Tunnel (Trance/Techno/Hardstyle/Hardcore) website

[edit] See also

• Prostitution in Germany

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Reeperbahn

• http://en.reeperbahn.se - Information about Reeperbahn and the St. Pauli district (in English)
• http://reeperbahn.hamburg.de - links and information about the reeperbahn (in German)
• http://www.szene-in-hamburg.de/reeperbahn.html - the night life in Hamburg on the Reeperbahn. (in German)

Coordinates: 53°32′58.0″N 9°57′44.2″E / 53.549444°N 9.962278°E / 53.549444; 9.962278