„Auch diese üble Erscheinung hat im Laufe der letzten Jahre eine Wandlung erfahren“. Der Zuhälter als (Sicherheits-)Problem im Wien der 1960er Jahre

Abstract

Viennese police officers ascertain that a new, juvenile “type of pimp” emerged on Vienna’s seedy underworld from 1960 onwards. The presumed increase of these men deemed pimps and their turf wars were scandalized as “pimp wars” by the Austrian media and monitored closely by the police. This and the pimp’s violent, commercial, extortive and motorized modus operandi, led officers to conclude that police work had to be adapted. On the basis of police sources and press reports, this article investigates the discourse on pimping as a “security problem” in Vienna in the 1960s. How did police officers conceptualize this new “type of pimp” and which police measures were applied to improve the surveillance of pimping? Ultimately, policing of pimps was mostly implemented by adapting the regulations for women selling sex. By asking how these presumed shifts in the Viennese underworld related to processes of urban, social, and economic transformation, this paper finally asks what researching police practices regarding pimping can tell us about the broader context of 1960ies Vienna. By focusing on pimps, who remain understudied in historical studies on commercial sex, this paper will contribute to the understanding of the figure of the pimp in the late 20^th century.