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Origins: A news story about a 25-year-old German woman who faced cuts to her unemployment benefits for turning down a job providing “sexual services” at a brothel was carried by a variety of English-language news sources in January 2005. It has struck a chord in many readers as an example of liberal morality and bureaucracy run amok: if prostitution is legalized (as it was in Germany back in 2002), this story suggests, then society has conferred its approval upon that trade, and prostitution can therefore be proffered to (and even foisted upon) women as a valid choice of employment.

We were initially skeptical about the literal truth of the version reported in the English press, however, because the issue seemed to have received scant attention in the German press. In fact, the origin of this story was evidently a 18 December 2004 article published in the Berlin newspaper Tageszeitung (also known as TAZ) which did not report that women in Germany must accept employment in brothels or face cuts in their unemployment benefits. (Although it claimed there had been “isolated cases” of such, it did not provide any source or documentation to back up that statement.)

The Tageszeitung merely presented the concept of brothel employment as a technical possibility under current law; it did not provide any actual cases of women losing their benefits over this issue. The article also quoted representatives from employment agencies as saying that while it might be possible for employment agencies to offer jobs as prostitutes to “long-term unemployed” women, they (the agencies) could not require anyone to work in a brothel. (The agencies noted that brothels used “other recruitment channels” anyway.)

As an example of how a hypothetical has been manipulated into a truth, consider the following paragraph from the Telegraph article cited above:

Ulrich Kueperkoch wanted to open a brothel in Goerlitz, in former East Germany, but his local job centre withdrew his advertisement for 12 prostitutes, saying it would be impossible to find them.
Mr Kueperkoch said that he was confident of demand for a brothel in the area and planned to take a claim for compensation to the highest court.

Then note how this same issue was covered by the German news source Deutsche Welle:

A brothel owner in the historic German town of Gvrlitz on the Polish border is preparing to open his establishment next month but faces a one last serious problem — he has no staff. Ulrich Kueperkoch’s adverts seeking “hostesses for erotic services” for his Golden 3 Privatclub have been rejected by Germany’s Federal Labor Office even though prostitution is legal in the country. The dispute with the labor office stems from its refusal to allow advertising for prostitutes in the network of job-placement agencies that it runs. A spokesperson said that the labor office has “decided not to be active in that market sector” due to its belief that such work could infringe on an individual’s rights if he or she is forced to take the job. Kueperkoch insists he would only employ those who were interested and not those who felt they had no other choice.

This was another case where, like a game of “telephone,” a story was sensationalized for political purposes and passed from one news source to the next, and somewhere in the rewriting and translating process what was originally discussed as a mere hypothetical possibility has now been reported as a factual occurrence.

Sources:
von Appen, Kai. “Ein Job Wie Jeder Andere.”

Die [Berlin] Tageszeitung. 18 December 2004.
Chapman, Clare. “”If You Don’t Take a Job as a Prostitute, We Can Stop Your Benefits.'”

The Telegraph 30 January 2005.

kestrel9 wrote: ↑Tue Jul 26, 2022 7:17 pm According to Snopes (yeah I know) this story is misrepresented and has been around since 2005.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hot-jobs/

Origins: A news story about a 25-year-old German woman who faced cuts to her unemployment benefits for turning down a job providing “sexual services” at a brothel was carried by a variety of English-language news sources in January 2005. It has struck a chord in many readers as an example of liberal morality and bureaucracy run amok: if prostitution is legalized (as it was in Germany back in 2002), this story suggests, then society has conferred its approval upon that trade, and prostitution can therefore be proffered to (and even foisted upon) women as a valid choice of employment.

We were initially skeptical about the literal truth of the version reported in the English press, however, because the issue seemed to have received scant attention in the German press. In fact, the origin of this story was evidently a 18 December 2004 article published in the Berlin newspaper Tageszeitung (also known as TAZ) which did not report that women in Germany must accept employment in brothels or face cuts in their unemployment benefits. (Although it claimed there had been “isolated cases” of such, it did not provide any source or documentation to back up that statement.)

The Tageszeitung merely presented the concept of brothel employment as a technical possibility under current law; it did not provide any actual cases of women losing their benefits over this issue. The article also quoted representatives from employment agencies as saying that while it might be possible for employment agencies to offer jobs as prostitutes to “long-term unemployed” women, they (the agencies) could not require anyone to work in a brothel. (The agencies noted that brothels used “other recruitment channels” anyway.)

As an example of how a hypothetical has been manipulated into a truth, consider the following paragraph from the Telegraph article cited above:

Ulrich Kueperkoch wanted to open a brothel in Goerlitz, in former East Germany, but his local job centre withdrew his advertisement for 12 prostitutes, saying it would be impossible to find them.
Mr Kueperkoch said that he was confident of demand for a brothel in the area and planned to take a claim for compensation to the highest court.

Then note how this same issue was covered by the German news source Deutsche Welle:

A brothel owner in the historic German town of Gvrlitz on the Polish border is preparing to open his establishment next month but faces a one last serious problem — he has no staff. Ulrich Kueperkoch’s adverts seeking “hostesses for erotic services” for his Golden 3 Privatclub have been rejected by Germany’s Federal Labor Office even though prostitution is legal in the country. The dispute with the labor office stems from its refusal to allow advertising for prostitutes in the network of job-placement agencies that it runs. A spokesperson said that the labor office has “decided not to be active in that market sector” due to its belief that such work could infringe on an individual’s rights if he or she is forced to take the job. Kueperkoch insists he would only employ those who were interested and not those who felt they had no other choice.

This was another case where, like a game of “telephone,” a story was sensationalized for political purposes and passed from one news source to the next, and somewhere in the rewriting and translating process what was originally discussed as a mere hypothetical possibility has now been reported as a factual occurrence.

Sources:
von Appen, Kai. “Ein Job Wie Jeder Andere.”

Die [Berlin] Tageszeitung. 18 December 2004.
Chapman, Clare. “”If You Don’t Take a Job as a Prostitute, We Can Stop Your Benefits.'”

The Telegraph 30 January 2005.

EDIT: Here's the same 2005 Telegraph article being rehashed in 2013 https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/germa ... stitution/

EDIT: It's irritating AF when people post stuff like this on Twitter with no sources. Shame on the BiblicalManlet! https://twitter.com/BiblicalManlet/stat ... 9223848962