Ambika Natarajan (Mumbai): Commercial Sex and Maidservants in Late Imperial Austria

Moderation: Tim Rütten

Online-Veranstaltung:

https://univienna.zoom.us/j/69018650901?pwd=vqEi6tdzwkwQMTa6iXGwakb67BzEF5.1

Abstract:

The relationship between the commercial sex industry and maidservants in fin-de-siècle Europe is a complex one. The usual narrative pressed by contemporary activists as well as historians of the period is that they were hapless victims of copious traffickers or Mädchenhändler. However, a glance at the prostitution records of the vice police reveals that the reality deviated considerably from the narrative of a naïve victim whom Mädchenhändler duped into the trap of prostitution. In this lecture, I argue that under the pretext of rescuing and preventing the Mädchenhandel of girls into forced prostitution, the vice police monitored many able-minded adult women who traveled to new locations with potentially better work opportunities and used people akin to travel agents to mediate the arrangements for the same. Since maternalism was a key element in the victim narrative, redefining the Habsburg legal concept of childhood formed the core of the anti-Mädchenhandel campaign. Paragraphs §127 and §128 of the Penal Code of 1852 set the age of consent for sexual activities for both sexes as fourteen years. While many European nations had raised the age of consent, the judicial system within the Habsburg Empire maintained the age of consent as fourteen years throughout the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century.

Zur Vortragenden:

Dr. Ambika Natarajan specializes in the history of Habsburg Central Europe. Her research focuses on how working-class women altered the discourse on labor and migration in the Habsburg Empire. She also studies empires and imperial states more broadly especially looking at the linkages between sexuality, biomedical science, and female work in the German-speaking lands. She has a PhD in the History of Science from Oregon State University, USA, graduate degrees in English and Biotechnology, and diplomas in German, French, and Creative Writing from reputed universities and institutions in India. Her PhD dissertation won the Best Dissertation Prize from the Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota, USA. Her book “Servants of Culture: Paternalism, Policing, and Identity Politics in Vienna, 1700-1914” is the 2023 Waterloo Centre for German Studies Book Prize Finalist. Her article entitled “Evolution of Servant Laws in the Habsburg Empire” has won the 2025 Journal of Austrian Studies Max Kade Prize.

Rückfragen: martina.fuchs@univie.ac.at