Anti-prostitute fence for school costs Berlin €57k

A school in Berlin has completed construction of a 1.8-meter high, 125 meter-long fence designed to keep prostitutes away from school grounds. It cost the city €57,000.

Berlin’s construction boom is pushing street sex-workers into the side street, and in this case, onto the doorstep of the Französisches Gymnasium high school just off Kurfürstenstraße, the heart of the capital’s red light district.

It’s claimed prostitutes pick up clients in the area at all hours of the day and night and it’s causing problems for the high school. There are reports of used condoms and syringes being discarded on school grounds.

“There were always complaints about unscrupulous characters, including prostitutes, walking shamelessly and illegally into school grounds even during the day,” District School Inspector Carsten Spallek told local media back in April, when the fence was first proposed.

“The prostitutes eat, stand, drink and litter. It looks filthy in the late evening,” District Coordinator Michael Klinnert told Berliner Zeitung.

“The women have no stations to wash themselves or to get themselves ready. And they relieve themselves wherever they please,” saying that women are often dropped off by clients near the school and that others, including Herbert-Hoover-Schule and Diesterweg-Gymnasium, have taken similar measures.  

Spallek believes the fence is money well spent, telling BZ that it will make the area a cleaner, safer place for students and teachers alike.

Prostitution has long been legal in Germany but last year parliament passed legislation that further regulated the practice, requiring all sex workers, including porn actors, webcam models, peepshow performers and lap dancers to register with authorities.