"Frauenkrankenhaus": Study of a venereal centre for women in occupied Brussels during the Great War
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- This master’s thesis focuses on the venereal centre (Frauenkrankenhaus) established by the Germans in occupied Brussels during the Great War and proposes a comprehensive study of this institution. It first presents its influences from the 19th century’s ideas on venereal peril and regulation of prostitution and origins in a sanitary crisis. Then, it analyses the centre’s organisation during the war, its patients, its staff, and Belgian and German perception. Finally, it analyses the aftermath of the war, when the fear of the “venereal peril” led Brussels’s mayors to maintain an intercommunal antivenereal hospital for prostitutes that shared many similarities with the Frauenkrankenhaus until 1924. The archives produced by the centre being lost, this master’s thesis is based on a variety of documents: the proceedings of a German conference on the fight against venereal diseases in 1915, medical and war literature, the press, war diaries, as well as the archives of the High Council of Hygiene, police archives and municipal archives from Brussels and Saint-Gilles.