Prostitute Murder –
Rosemarie Nitribit, how the economic miracle of love was brutally murdered
The most famous photo of Nitribitt – here in her Opel Kapitän.
© Ullstein picture
Rosemarie Nitribitt is working her way up from the ruins of the post-war period. She became a love entrepreneur and invented the “Girlfriend Experience” for the Bonn Republic. Her death made her a legend.
Nina Hoss played Rosemarie Nitribitt. The beauty of the sleazy child. On screen, Hoss was beautifully radiant and vital. This is how she caught the celebrities and business leaders of the 1950s on the screen. Nothing about her reminded of the real Nitribitt. In the film, the Frankfurt prostitute was played by the most amazing women, in 1996 by Nina Hoss, in 1958 by the most beautiful woman in the world at the time, Nadja Tiller. The photos of Nitribitt give you a completely different impression. She looked good, but above all you could see the misery of the post-war period, a dark hunger for life radiated in her. Just as she greedily sucked on her cigarette and proudly posed next to her Mercedes 190 SL. Because that differentiated the nitrititt from the hidden affairs of the fifties. She was famous in Frankfurt, known as DIE Nitribitt, and held court like a great horizontal from 19th-century Paris. She was so well known that a woman from Frankfurt demanded that Mercedes have her 190 spray-coated because she was constantly being harassed in the car by men who mistook her for Nitribitt.
From the cellars of the post-war period
Rosemarie Nitribitt had made it from the darkest cellars to the symbol of prosperity of the 1950s, the Mercedes 190 SL. At the age of five she was placed in a home, after which she went to foster parents. When she was eleven, she was raped by a neighbor’s boy. The post-war period in Germany is poor and ugly, but later it made it. The richest and most famous men of the Bonn Republic lay at the feet of the Nitribitt: Harald Quandt, Gunter Sachs, Harald von Bohlen and Halbach.
Even the name was dynamite. A chain of associations about the explosive ekrasite that no one understands today. Erich Kuby wrote in the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”: “Indeed, this explosive with the first name Rosemarie would blow up a considerable part of West German society if there were anything other than an economic crisis that could really affect this society.”
The following year, Kuby wrote the novel “The Girl Rosemarie” with the subtitle: “The dearest child of the economic miracle”. It is filmed with the beauty queen Nadja Tiller and, although only very loosely based on the real Nitribitt, shapes the perception of the case to this day.
The pride of the economic miracle: a Mercedes 190.
© Ullstein Bild / Getty Images
corpse decomposed
This “Nitribitt case” begins on November 1, 1957. On that day, Frankfurt police officers found the famous half-world lady in her new apartment. Lying on the ground with his face covered in blood. She must have resisted to the end, in vain. A blow or fall on the back of the head knocked her out briefly, then her killer strangled her.
A prostitute murder or in the jargon of the time: a whore murder. Usually something like this is quickly forgotten. But here two peculiarities coincided. On the one hand there were the illustrious customers of Nitribitt. And on the other hand, it was the first murder that the hungry scandal press of the time pounced on. The murder and possible motives were speculated with delight. And while the press gleefully painted this portrait of morals, they avoided naming the obvious. Instead of a prostitute, one spoke of a “well-known phenomenon of the living world”.
The economic miracle of love for sale
Rosemarie Nitribitt was the immoral mirror of the prosperous years. After imprisonment and other humiliations, in 1953 she decided to follow the path that the whole republic was taking. To work in a disciplined manner, to educate oneself – as did hundreds of thousands who had learned nothing but soldiers and killing.
Rosemarie Nitribitt works systematically to become a great prostitute. She took classes in manners, learned English and French. Most importantly, she invested in herself. She wears custom-made clothes. Plus jewelry and furs. In the telephone book she appeared as a mannequin and her sophisticated demeanor gave her customers the illusion of the big world.
Not only did Nitribitt want to get out of the post-war fug, their wealthy customers wanted it too. Instead of the quick number, Rosemarie Nitribitt offered what is now called the “Girlfriend Experience”. A friend and lover who could be bought, with no further demands other than money.
One of her lovers affectionately called his “little deer”. Her biggest investment was a Mercedes. The entrepreneur of love had realized that there was no point in waiting for a suitor like all the other girls on the side of the road. Nitribitt went hunting for men with her Mercedes. A game that was not used to such hunters and was willingly hunted down by her.
Breakdown process with no result
The murder of her made waves, also because the police could not identify a perpetrator. The investigations were overshadowed by breakdowns right from the start. Not even the time of death could be determined, since the overwhelmed police officers ripped open the windows because they could not stand the bestial stench of the corpse, which had been lying on the heated floor for several days. The then fixed time of death was more guesswork than exactly determined.
The police finally present an acquaintance of Nitribitt as the perpetrator, but they can’t prove anything apart from conspicuous money movements. In the end he is acquitted for lack of evidence. The trial fell through when witnesses said they saw the Nitribitt when police believed she was already dead. Evidence later disappeared, including letters and photos from Nitribitt and its customers.
Economical and disciplined
She was thrifty, if not stingy. In view of the repair bill from her garage, she is said to have involuntarily complained loudly: “Do you think I earn my money while I sleep?” Even in death, Rosemarie Nitribitt proved that she was not a romantic, but an entrepreneur.
When she died, there were said to be 20,000 marks in cash in her apartment, and she had 90,000 in her account. Because of her figure and as a matter of principle, she saved on food: the stomachs of the most famous prostitutes of the fat years of the economic boom contained only a little rice and nothing else.