Pornography in Germany

Pornography has been legal in Germany since 1975. Exceptions to this include pornographic content depicting violent acts or sexual acts with animals, the distribution of which is prohibited, as well as child pornographic content, the distribution and possession of which is prohibited when depicting real children, but legal when it is immediately apparent that the content is purely of fictional nature in cases of mere possession. German law distinguishes between child and youth pornographic content, whereby the latter, which concerns persons over the age of 14, is punished less severely, with the mere possession of youth pornographic content being legal when it is produced exclusively for personal use with the consent of the persons depicted.

Selling or distributing pornography to minors is a criminal offense. Shops and websites that offer pornography must carry out age verification. For example, Aylo's age-verification software AgeID is used to verify the ages of users of pornographic Internet websites and has been in use in Germany since 2015.

The German Edathy affair of 2013/14 following the neglected cooperation of Federal Criminal Police within the Canadian child pornography uncoverings gave way for new legislation procedures in parliament to define the status of either posing or exhibitive pictures of minors. New laws were still in parliamentary debating as lately as 19 December 2014.

Modern German pornography is generally similar to the American "glamour" pornography though often tailored primarily for the German market. In contrast, several German labels focus on a more "home-made" amateur flair, often focusing on intense hardcore themes such as gang bangs, bukkake, scat and urine fetishism; most notably 'German Goo Girls' and other series by John Thompson Productions.

History

The world's first sex shop was opened in Flensburg in 1962 by Beate Uhse AG. Post-WW2 commercial movie pornography in Germany began with the softcore film Graf Porno und seine Mädchen (Count Porno and his girls) in 1968. The movie's success (more than 3 million admissions) lead to a whole series of pornographic media that was referred to in German media as the Sex-Welle (sex wave). The most well known film of this period is Schulmädchen-Report: Was Eltern nicht für möglich halten (The School-Girl Report, what the parents do not believe possible) by Ernst Hofbauer in 1970. The sex scenes had become bolder with time and by 1975, when the legal ban of pornography was lifted, the era of German hardcore pornography began.

Film and pornography

Director Hans Billian was the protagonist of the period and the films were usually in line with the so-called "Bavarian porn sex comedies", often depicting male performers as comic characters, like Sepp Gneißl in Kasimir der Kuckuckskleber (1977). This era was also characterised by several Josephine Mutzenbacher films.