Rosalie Marie Auguste Nitribitt , known as Rosemarie, was one of the most notorious prostitutes in German history, both in life and in death. Nitribitt was known for her great beauty, unconventional displays of self-made wealth, and her untimely death at the age of twenty-four—a brutal strangulation—by a culprit who remains undiscovered. The young red-lipsticked blonde prowled Frankfurt streets for new Johns in a jet-black Mercedes-Benz, which she customized with bright cherry red leather seats and stark white wall tires.
She was often accompanied by her white poodle, Joey, and was known for dressing in the latest fashions, seductively propositioning German men in English and French. Germany after the war was a grey, crumbling country in disarray, and women during that time were pressured to display a generic humility and subservience.
The national obsession with alluring, curvy seductresses had ended, and bombshell personas—like that of ex-pat Marlene Dietrich—were criticized. There was a national push to focus on stark morality, discipline, and domestic matters. Scarce were the places in Germany where one could engage in lurid sexual desires and abandon the fear of judgement from prudish peers—especially if you had to worry about Mommy and Daddy cutting you out of the family fortune.
She and two half-sisters had spent a childhood in Nazi Germany shuffling between bleak juvenile centers and neglectful foster parents. At eleven, she was raped by a local eighteen-year-old boy, who suffered no consequences for the brutal attack. She befriended two prostitutes and found refuge on the streets. The rebellious teenage Rosemarie was arrested countless times for solicitation, and eventually fled Dusseldorf for Frankfurt in April to pursue a short-lived career as a model and waitress.
Rosemarie quickly developed a taste for elegance far beyond the income of a waitress. Rosemarie reveled in using her beauty and wit to charm clients out of large sums of money and gifts. Local lawyers, politicians, industry leaders, and doctors became enamored with Rosemarie, and she rapidly rose up the ranks to become the most popular call girl in Frankfurt. With the newfound freedom that a car provided, Nitribitt could now find clients past the range of local bars and restaurants near the Frankfurt train station.
