Nina Hoss played Rosemarie Nitribitt. The beauty the dirty child. On screen, Hoss was beautifully radiant and vital. So she caught the celebrities and captains of industry of the 1950s on the screen. Nothing about her resembled 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. Nitribitt’s photos give you a completely different impression. She looked good, but above all you could see the hardship of the post-war period in her face; a dark hunger for life radiated within her. Just as she sucked greedily on her cigarette and posed proudly next to her Mercedes 190 SL. Because that’s what differentiated the Nitribitt from the hidden affairs of the fifties. She was famous in Frankfurt, she was known as THE 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 sprayed because she was constantly being harassed in the car by men who mistook her for Nitribitt.
Rosemarie Nitribitt had made it from the darkest cellars to the symbol of prosperity of the 50s, the Mercedes 190 SL. She was placed in a home when she was five and then went to foster parents. When she was eleven, she was raped by the neighbor’s boy. Post-war Germany is poor and ugly, but later she made it. The richest and most famous men in the Bonn Republic lay at Nitribitt’s feet, including: 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”: “In fact, this explosive with the first name Rosemarie would blow up a considerable part of West German society if there was something 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 Economic Miracle’s Favorite Child”. It is made into a film 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.
This “Nitribitt case” begins on November 1, 1957. That was the day that Frankfurt police officers found the famous demimonde in her new apartment. Lying on the floor with his face covered in blood. She must have resisted until the end, but in vain in the end. A blow or fall on the back of the head briefly incapacitated her, then her murderer strangled her.
A prostitute murder or in the jargon of the time: a prostitute murder. Normally something like this is quickly forgotten. But here two peculiarities came together. On the one hand, there were Nitribitt’s illustrious customers. And on the other hand, it was the first murder that the hungry scandal press of the time pounced on. There was much speculation about the murder and possible motives. And while the press happily painted this picture of morals, they avoided stating the obvious. Instead of a prostitute, people spoke of a “well-known phenomenon in the living world”.
Rosemarie Nitribitt was the immoral mirror of the years of prosperity. After imprisonment and other humiliations, she decided in 1953 to follow the path that the entire republic was taking. To work in a disciplined manner, to continue training – just as hundreds of thousands of people did who had learned nothing except soldiering and killing.
Rosemarie Nitribitt works systematically to become a great prostitute. She took behavior lessons and learned English and French. But most importantly, she invested in herself. She wears custom-made clothing. Plus jewelry and furs. In the telephone book she was known as a mannequin and her sophisticated appearance gave her customers the illusion of the big world.
It wasn’t just Nitribitt who wanted to get out of the post-war stuffiness, their wealthy customers wanted that too. Instead of the quickie, Rosemarie Nitribitt offered what is now called the “girlfriend experience.” A venal friend and lover who made no 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 suitors on the side of the road like all the other girls. Nitribitt went hunting for men in her Mercedes. A game that was not used to such hunters and was willing to be hunted down by her.
Her murder caused quite a stir, partly because the police were unable to identify the perpetrator. Right from the start, the investigation was marred by mishaps. Even the time of death could not be determined because the overwhelmed police officers threw 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 time of death then determined was more of a guess than exactly determined.
The police finally present an acquaintance of Nitribitt as the perpetrator, but cannot prove anything other than conspicuous money movements. In the end he is acquitted due to lack of evidence. The trial collapsed when witnesses said they had seen Nitribitt when police believed she was already dead. Evidence later disappeared, including letters and photos from Nitribitt and its customers.
She was frugal, if not stingy. When faced with the repair bill from her car repair shop, she is said to have involuntarily complained loudly: “Do you think that I earn my money in my 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 the account. Because of her figure and as a matter of principle, she saved on food: the stomach of the most famous prostitute of the great economic miracle years only contained some rice and nothing else.
