Gefährdete Mädchen (1958)

The story is set in the entertainment and striptease scene of Hamburg’s St. Pauli district. One day, the young Viennese dancer Eva Mannhardt, who had planned to take part in a beauty contest in the Hanseatic city, is found dead. Although all the signs point to an accident, the investigating detective inspector Maulbeck remains suspicious, since he has been dealing for some time with the criminal activities of a girl-trafficking gang in Hamburg’s red-light district. The people pulling the strings are known, but so far the police have been unable to prove their crimes. Help arrives in the form of Viennese detective inspector Christa Ritter, who comes to Hamburg to assist her local colleagues. Ritter is determined to immerse herself in the underworld so she can get closer to the perpetrators and perhaps secure some evidence. With the help of the enigmatic photographer Heinz Sanders, whom she had met shortly before at a beauty pageant, the Viennese policewoman finds work as a barmaid at the seedy establishment “Garden of Eden.” There, willing young women are trained as dancers and enticed with promises of launching major stage careers abroad. They are then shipped out as “fresh meat” for wealthy clients. According to what the police have learned, the naïve young European women generally end up at their destination not on the show stage, but in a brothel. The two young Viennese women Erika and Sonja have also come to Hamburg in hopes of a dancing career, and are at risk of suffering the same fate. The heads of the trafficking gang, the outwardly respectable Dr. Thomas Jensen and his burly henchman Mario Cortez, are regulars at the “Garden of Eden” and are once again looking for new young victims. The ingenuous Erika readily falls for Jensen’s old-fashioned charm. The evil cartel is at risk of being exposed when the dancer Draga lets the police know that she knows something about the gang’s operations and is willing to talk. The criminals find out about this too, and suddenly Draga has vanished without a trace. The Hamburg police must now act swiftly, with help from their Viennese colleague, to break up the trafficking ring.