St. Pauli Herbertstraße (1965)

Angelika Geißler leads a sheltered, quiet life on her parents’ farm. One day, after she is raped by a brute and discovers she is pregnant, her conservative family, governed by strict moral beliefs, turns its back on her. Her father summarily throws her out of the house, and her sanctimonious mother commits suicide because she cannot bear the “disgrace.” Angelika leaves her rural home and heads for the big city. When she arrives in Hamburg, she ends up on the “sinful mile” of St. Pauli. Her social decline is now set in motion: first, she works as a hostess at an entertainment venue to earn a living; then she falls in with the sleazy pimp Werner Kästel, who promptly installs her in his brothel to train her as a prostitute. Angelika fights tooth and nail against sleeping with men for money, but the vile man forces her to have sex for payment. Angelika is lucky to meet the auto mechanic Helmut Brett one day. He means well by her and is genuinely interested in her. He manages to find out where she is being held and eventually frees the battered young woman from the notorious Herbertstraße.