Riding the Sexwelle

WEST GERMANY Riding the Sexwelle The phenomenon that West Germans call the Sexwelle (sex wave) threatens to reach tidal proportions. Advertisements feature undressed girls, sex boutiques in several cities offer an endless variety of erotic paraphernalia, and coyly clinical ''sex education" films pack moviehouses. In Hamburg's seamy, mile-square St. Pauli district, whose fleshpots draw 300,000 visitors a month, businessmen who are shy about being spotted on the notorious Reeperbahn can swing into an underground garage, park, choose a frauelein at a discreet Kontakthof (contact court), then take an elevator to one of two six-story, modern sexscrapers named Eros Center and the Palais d'Amour.

The German sex scene is changing so swiftly that it fairly cries out for a journal of its own. Now it has not one but two. From the basement of a St. Pauli curio shop has emerged the St. Pauli Nachrichten, a 15-c- tabloid whose circulation has swelled almost as remarkably as the Sexwelle itself. First published in early 1968 by burly Hamburger Helmut Rosenberg, 33, owner of the curio shop, and by a former Der Spiegel photographer named Guenter Zint, the rag has grown from a four-page novelty with a press run of 10,000 to a twice-monthly 16-page paper with a circulation of 700,000, including 3,000 subscribers from as far away as South Africa and Australia.

The Formula. Along with a younger rival called the St. Pauli Zeitung (circ. 535,000), the Nachrichten carries the sort of news and pictures that no other paper sees fit to print. As basic how-to (and how-much) sheets, the papers are vital to Reeperbahn newcomers who do not know the cost of a "car-strip" girl ($4 to $6) or an all-nighter ($40). Outside of Hamburg's St. Pauli area, where their success lies, the papers have sought to establish themselves as national arbiters of porn. The Nachrichten runs regular reviews of erotic art shows, sex books, records and nightclub acts. Peeping into the future, a layout in one recent issue suggests that self-service Sexomats, patterned after Automats and offering a wide variety of dishes, could be available in the year 2000. There are also interminable "marriage mart" columns. Typical item: "Handsome businessman is looking for green widow, prepared for all manner of shameful deeds."

The rival Zeitung fights back with such circulation builders as sex crossword puzzles, a dirty-poem page and .lurid sexoscopes (in January, Leos are "in for some luck: the boss's wife is after you," but Scorpios are advised to relax and "use this time to regenerate yourself and gather new strength"). Like concerned, civic-minded papers everywhere, the St. Pauli sheets are not above crusading. One recent Nachrichten headline read: HOW PROSTITUTION IS BEING RUINED BY HOME SEX.

The St. Pauli papers have been helped by prurient publicity from West German courts, which have fined the Nachrichten more than $1,000 for "encouraging and abetting illicit intercourse." Even without such unsolicited testimonials, the papers seem to have the formula that will eventually drive their circulation past 1,000,000--a readership exceeded by only two newspapers in the Federal Republic. "I don't bother with sports or politics," says Publisher Rosenberg, who has only three full-time $218-a-month writers on his staff. "I give 'em sex, lots of it, straight and enjoyable. You never read about Viet Nam in my papers." That could change, of course, if anyone from the Nachrichten ever makes it to Saigon's Cholon red-light district.

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