city vice versus rural vice

In German history the city carries the reputation as the vice-creating, underworld-protecting institution that inevitably destroys the historic virtue of the German villages and rural population. The existence of widespread prostitution in during the urbanization in Germany is often pointed to as proof enough of the city’s detrimental effect on the German population. The city, however, in my opinion, does not initiate these vices – they are instead merely an exaggeration from the vices already found in the villages. That the city somehow, once a large numbers of people gather together, creates vices ignores the possibility that these so called vices existed previously but lacked a medium through which to be expressed. The city is that medium, that weaving, nook-and-crannied structure that serves to exaggerate vices that its citizens possessed earlier. Prostitution, an exaggerated form of carnal vice, finds its origins in the oh-so-cleanly villagers. Some of the practices that villagers undertook in the rural areas also reflect a certain carnality that flies in the face of supposed religious doctrine. The practice of letting a couple live together indefinitely until the woman’s father can pay a dowry is one such practice that, after again putting a price on a woman’s body, deliberately abandoning supposedly held virtues. That the villagers themselves could account for the actions of the couple and make sure the marriage came to fruition is undeniable, but with the acceptance of a practice like this in the countryside, when moved into the city the accountability is lost and the “vice” can be exposed, increased, exaggerated. It is not, therefore, the city that creates these vices but rather commonly held practices that let’s these so-called vices sneak into the cities and multiply just as the population itself does.