On the night train, Lili Elbe wrote her obituary for a travel companion: »The painter Einar Wegener is dead. He died on the train between Paris and Berlin.
The other fellow travelers believed he had fallen asleep in his seat in the corner of the window of the compartment. ”A corpse, however, is never found - with the obituary, Elbe symbolically implements what it has decided in Paris.
Because Lili Elbe and Einar Wegener are, at least from the outside, the same person.
Lili Elbe does not exist in official documents.
Not yet.
Her passport was in the name of Einar Wegener, born in Denmark, living in Paris, married to Gerda Wegener, also a successful painter.
But that should be the end of it.
"All bridges have broken off," writes Elbe.
And adds about Einar: "His whole life seems to be something past ... something lost ... lost."
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Lili Elbe (1930): "All bridges broken off"
If she had described her situation to doctors, namely to be a woman in a body that appeared to all others to be that of a man, they declared her hysterical or did not take her seriously.
Usually both.
“I quietly vowed to myself that from now on no power on earth would induce me to consult new doctors.
To the mockery of the doctors, I didn't want to be demoted, ”she writes, as indignant as she is desperate - and in May 1929 she decides to take her own life if she doesn't find any help within twelve months.
Now, in February 1930, the longed-for help seems possible.
In Berlin, at the Institute for Sexology.
While her train rushes through the darkness, Lili finds Elbe to sleep.
"Through Science to Justice"
The huge institute in which she wants to introduce herself is located in the noble Tiergarten district in two neighboring buildings.
Objects are exhibited in some corridors: hussar boots that are idolized by fetishists.
Whips from a sado maso studio.
And rare cult items from all over the world.
The institute's founder and director also lives here: Magnus Hirschfeld.
At the inauguration in 1919 he described it as a "research facility, a teaching facility, a healing facility and a refuge".
As his life's work, it should help to implement his motto: through science to justice.
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Sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld
Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Hirschfeld is vehemently committed to reforming sexual law in Germany. Above all, he fights against the notorious Section 175 of the Criminal Code, which prohibits romantic relationships between men. Although the 1920s are considered a liberal, downright wicked decade, especially in Berlin, it is a long, hard fight. Because large parts of the social elite reject reforms.
As a young general practitioner in Magdeburg, Hirschfeld learned about the consequences of legal and social discrimination against homosexuals.
A patient he was treating for depression told him he would be married in a few days.
He is actually homosexual, but does not have the heart to confess this to his bride and family.
Shortly thereafter, the patient committed suicide.
Influenced by this, Hirschfeld turned to sexology and moved to Berlin.
"Transvestite certificates" offered protection from the police
The situation could be particularly difficult for those people who Hirschfeld called transvestites and for whom we now use different terms: crossdressers who like to wear clothes of the opposite sex.
And transgender people who, like Lili Elbe, do not identify with the gender that was assigned to them at birth.
This also included Katharina T., picked up by the Berlin police in 1908 or 1909, the exact year can no longer be determined like the surname.
While the passport and name denoted a woman, T. felt like a man and wore men's clothes.
This was not explicitly forbidden in the German Empire, but there was always the threat of trouble because of "gross nonsense" or "causing public nuisance" - both criminal offenses.
When Hirschfeld found out about the case, he wrote an expert opinion and confirmed that T. felt like a man.
Together they handed it over to the police chief - with success, as Hirschfeld proudly reports: "First verbally on an interim basis, then also in writing by the police chief von Stubenrauch [T.] was given permission to go on in men's clothes." It was the first forerunner of the so-called transvestite certificates, which protected crossdressers from problems with the police in the following decades.
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Harald Neckelmann
The story of Lili Elbe: A person changes his gender
Publisher: bebra verlag
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: bebra verlag
Number of pages: 368
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Hirschfeld wrote numerous reports, published magazines, founded associations and a foundation, and then, in the spirit of optimism after the revolution of 1918, founded the Institute for Sexology.
It should consist of two parts, as the historian and Hirschfeld expert Rainer Herr explains: one medical-practical and one scientifically researching.
But the plan soon failed.
Rapid inflation destroyed large parts of the foundation's assets.
The institute had to focus on medical treatment and counseling.
For this, however, Hirschfeld and his colleagues used innovative, creative methods.
They organized educational evenings: guests could ask questions anonymously and an employee answered them on stage.
The institute offered marriage counseling and, unique in Germany in the 1920s, supportive counseling for homosexuals and transgender people.
Desperate patients threatened suicide
More and more people came to the institute who didn't just want to wear the clothes they felt comfortable in.
They also wanted to change their name and gender in ID cards, and sometimes even marry.
Some knew of new biological knowledge, for example about the effect of hormones: Endocrinologists had discovered that ovarian and testicular tissue produce sex hormones that influence body structure.
And plastic surgeons had developed new surgical methods, not least through the treatment of seriously wounded people during the First World War.
Were these transgender patients able to help adapt their bodies to the psyche?
So high were the hopes that desperate patients threatened to take drastic steps if doctors were skeptical about the risks of gender reassignment surgery.
Some said they would castrate themselves if necessary - or kill themselves.
The psychiatrist Arthur Kronfeld reported about one patient:
“He came to the consultation with a revolver in his pocket, as he confessed to us afterwards; he also had morphine with him at all times so that he could put an end to himself if he was definitely denied the operation. The more we got to know him, the less doubt there was about the seriousness of his suicidal intentions. "
In fact, the institute performed a series of gender reassignment operations or referred the patients to other clinics and practices for special interventions.
Lili Elbe was among them.
"My condition makes me desperate"
The closer the date for a first operation came, the more nervous the Elbe became.
When she saw a sluice rushing down a sluice while walking in the Tiergarten between two examinations, she recognized herself in it: "I'm like someone trying to sail down a waterfall."
But Elbe stuck to her plan and was neutered in a Berlin practice.
Doctors at the Staatliche Frauenklinik Dresden continued the treatment and operated on her three more times in the months that followed.
In between, she applied for a passport in her new name.
Einar Wegener was also replaced by Lili Elbe in the church book, the marriage with Gerda was dissolved, but the relationship between the two remained good.
In addition to the relief about this, Lili Elbe described in her notes and letters the worry of pain caused by the operations.
"It will be the last time," she wrote on June 14, 1931, before the fourth operation.
It went well at first: "It's been a month since I had an operation ... I'm moving forward."
Soon afterwards, however, the problems increased and the pain increased.
"My condition makes me desperate," she complained.
She was noticeably worse.
Lili Elbe died in Dresden on September 12, 1931.
It is unclear exactly what - their documents were lost in World War II.
A role model for future generations
The prospects for the Institute for Sexology also darkened in the early 1930s.
Hirschfeld continually failed to incorporate it into the Berlin University.
The mostly conservative professors and students were just as suspicious of the modern institute as the founder, the gay, Jewish social democrat.
The more popular the National Socialists got, the more precarious Hirschfeld's situation became.
Immediately after taking power, Nazi hordes stormed the institute and looted it.
In May 1933 they threw a Hirschfeld bust and large parts of the valuable library into the flames of the book burning.
Hirschfeld was on a world tour and decided not to return.
He went into exile in France and died there in 1935.
Nevertheless, the institute became a model for later generations, as did Lili Elbe. Hirschfeld's innovative methods continue to inspire sexologists to this day. And Elbe's posthumously published notes quickly became bestsellers - for the first time a broad population got to know the thoughts, wishes and fears of a transgender person. Her book was translated into many languages and became the basis for the successful film "The Danish Girl" (2015).
And politically? Section 175 was gradually defused, deleted in the GDR in 1989 and in unified Germany in 1994. But transgender people continue to fight for the right to choose their own first name. It was not until May 2021 that the Federal Court of Justice decided on the action brought by a woman who wanted her new name to be entered on the marriage certificate issued before the name change - the judges refused.
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