Profiles of Transgender Courage: Lili Elbe

Lili with feather duster- Gerda Wegener(1920)

 To the left is "Lili with a feather duster", a painting done by Danish painter Gerda Wegener in 1920. The subject of the painting is Lili Elbe, who had been formerly known as Einar Wegener, Gerda's one-time husband.

Lili Elbe was a Danish transwoman and one of the first confirmed recipients of sex reassignment surgery. In 1930 underwent three highly experimental surgical procedures to transition to female. A fourth surgery which was carried out the next year to implant a uterus, theoretically enabling her to have children. Complications occurred during the surgery. Afterward, her body rejected the uterus which led to an infection and subsequent cardiac arrest causing her death in June of 1931. The Danish Girl, a movie based on a fictionalized account of Lili's experiences starring Eddie Redmayne, was released in December 2015.(It's a fascinating piece, totally recommended.)

Before Lili's transition, she sought medical help and advice from a plethora of sexologists and psychologists throughout Europe, mostly France, Denmark, and Germany. Most of these doctors viewed her gender dysphoria as a mental illness which could be "cured" through various forms of treatment that we now consider torture. She was labeled sick, demented and a schizophrenic spent a short time in a mental institution and underwent electroshock therapy.
Throughout Lili's journey, Gerda remained a loving and supportive companion. Even after Lili was legally considered a woman and her marriage to Gerda was dissolved they remained good friends. Lili was often  the subject of Gerda's paintings which were held in high acclaim in many circles of the craft at the time.

Dora Richter was another transwoman in Europe around the same time period. Though her case was not as high profile as Lili's. Not much is known about her, though her procedures were carried out around the same time as Lili's and by the same Doctors...which is reason enough for her case to contest Lili's as " the first transwoman to undergo SRS".



If it were not for these two brave transwomen, advances may not have been made in the medical community that would drastically change the lives of transgender people for generations to come.