Behind Lili Elbe

Hi! Marlo here from Myths & Mischief. In this Pride Month post, we’re going to discuss the life of a transgender woman named Lili Elbe, or Lili Ilse Elvenes. Do keep in mind that I’ll be adding some personal commentary here at the end, which will be my opinion. And we’ll be dealing with some heavy topics, like dysphoria, suicidal thoughts, divorce, and death.

Elbe was born in Vejle, Denmark in 1882. She was the child of Ane Marie Thomsen and spice merchant Mogens Wilhelm Wegener. She may have been intersex, meaning born with a mixture of different genitalia, but this is disputed. Elbe met one Gerda Gottlieb in the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Gerda’s father was a vicar in the Lutheran church. Elbe and Gottlieb fell in love, and were married in 1904. After college, they were both illustrators; Elbe specialized in landscape paintings, and Gottlieb illustrated books & magazines. They settled in Paris in 1912, where Elbe lived more openly as a woman by posing as Gottlieb’s sister-in-law. Elbe would fill in as a model for Gottlieb’s illustrations, and enjoyed wearing stockings and heels. The actress Anna Larssen, Gottlieb’s usual model, suggested the name Lili, and, by the 1920s, Elbe regularly attended festivities using that name. Gerda painted Lili as a woman multiple times, as well as painting many erotic scenes of women; her work has since been described as lesbian erotica.

Sex reassignment surgery, as it was called at the time, was experimental. Before learning about it, she contemplated suicide. In 1930, Elbe went to Germany for this surgery. She stayed at the Hirschfeld Institute for Sexual Science. Her health was evaluated by sexologist and LGBT advocate Magnus Hirschfeld before the procedure. A series of four operations took place over 2 years. Her surgeons were Erwin Gohrbandt and Kurt Warnekros. Elbe and Gottlieb’s relationship had already begun to fall apart, and a Danish court annulled the couple’s marriage in October 1930, and Elbe legally changed her sex and name. She officially became Lili Ilse Elvenes.

The name “Lili Elbe” was first used in print in a Danish newspaper in February 1931. Elbe quit being an artist after she transitioned. In Dresden, she began a relationship with French art dealer Claude Lejeune. In 1931, she became the second person to receive a vaginoplasty, just a few weeks after one Dora Richter underwent the procedure in the same facility as Elbe. She then worked with her friend Ernst Harthern on a memoir of her life. But Lili’s body rejected the new uterus she had received. This organ rejection critically weakened her immune system. This led to her death from cardiac arrest on September 13, 1931. She was buried in Trinity Cemetery in Dresden. She was 48 when she died. Fourteen years later, when the Allies bombed Dresden during World War II, her medical records would mostly be destroyed. But her memoir, Fra Mand til Kvinde, was published after her death. Its title translates: “From Man to Woman.”

With all these life details in mind, one might describe Lili Elbe as an Icarus of sorts. Someone who flew too close to the sun – in this case, gender affirmation – and inevitably died because of it. Someone who foolishly tried out this crazy, experimental surgery, only to have her life fall apart because of it. But Lili Elbe was a person. She was a creative, determined Danish woman. She made rational, if historic, decisions about her own body because she wanted to – and because she had the means. She put her trust in three very famous, well-known doctors who were willing and able to conduct gender-affirming surgery (the modern term for sex reassignment). Everyone involved knew that organ rejection was a possibility, and that the surgery was risky, but they doubtlessly did it because they knew what it meant for Elbe and for history. Lili Elbe didn’t ask to be a pioneer. She didn’t ask to have a 2015 movie made about her life, starring Eddie Redmayne. She asked to have a body that suited her, that made sense, that fit who she was. And she got it, if for but a short time. Imagine how good that felt.

References:

• https://transreads.org/fra-mand-til-kvinde-lili-elbes-bekendelser-man-into-woman-danish-language-edition/
• https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2016.1265355
• https://www.kulturarv.dk/kid/VisWeilbachRefresh.do?kunstnerId=1237&wsektion=genealogi
• https://lauravianello.wordpress.com/2015/12/02/lili-elbe-and-gerda-gottlieb-defining-gender-through-artistic-representation/