Lili
Lili: A Portrait of the First Sex Change
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Foreword
Introduction
Editor’s Note
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Dusk
Copyright
Lili: A Portrait of the First Sex Change
Edited by Niels Hoyer
Foreword
by Helen Parker
Lili Elbe’s remarkable life – her journey from Man to Woman – is a transformation few of us take, and brings us to a place where our private life suddenly becomes public. Each step forwards to become the person we are makes it harder to go backwards, to return to the shadowy, private world of closed doors and shuttered windows. The experience, the awakening of one’s true self, after being so long suppressed, can never be adequately explained with language – words are insufficient to describe such powerful emotions and experiences satisfactorily. Lili Elbe’s memoir Man into Woman helps us to become involved in and understand this burgeoning experience, a world where fear and joy exist side-by-side. Her emergence into the world of Berlin, Copenhagen and Paris in the 1930s is described frankly and with the language of the time: her first walk outside, her first journey, meeting enlightened doctors with understanding and a willingness to help her. What is truly touching is the great wealth of unconditional human kindness her loved ones and friends for the most part gave her. In return they see, as you will see in Lili, a person developing, giving joy and hope and love to those around her.
Lili’s pioneering transformation from the man, Einar Wegener (Andreas Sparre), into Lili is of interest not only to the casual cross-dresser but also to the post-operative transsexual. It is also for those who wish to understand more of the human spirit; what strengths we have as individuals to search for and find our true selves, whatever the risk and possible dangers.
To those of you who wish to support us on a similar quest today, Lili’s journey from Man to Woman is essential reading in order to understand our search for who we really are. The support of friends and professionals who make no judgements and accept us enables us, as they did with Lili, to become a reality, a real person with all the complexity and contradictions that brings. This is at the heart of her tale: Lili’s story is above all a human story and each faltering step she takes is an awakening of her true self. Moreover it is a human journey full of the perils and setbacks experienced by every great pioneering exploration.
Because the true events in this book were written over seventy years ago, Lili's transition may seem to the modern reader no more than a product of the combination of the glib and decadent 1930s life-style and bad science, but the risks of surgery and treatment are as real today as they were in her day. The technology and the understanding of the human body may have moved forward, but modern medical techniques, hormone treatment and surgery still carry a real risk to life. Still the fundamental question why? has not been answered. To those of us undergoing the same transformation, it is imperative we place our trust in those around us as Lili did; not only in those helping us medically but also in our friends and lovers, for it is only with their help that we can become the people we really are.
Those of you who read Man into Woman from the viewpoint of a practitioner – the counsellor, the psychiatrist or the surgeon – know that it confirms what many of us struggle to tell you but are unable to put into words: Lili was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to become the person within. Lili, like us, does not seek anything from you but an honest willingness to help and understand. We demand that you do not make false judgements of us or construct bureaucratic hurdles and hoops for us to jump through. Have your checks and balances, but as it was with Lili, the ultimate decision for transformation is ours and ours alone.
For those of you following Lili in her footsteps, taking what she calls the “bridge across the abyss which separates man and woman”, I hope you read this story to raise your spirits as it did mine. For the interested reader, view this story, Lili’s story, her transition from Man into Woman, not from the standpoint of a voyeur, but as a passenger on her and our journey. By understanding us you will be helping us. For others it is a true and poignant story of a marriage and of the deep love human beings are capable of: Grete’s (Gerda Wegener’s) love for her husband Andreas, her greater love for Lili, and the love Lili had for Claude Lejeune and he for her are truly inspiring.
Most of all Man into Woman is the story of those tender transitional moments in Lili’s life – her first walk in a crowd, looking at her reflection in a shop window, holding on to a friend’s arm, meeting new people for the first time who only see Lili, choosing and wearing the clothes that complete the picture – moments that confirm the pure feelings awakening and burgeoning from inside.
Lili – your story is our story …
Hampshire 2004
Introduction
To the reader unfamiliar with the unhappy byways of sexual pathology, the story told in this book must seem incredibly fantastic. Incredible as it may seem, it is true. Or, rather, the facts are true, though I think there is room for differences of opinion about the interpretation of the facts.
There would seem to be no doubt about the following points. A well-known Danish painter, whose identity is shrouded in this book under the name of Andreas Sparre, was born in the 1880s. At about the age of twenty he married, and was sufficiently normal both psychologically and physically to be able to fulfil his functions as a husband. Some years later a purely fortuitous happening led him to dress up as a woman, and the disguise was so successful that he followed it by dressing up as a woman on several occasions, on each of which those who were in the secret were surprised at his apparent femininity. In fun, one of his friends dubbed him, when disguised as a woman, Lili. Gradually he began to feel a change taking place in himself. He began to feel that “Lili” was a real individual, who shared the same body as his male self – Andreas. The second personality, Lili, became more and more important, and Andreas became convinced that he was a sort of twin being, part male and part female in the one body. He began to suffer from strange disturbances every month in the shape of bleeding from the nose and elsewhere, which he came to regard as representative of menstruation, and he sought the help of many doctors, who, however, were unable to relieve him.
He began to study books on sexual pathology and gradually came to the conclusion that although his external organs were those of a male, and quite normal (though perhaps rather undeveloped) his body contained the internal sexual organs of a female in addition.
Some of the doctors to whom he went thought him neurotic, others thought him homosexual; but he himself denied the truth of both these diagnoses. One doctor treated him with X-rays, and later on Andreas attributed the shrunken state of the female sexual organs which were found in his abdomen to the destructive effect of this X-ray treatment.
Gradually the female personality, Lili, took on such importance that Andreas felt that, unless in some way his male self could be made to give place to Lili, he could not go on living. By this tim
e he was in his forties, and his failure to find any doctor who could help him to realize his desire to become a woman led him to the project of suicide if nothing should happen within the next year.
Just as things seemed at their worst he met a famous German doctor from Dresden, who agreed that Andreas was probably an intermediate sexual type, furnished, by some sport of nature, with both male and female gonads. He explained that there were probably rudimentary ovaries in Andreas’ abdomen, but that these were unable to develop properly because of the inhibiting influence of the testicles which Andreas also possessed.
He proposed that Andreas should go to Berlin, where certain investigations were to be undertaken. If these investigations confirmed his suppositions he promised to remove Andreas’ male organs and transplant into him ovaries from a young woman, which would, as the work of the Steinach school had shown, activate the rudimentary ovaries lying dormant in Andreas’ abdomen.
Andreas went to Berlin. The investigations confirmed the German doctor’s theory, and Andreas embarked on a series of operations. The first one was castration. His testicles were removed. A few months later he went to Dresden, where his penis was also removed, his abdomen was opened, and the presence of rudimentary ovaries was established. At the same time ovarian tissue from a healthy young woman of twenty-six was transplanted into him. A little later he underwent another operation, the nature of which is not explained, though it had something to do with the insertion of a canula.
By this time he felt himself to be entirely a woman. The Danish authorities issued him a new passport as a female in the name of Lili Elbe, and the King of Denmark declared his marriage null and void. With his consent, and indeed at his suggestion, his former wife married a mutual friend of theirs in Rome.
A French painter, who had been a friend of Andreas and his wife for many years, now fell in love with Lili, and proposed marriage to her.
Before consenting to the marriage Lili made another journey to the German surgeon at Dresden to tell him that she had received the offer of marriage and to ask him if he could carry out yet another operation on her to enable her to function completely as a woman, to take the female part in intercourse, and to become a mother. An operation for this purpose was carried out; but shortly afterwards Lili died in Dresden of heart trouble.
There seems to be no question that the above statements are true. The extraordinary case was kept secret at first, but through a friend’s indiscretion the secret leaked out, and the case was reported in the German and Danish newspapers and caused a great sensation in the year 1931, some time before Lili’s death.
*
The story of this strange case has been compiled by Niels Hoyer, partly from his own knowledge, partly from material dictated by Lili herself, partly from Lili’s diaries, and partly from letters written by Lili and other persons concerned. The biographer states that the surgeon who performed the operation has passed his account of the case as correct.
*
The case falls within the domain of sexual pathology, and comes within the category of sexual intermediacy. We are accustomed to classify individuals as male or female, the classification being made at birth by inspection of the external genital organs. But modern sexology has pointed out the inadequacy of this rough and ready classification. It must be remembered that in the early embryo it is impossible, even by the most careful examination, to determine the sex. Gradually a little eminence grows up which forms the rudiments of the sexual organs. At first the rudiments of the organs of both sexes develop, but later only one set continues developing, while the other set remains very rudimentary. If development proceeds normally, the individual differentiates sufficiently to be classified for all practical purposes as a male or as a female. But even in the most normal and unambiguous individual, the rudiments of the organs of the other sex are present throughout life. Thus the male possesses a rudimentary uterus and the female a rudimentary penis.
So far, we have been speaking of the primary sexual organs, or genital organs.
But there are a number of other, or secondary sexual characteristics (breasts, width of pelvis, hair, etc.) which differ in the two sexes, and individuals who are classified as male may have secondary sexual characters of a female type and vice versa. When carefully investigated even the apparently most normal male may be found to have certain physical sex characteristics approximating to the female type, and the apparently most normal female to have sex characters approximating to the male type. One is led to the conclusion that the one hundred per cent male and the one hundred per cent female are theoretical types which do not exist in reality.
So far we have dealt only with the physical sexual characteristics, but there are psychological sexual characteristics which differ as between the sexes, too. Sometimes the presence of marked physical characteristics of the opposite sex is not accompanied by any noticeable psychological intermediacy, or by any change in the direction of sexual desire, i.e., by any trace of homosexual feeling. In other cases some degree of homosexual feeling is present and in yet other cases the sexual intermediacy is marked much more psychologically than it is physically. For a full discussion of this subject the reader is referred to Professor Gregorio Marañon’s book, The Evolution of Sex and Intersexual Conditions, which is available in an English translation.
Cases occur, though rarely, where an individual patient possesses the genital organs of one sex, and in addition more or less complete genital organs belonging to the other sex as well. Such fascinating anomalies are known as hermaphrodites, though in human beings the hermaphrodism always seems to be incomplete. There is a small number of curious cases of this sort recorded in sexological literature, though no other case, so far as I know, has been so extreme, or so well recorded, as the case of Andreas Sparre.
Thus, when I was a medical student in Sydney, about the year 1912, a man was admitted to the wards of my hospital suffering from regularly recurring haemorrhages, which were thought to be due to kidney disease. Investigation showed that although his external genital organs were normal, and he was married and able to perform the sexual act as a male, his body contained ovaries. In Berlin in 1923, I saw, at the clinic of a colleague, an individual who was apparently male, but who felt himself to be a female just as Andreas did. This patient, too, had his male organs removed at his own request, and was given injections of ovarian extract. No operation was ever undertaken to determine whether ovaries were present in his body or not. I saw him – or her – again in 1926, after the removal of the male organs, and quite recently I received a report about the case. The individual is very unhappy, and has not succeeded in becoming completely a woman.
Professor Steinach, of Vienna, has for some decades been carrying out a series of investigations into sexual physiology, and has had considerable success in changing males into females and females into males among lower animals, such as rats and guinea-pigs. He has even been successful in enabling a formerly male rat to develop breast glands which function to the extent of producing milk to nourish the litter of another rat; but up to the present he has not succeeded in completing the transformation so that a former male could become pregnant and give birth to a litter.
Among birds, there are a number of cases on record where hens, which have laid eggs and produced many chickens, have gradually changed their plumage, begun to crow, and developed into cocks, and as cocks have fertilized other hens.
But in human beings, although mild grades of sexual intermediacy are by no means rare, cases like that of Andreas Sparre arise but seldom; and I cannot help thinking that until we know more about sexual physiology it is unwise to carry out, even at the patient’s own request, such operations as were performed in this case. It would, I think, have been better to try the effect of psychological treatment. Andreas Sparre might either have been cured, or at least enabled to adapt himself to life. By proper psychological treatment the duplication of personality might have been resolved and he might have been enabled to lead a reasonably hap
py life instead of embarking on a series of painful and dangerous operations which ended only with his death.
There seems to be no need to disclose the real names of the persons mentioned in this book, except to say that Andreas Sparre was the well-known Danish painter Einar Wegener.
NORMAN HAIRE
127 Harley Street, London, W.1.
Editor’s Note
In accordance with Lili Elbe’s last wishes, I have arranged the papers she left behind in the form of this book. It is a true life story, recorded by a person whose earthly course assumed the shape of an unparalleled and incredible tragedy of fate, the life story of a person whose afflictions were outside the range of our ordinary ideas.
The German doctor whose bold operations enabled the mortally ill and despairing Danish painter Einar Wegener (Andreas Sparre) to go on living in complete harmony with the dictates of his nature has approved the book in its German version. At Lili Elbe’s desire, fictitious names have been employed for the persons who figure in her narrative.
She has retained her own name, chosen out of gratitude to the German city in which she fulfilled her human destiny.
The German edition of this book was preceded by a Danish edition, and arrangements are being made for editions of the book to appear in other languages.
Lili Elbe’s book must be dedicated in gratitude to her great helper in Dresden, her life comrade in the sunny south, and her truest friend in Paris.
NIELS HOYER
I
The scene is Paris in the Quartier Saint Germain. The time a February evening in 1930. In a quiet street which harbours a stately palace there is a small restaurant, whose regular customers are foreigners, and mostly artists.
Among them this evening were Andreas and Grete Sparre, two Danish painters, and their Italian friend Ernesto Rossini, with his elegant French wife Elena. The friends had not seen each other for a whole year. One couple had been travelling in Northern Europe, the other in the South.