Man Into Woman

A Comparative Scholarly Edition

Lili Elbe, Pamela L. Caughie, Sabine Meyer, Pamela L. Caughie, Sabine Meyer

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350021501
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: LGBT Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

In 1930 Danish artist Einar Wegener underwent a series of surgeries to live as Lili Ilse Elvenes (more commonly known as Lili Elbe). Her life story, Fra Mand til Kvinde (From Man to Woman), published in Copenhagen in 1931, is the first popular full-length (auto)biographical narrative of a subject who undergoes genital transformation surgery ( Genitalumwandlung ). In Man Into Woman: A Comparative Scholarly Edition, Pamela L. Caughie and Sabine Meyer present the full text of the 1933 American edition of Elbe's work with comprehensive notes on textual and paratextual variants across the four published editions in three languages. This edition also includes a substantial scholarly introduction which situates the historical and intellectual context of Elbe's work, as well as new essays on the work by leading scholars in transgender studies and modernist literature, and critical coverage of the 2015 biopic, The Danish Girl. This print edition has a digital companion: the Lili Elbe Digital Archive (www.lilielbe.org). Launched on July 6, 2019, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science ( Institut für Sexualwissenschaft ) where Lili Elbe was initially examined, the Lili Elbe Digital Archive hosts the German typescript and all four editions of this narrative published in Danish, German, and English between 1931 and 1933, with English translations of the Danish edition and the typescript. Many letters from archives and contemporaneous articles noted in this print edition may be found in the digital archive.

[Eds. Note: Page references to the American first edition are in brackets.]

Corpus

Man into Woman

Einar Wegener (Andreas Sparre) about 1920.¹

Frontispiece

Man Into Woman, Copyright, 1933,

By E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.:: All

Rights Reserved:: Printed in U.S.A.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Einar Wegener (Andreas Sparre) about 1920¹

Lili, Paris, 1926

Lili and her friend Claude, Beaugency, France, 1928 (before the operation)

French landscape by Einar Wegener, 1929

Einar Wegener, 1929

Einar Wegener as Lili, Paris, January 1930

Einar Wegener’s pictures at Copenhagen Exhibition, 1930, in lifetime of Lili Elbe

Lili Elbe, Dresden, May 1930, between second and third operations

Lili Elbe, Dresden, June 1930, after the operation

Portrait by Gerda Wegner, with Lili as model

In the Women’s Clinic, Dresden, 1930

Lili Elbe, Copenhagen, October 1930

Lili Elbe, Copenhagen, February 1931

Portrait of three women (Lili in centre) by Gerda Wegener

Lili Elbe, Dresden, 1931, after the operation

Grave of Lili Elbe

Fragment of letter written by Einar Wegener, January 1930

Fragment of letter written by Lili Elbe, June 1931

Introduction¹

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.

5 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 ‘eighties of the last century. At about the age of twenty^*1 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, 10 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 15 second personality, Lili, became more and more important, and Andreas became convinced that he was a sort of twin being, part male and part [v] female in the one body. He began to suffer from disturbances every month in the shape of bleedings 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.

20 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), yet his body contained in it the internal sexual organs of a female in addition.

Some of the doctors to whom he went thought him neurotic, some thought him 25 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 30 living. By this time 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,^*2 who agreed that Andreas was probably an intermediate sexual type, furnished, by some 35 sport of nature, with both male and female gonads. He explained that [vi] 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 5 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, and 10 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 15 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 [vii] Andreas and his wife for many years, now fell in love with Lili, and proposed marriage to her.^*3

Before consenting to the marriage Lili made another journey to the German surgeon 20 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 case was kept 25 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 written by Niels Hoyer,^*4 partly from his own knowledge, partly from material dictated by Lili herself, partly from Lili’s diaries, and 30 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 [viii] being made at birth by inspection of the external genital organs. But 35 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 5 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 characters (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 10 investigated even the apparently most normal male may be found to have certain physical sex characters a...