15 other persons worthy of more attention

 Buzz feed a few days ago ran a list of 19 trans persons who had achieved something in life. I have two problems with it.

• It is a list of the usual suspects. Why are such lists almost always aimed at readers who have been off-grid for years and are unaware of trans persons? These days even most cishet persons, old and young, are aware of Lili Elbe, Billy Tipton, Coccinelle, Christine Jorgensen, Renee Richards, Sylvia Rivera. Why not devote more of the list to the lesser known?
• The inclusion yet again of Roberta Cowell, referred to by those who knew her as Betty. Yes, Betty was one of the first trans women in Britain (preceded by Norma Jackson and Dorothy Medway – who unlike her were not nepo-babies and had far fewer resources), but she refused to consider herself as one of us – and in fact was quite transphobic. She insisted that Christine Jorgensen was a transvestist. She declined Michael Dillon’s advances, as she said later: “But as far as I was concerned, it would have been two females getting married (p87 in Hodgkinson’s book)”. On p101 of her autobiography she wrote: “One thing was certain. I had not the slightest desire to swell the ranks of the gentlemen of no particular gender. It is true that I had become a little more tolerant in this direction than I had been in the past; this meant, however, that had I met one I would have refrained from actually kicking his spine up through the top of his head.” When interviewed for the Sunday Times in March 1972 the interviewer commented: “She doesn’t approve of the Permissive Society and she doesn’t welcome Women’s Lib. She certainly hopes the trend towards Unisex has stopped. It’s unhealthy, unnatural.” And quoted her: “My experience shows that men and women are so completely different as to be almost different species. …. I was a freak. I had an operation and I’m not a freak any more. I had female chromosome make-up, XX. The people who have followed me have often been those with male chromosomes, XY. So they’ve been normal people who’ve turned themselves into freaks by means of the operation.” And of course, Cowell totally abandoned the two daughters that she had fathered. And indeed how could she have fathered children were she not XY?

Cowell is not at all a positive role model.

-----------------------------------

Here are 15 other trans persons worthy of more attention. I could easily list 50 or more.

The sort is by birth date.

John de Verdion (1744-1802)

German book dealer and language teacher. De Verdion, after some embarrassment re his sex, emigrated to London, where he taught German to Edward Gibbon, and English to the Prussian ambassador. He lived 30 years in London, despite suspicions about his sex. GVWW

Toupie Lowther (1874-1944)

From teenage, a fencing champion, Toupie in 1898 vanquished the army’s Sergeant instructor at The Military Gymnasium of the Army Camp in Aldershot, and in 1903 held her own against the Maître, or Prof. Yvon at the Civil Engineers Hall in Paris. An accomplished singer and composer, Toupie set poems by Oscar Wilde and Alfred Tennyson to music, and her music was performed at the Wigmore Hall in London. Toupie was also a keen tennis player and participated in championship games, especially those held at Homburg 1896-1901, and at Wimbledon where she reached the singles semi-final in 1903. Toupie was one of the ‘first women’ to own a motorbike and lift weights. In 1917 Toupie organized an ambulance unit which worked on the front lines during the war. They were heavily involved in the battles at Compiègne, in June 1918. Lowther and several others in the unit were awarded the Croix de Guerre. Radclyffe Hall’s short story, "Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself", and her novel The Well of Loneliness were largely based on Toupie Lowther’s life. In later years Toupie lived in a small village in Sussex, mainly in male dress. GVWW.

Wilmer Broadnax (1922-1992)

From Louisiana, Broadnax took the identity of the elder brother who had died, and moving to Los Angeles, became a successful gospel singer, singing with the Spirit of Memphis and the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi. He died age 70 after a jealousy fracas with his younger girlfriend who stabbed him. GVWW.

Lucy Salani (1924-2023)

Compulsorily inducted into the Wehrmacht, in German-occupied Italy, the Repubblica di Salò, Salani from Bologna deserted twice. She survived in Bologna as a sex worker with even German officers as clients, until she was recognised and sentenced to a forced labour camp working on parts for the V-1 rockets. With another inmate, Salani escaped. On recapture, she was deported to the Dachau concentration camp, and had to wear a Pink Triangle. As allied troops approached, Salani was in a group that was lined up and machine-gunned. Salani was hit in the leg but was found alive under some dead inmates. After the war she worked in a drag show, and then became an upholsterer. She had completion surgery in London in the 1980s. In the 2010s she was discovered by LGBT groups and became an advocate for concentration camp survivors criticising how they were ignored and forgotten. She lived till age 98. GVWW.

Anne Vitale (1938 - )

Vitale transitioned while doing a psychology PhD. She opened a clinic in San Rafeal, California in 1984, and has treated many trans persons. She treats older transition persons for what she calls Gender Deprivation Anxiety Disorder (GEDAD). It is this deprivation, not a person’s gender identity, that she seeks to treat. GVWW

Dolly Van Doll/Carla Follis (1938 - )

From Turin, Dolly performed at Madame Arthur and then Le Carrousel. She had completion surgery from Dr Burou in Casablanca in 1964. . In 1971 she accepted a contract in Barcelona. She rose to become a star performer in Franco’s Spain, and also met the love of her life. After Franco’s death she revamped her act and opened her own club in Valencia. GVWW.

Roberta Perkins (1940-2018)

Perkins did a dissertation on transvestism and transsexuality at Macquarie University in Sydney in 1981 – one if the very first by an openly trans woman. She was also one of the members of the newly founded Australian Transsexual Association. Roberta’s book The Drag Queen Scene: Transsexuals in Kings Cross, a study of 146 lives based on her dissertation came out in 1983. The New South Wales Minister for Youth and Community Services read it and approved a grant of $A80,000 which was used to open a centre, Tiresias House. Within a few years, the centre has expanded to four houses. A residential nurse and a community worker were employed. Six years later it was renamed the Gender Centre. Perkins later wrote and published books and articles in peer-reviewed journals on trans women and sex workers. She was involved in the struggle for decriminalization of sex work in New South Wales and Australia. GVWW.

Janine Roberts (1942-2016)

Roberts was ordained a Catholic priest, and did degrees in theology, philosophy and sociology. Roberts then resigned from the priesthood and married a woman. They moved to Australia where they had two daughters. Roberts started working with Australian Aboriginals, and in 1976 published a book on their culture and institutional racism. She worked with aboriginal groups in resisting mining on their territory, and researched Granada TV’s World in Action program on the issue. By this time she had transitioned. In the late 1980s Janine was working on a documentary on the diamond industry for Australian, US and UK television. The Sun newspaper outed her to attack her credibility. In 1992, when The Diamond Empire was two-thirds shot, her home was invaded and she was seriously beaten and was in hospital for two months. While she was on the critical list, the BBC took control of the project away from her. The program was shown on the BBC and in the US with her name on it. Pressure from the diamond monopoly, De Beers, resulted in its showing on Australian Broadcasting Company being cancelled, and in the BBC not selling it abroad, especially to South Africa. GVWW.

Sonia Burgess (1947-2010)

Sonia was a lawyer from Yorkshire who had an office in Islington, London where she aided trans persons and immigrants. She sued the Home Secretary in 1991 when a teacher from Zaire was deported in defiance of a court ruling. She was the lawyer for Mark Rees in his appeal to the European Court of Human Right (ECHR) in 1986, and for Stephen Whittle in his four-year struggle to be recognised as his child’s parent – this also went to the ECHR in the early 1990s. Burgess was the lawyer for Press for Change. She building up to transition when in 2010, travelling on the Underground with a frustrated client, the client lashed out and Sonia went under a train. GVWW.

Brenda Lee (1948 – 1996)

She lived in São Paulo from age 14. Brenda was one of the first Brazilian travesties to work in Paris in the late 1970s as a prostitute. She returned to São Paulo in 1984 and bought a house in the Bixiga neighbourhood. She turned the building into a Casa de Apoio to care for those with HIV who had been rejected by their relatives, as many were after a series of murders of travesties in the South Zone of Sao Paulo in 1985. It started with three patients and an agreement with the São Paulo Ministry of Health, and in 1992 was legally incorporated. She worked with the Emilio Ribas Hospital which took those who needed hospitalization. Brenda also had a car repair business and a hairdressers in the building. She was brutally murdered in 1996. She was given a full Catholic funeral with representation from the Cardinal-Archbishop. A Brazilian award for defending human rights was named the Brenda Lee Award. GVWW.

Ajita Wilson (1950-1987)

From Brooklyn, Ajita Wilson moved to Europe where she appeared and often starred in almost 50 films, mainstream, porno and Euro-trash. She died from the complications from a road accident. GVWW.

Anna Grodzka (1954 - )

After marriage and raising a son, Anna transitioned in 2010. She was co-founder and then president of Trans-Fuzja, she was also vice-president of the Commission for Social Dialogue Committee for Equal Treatment under the President of the Capital City Warsaw. She was list Member of Parliament 2011-2015. GVWW.

Helen Savage (1955 - )

Savage was also an archeologist and a wine columnist, but was ordained in the Church of England in 1983, and in 1993 became the vicar in the parish of St Cuthbert’s in Bedlington, Northumberland. She transitioned with doctors at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. She did a PhD on gender dysphoria and Christian theology at the University of Durham, which draws upon the experiences of seven trans Christians who were interviewed over a period of eight months from 2002-3. She wanted to return to being a parish vicar, but encountered more problems as a woman than as a trans person in that some parishes would not take a woman priest, and she wished to remain in the north. Finally in 2015 she took the Moorland group of seven parishes around Hexham in Northumberland, and the Hexham Courant acquired its first ever wine columnist. She is also a Master of Wine (one of only 300 or so worldwide). GVWW.

Yasmene Jabar (1956 - )

A farmer’s daughter from North Carolina, she had completion surgery at age 20. She married two Moslem men (sequentially). She set up Cafe Trans Arabi and the International Transsexual Sisterhood, thefirst to help trans women in the middle east, and then expanded to help trans women wherever they are. In 2005 she was involved in the Trans Eastern Conference (TEC) in Istanbul. GVWW.

Karine Espineira (1967 - )

Born in Chile. The family fled to France after the US-backed Pinochet coup in September 1973. In the early 1990s Karine was involved in the Association du Syndrome de Benjamin that had just been founded by Tom Reucher; She and her life-partner Maud-Yeuse joined the anti-essentialist, anti-psychiatry, queer-theory group organized by University of Lille sociologist, Marie-Hélène Bourcier. In 2008 Karine published La transidentité: de l'espace médiatique à l'espace public; in 2012 Karine, Maud-Yeuse and Arnaud Alessandrin published La Transyclopedie: Tout Savoir Sur Les Transidentites, a history-cum-encyclopedia of transgender in France. GVWW.

Erwin K Koranyi (1924-2012) psychiatrist at Ottawa's 1970-1980s gender clinic

Koranyi was born and raised in Budapest. During the Holocaust Koranyi was compelled into slave labour, and his wife had been arrested and was in a holding camp before transit to Auschwitz, when they – and thousands others- were saved by the intervention of the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. 

Lici emigrated to Sweden where she became a physician. Erwin was able to complete his medical studies in Innsbruck, Austria. After some time in Israel, he emigrated to Canada, where he became a psychiatrist at Montreal's McGill University. Dr. Koranyi married Edie Rosenbaum, also a Holocaust survivor. In 1970, he moved to the University of Ottawa, and joined the Psychiatric Outpatient Unit at the Ottawa General Hospital. 

Later he transferred to the Royal Ottawa Hospital, where he became Director of Education and later head of a Neuropsychiatric Unit. Among the patients who came to see him were some transsexuals. 

In 1976 Koranyi published "Sex Change Surgery in a Male Transsexual" in the Psychiatric Journal of the University of Ottawa, which included some dubious comments:

“Sometimes deceived by their intense fantasy and desire to be a female, they indulge in self- administered or prescribed estrogen therapy, but as soon as they become impotent as a result of this practice, they stop. …Only some, feminized to an extreme, may ask for a sex change operation. In the face of otherwise good ego strength, if the desire is sufficiently intense and the narcissistic pleasure surpasses the loss of orgastic satisfaction, they may be considered reasonable candidates for the operation. … The transvestite is a part-time cross-dresser, essentially a fetishist, whose 'turn ­on' is the act of dressing itself. Secretly, or sometimes in trusted company, not infrequently with so-specialized prostitutes, rarely with their consenting wives, they cross-dress in order to bring about erection and sexual excitement. … Their actual appearance is frequently of secondary importance, even grotesque, as they do not really wish to convince anyone of their femininity, except themselves, in their sexual fantasies.”

Inevitably, these comments caused kerfuffles.

Linda Stephens, editor of The Journal of Male Feminism, wrote and asked Koranyi for permission to reprint the article. Koranyi declined: 

“this is a topic which may well be easier misunderstood than understood. In our gender clinic we often run into problems with certain patients who have built false hopes and who are therefore exposed to disappointments or worse. We wish to avoid such situations as much as possible.” 

Stephens printed the reply and commented 

“I believe a considerable portion of Dr. Koranyi's article consists of misinformation and unsupported and unsupportable opinion. Nevertheless, we had wished to publish his article and to allow our readers to draw their own conclusions.”

The TVIC Journal printed significant quotes from the article without asking.

The Ottawa gynaecologist Bernard Barwin did an emergency vaginoplasty that year for a trans woman who had done a self-penectomy. Barwin and Koranyi then worked together re trans patients.

In 1980 Koranyi published Transsexuality in the Male: The Spectrum of Gender Dysphoria, with a chapter on trans surgery by Norman Barwin, and a chapter on the legal implications and complications by psychologist Betty Lynch and psychiatrist Selwyn Smith, both also of the Royal Ottawa Hospital. He defined homosexuality, transvestism and transsexuality. 

“The clinically clearly delineated and easily separable cases of these three conditions are the ones that remain in the majority. However, these neatly packaged definitions often collapse, particularly when applied to cases having overlapping characteristics. Therefore, some of these cases are more accurately regarded as manifestations of a spectrum of disorders that defy unambiguous distinction.” 

He did agree with surgery for those whom he sees as true transsexuals:

“Surgery, so fervently desired by transsexuals, should currently be considered an effective, palliative, symptomatic treatment in well-selected cases, particularly because other treatment modalities are not really available. Psychological treatment forms, be they analytical or behavioral in orientation, are effective therapeutic tools in many other instances but fail as a rule with transsexuals, who are rarely, if ever, interested in what these treatments can offer.”

However his definition of Transvestism was still reactionary:

“TRANSVESTISM. In its pure clinical form, this form of fetishism is typified by periodic crossdressing accompanied by sexual excitement. This is relieved by autoerotic means or by the services of specialized prostitutes. The usual sexual orientation is heterosexual, sometimes homosexual.” 

He cited Stoller more than Benjamin. As this book predated The Clarke Institute’s Gender Dysphoria, 1985, there is no suggestion of Autogynephilia.

In 1983 he gave a paper at the 7th World Congress of Psychiatry (W.P.A.) in Vienna, which was printed in the Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences.

“The rationale for this surgery was the notorious failure of all forms of psychotherapies, the intention to reduce the high suicide rate and self-castration and to enhance the potential for social adaptation among transsexuals. … In our gender clinic forty-one male transsexuals were assessed. Seven of them are expecting surgery and in 12 cases the surgery has been completed. Of these 12 transsexuals, four are married; we have indirect information on three who are prostitutes, at least one with a drug addiction problem. We have also seen three female-to-male transsexuals; surgery was performed on two, one of whom lives in a steady relationship, the other conducts a promiscuous lifestyle. On the third. female-to-male transsexual surgery is pending.”

Koranyi retired in 1990, but continued some teaching assignments.

He died aged 88 in 2012.

• Erwin K Koranyi. "Sex Change Surgery in a Male Transsexual". Psychiatric Journal of the University of Ottawa, 1, 3, November 1976. Excerpt in TVIC Journal, 6, 55, May 21 1977 p5 Online.
• Erwin K Koranyi. Letter, and Linda Ann Stephens “Are We in The Middle Ages or Approaching The 21st Century?”. The Journal of Male Feminism, 77, 4 & 5, 1977 p7-8, Online.
• Erwin K Koranyi. Transsexuality in the Male: The Spectrum of Gender Dysphoria. Charles C Thomas Pub Ltd, 1980. With a forward by Ralph Slovenko of Wayne State University, and contributions by Norman Barwin of Ottawa General Hospital and Betty Lynch and Selwyn Smith, both of the Royal Ottawa Hospital.
• Alfred J Koonin. Review of Transsexuality in the Male. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, September 1981.
• Erwin K Koranyi. Physical Illness in the Psychiatric Patient. Charles C Thomas Pub Ltd, 1982.
• Erwin K Koranyi. “Transsexuality Revisited”. Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences, 16,1, 1983. Reprinted as “Transsexuality of the 80s” in P Pichot, P Berner, R Wolf & K Thau (eds) Psychiatry The State of the Art:6 Drug Dependence and Alcoholism, Forensic Psychiatry, Military Psychiatry . Springer, 1985.
• Erwin K Koranyi. Dreams and Tears: Chronicle of a Life. General Store Publishing House, 2006.
• Erwin K Koranyi. Echo of Edith. ‎ General Store Publishing House, 2012.
• Myrna & Norman Barwin. “Remembering Erwin Koranyi 1924-2012”. Ottawa Jewish Bulletin, July 23, 2012: 4.

Legacy.com         The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation

Quotations, mainly from the 1980 book, in writings by others:

• Carole-Anne Tyler. “The Supreme Sacrifice?: TV, ‘TV’ and the Renee Richards Story”. Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 1,3, Fall 1989. Republished as Chapter 5 in Carol-Anne Tyler. Female Impersonation. Taylor & Francis, 2013: 195-6n22.
• Morris Meyer. “I Dream of Jeannie: Transsexual Striptease as Scientific Display. The Drama Review, 35, 1, 1991:34-6.
• Alex Sharpe. “Anglo-Australian Judicial Approaches to Transsexuality: Discontinuities, Continuities and Wider Issues At Stake”. Social & Legal Studies, 6,1, 1997: 29, 38-9.
• Alex Sharpe. Transgender Jurisprudence: Dysphoric Bodies of Law. Cavendish Publishing Limited, 2002: 33, 34, 97.
• Moe Meyer. An Archeology of Posing: Essays on Camp, Drag, and Sexuality. Macater Press, 2010: 25.

Magnus Hirschfeld’s Die Transvestiten – some more observations

Part 1:  3 misconceptions

Part 2: 2 more misconceptions

Hirschfeld as trans.

Misconception #4: the assumption that Hirschfeld was himself a transvestite.

The first such claim seems to be Vern Bullough’s Science in the Bedroom: A History of Sex Research, 1994:62 where he starts his 14-page essay on Hirschfeld with “Undoubtedly influenced by his own homosexuality and transvestism ….”. However, in the digital version of the book obtainable from Archiv für Sexualwissenschaft, (online) the words “and transvestism” have been removed. Nor did Bullough claim a transvestite Hirschfeld in his 11-page biography in Sexuality and Culture 7 (1) Winter 2003. Bullough had not given any footnote or other reason for his claim, and in effect withdrew it. However those two words in the 1994 hardcover version of the book seem to be the basis of claims elsewhere.

->Find a Grave’s Magnus Hirschfeld page says: “As a Jew living in a historically anti-Semitic country, and as a gay man and transvestite”, and of its nature gives no citations.

-> Tim Armstrong in his Modernism, Technology, and the Body: A Cultural Study, 1998, page 167, writes of Magnus Hirschfeld “Himself homosexual (like Haire) and transvestite, he was less dogmatic than Krafft-Ebing had been”. Armstrong gives no citation or quote to support this. 

->Marta Vicente. "The Medicalization of the Transsexual: Patient-Physician Narratives in the First Half of the Twentieth Century". Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 76 (4), Oct 2021: 10, says “Hirschfeld, who also cross-dressed and was known among Berlin transvestites as ‘Aunt Magnesia’ ” and gives a footnote citing Charlotte Wolff’s 1986 biography of Hirschfeld, which does record his distaste at being referred to as “Aunt Magnesia” but no transvesting.

-> Patricia Gherovici, in her “Psychoanalysis Needs a Sex Change”, p4, says “He was also an occasional cross-dresser himself” – her only citation is Bullough, 1994, p68 - not p62. 

->Daniel Brook’s The Einstein of Sex, p96, says “When Magnus researched drag bars and balls, he reputably sometimes went in drag himself as ‘Auntie Magnesia’. A dowdy feminine version of his rumpled self, Auntie Magnesia presumably favored frumpy dresses…”. Endnote p276n96 cites only Robert Beachy’s Gay Berlin which talks of the balls but says nothing of Hirschfeld in drag. Brook actually then mentions that Hirschfeld found the practice of men doing female drag while “boasting moustaches or full beards” ‘distasteful and repellant’. This is Magnus Hirschfeld, famous for his bushy moustache, whom Brook has just suggested did transvest. There is no record of a Hirschfeld without his moustache.

Christopher Isherwood lived in Hirschfeld’s institute and has no such gossip in his autobiography Christopher and his Kind: A Memoir, 1929-1939, published 1976. And of course, if there had been any such rumours, the Nazis would have delighted in repeating them.

The canard is repeated in the EN.Wikipedia article.

We might also note that a gay man who does drag once or twice for a party or a ball, is not thereby a transvestite. Despite what Virginia Prince and the DSM have ignorantly claimed, there are indeed gay transvestites. However being a transvestite does require more than dressing up once or twice for a social event. The soldiers who put on drag shows for fellow soldiers and in prisoner of war camps – with a few exceptions – are not taken to be transvestites, nor are rugby players who drag up for a laugh.

Modern commentaries:

Misconception #5: the advertising pitch that Hirschfeld and Die Transvestiten are an untold tale.

The blurb for Shillace’s book says they are “the forgotten story”; the blurb for Brook’s book says “Today, he’s been largely forgotten”; a review of Brook on Amazon says: “Hirschfield comes up in many contexts but this is the first book I’ve found specifically about him.” And Bullough in his 2003 paper for Sexuality and Culture, wrote “For most of the last half of the twentieth century, however, Hirschfeld was more or less ignored in the English speaking world, despite the fact that two of his works, Die Transvestiten (1910) and Die Homosexualität des Mannes und des Weibes (1914), were the most significant and authoritative works written on the subjects before Kinsey and his data and are still of importance to the current generation of researchers.” 

Er, No!

While there are no way as many books about Hirschfeld, as about Sigmund Freud, there are more books about Hirschfeld than about each of Havelock Ellis, John Addington Symonds, Edward Carpenter, Albert Ellis, August-Henri Forel, Bernard Talmey, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Norman Haire and even Richard von Krafft-Ebing.

In my personal memory there were discussions with trans, gay and cishet persons where they knew at least of the book burnings, and often more. This is going back to at least the 1970s. However more importantly there have been many books, journal articles and magazine articles starting with Wolff’s biography in 1986, and then more and more.

A partial list:

• Charlotte Wolff. Magnus Hirschfeld: A Portrait of a Pioneer in Sexology. Quartet Books, 1986: 107-6
• Vern L. Bullough & Bonnie Bullough. Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender. University of Pennsylvania Press 1993: 207-13. 
• Geertje Mak. ,Passing Women': im Sprechzimmer von Magnus Hirschfeld. Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften, 9,3, 1998.
• Vern L Bullough. "Magnus Hirschfeld, an often overlooked pioneer". Sexuality and Culture. 7(1) Winter 2003: 62–72.
• J Edgar Bauer. “Magnus Hirschfeld's Doctrine of Sexual Intermediaries and the Transgender Politics of (no-) Identity” in Gert Hekma (ed). Past and Present of Radical Sexual Politics. Mosse Foundation for the Promotion of Gay and Lesbian Studies at The University of Amsterdam, 2004.
• Rainer Herrn. Schnittmuster des Geschlechts: Transvestitismus und Transsexualität in der frühen Sexualwissenschaft. Giessen: Psychosozial-Verlag, 2005.
• Ralf Dose. Magnus Hirschfeld: Deutscher – Jude – Weltbürger. Verlag Hentrich & Hentrich, 2005.
• Ibon Zubiaur. Pioneros de lo homosexual (Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs, K M Kertbeny, M Hirshfeld). Anthropos, 2007.
• Elena Mancini. Magnus Hirschfeld and the Quest for Sexual Freedom: A History of the First International Sexual Freedom Movement. Palgrave Macmillan. 2010.
• Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) Une Pionier du mouvement homosexual confronte au nazisme. Le Mémorial de la Déportation Homosexuelle, 2010.
• Patricia Gherovici. “Psychoanalysis Needs a Sex Change”. Gay and Lesbian Issues and Psychology Review, 7(1), 2011. 
• Jack Molay. “Magnus Hirschfeld's Theory of Transgender Intermediaries”. Crossdreamers, 19/12/2014.
• Ralf Dose. Magnus Hirschfeld: The Origins of the Gay Liberation Movement. Monthly Review Press, 2014 (translation of Dose’s 2005 book)
• Wouter Egalmeers. Magnus Hirschfeld’s exposition of ‘universal’ fetishism in his 1930 Bilderteil zur Geschlechtskunde. Research Masters Thesis, Radboud University, 2016.
• Ken Plummer. „Hirschfeld, Magnus (1868-1935)”. In George Ritzer (ed) The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2016.
• Heike Bauer, The Hirschfeld Archives: Violence, Death, and Modern Queer Culture. Temple University Press, 2017.
• Manfred Herzer. Magnus Hirschfeld und seine Zeit. Gruyter, 2017.
• Emma Heaney. „’I am not a friend to men’: Embodiment and desire in Magnus Hirschfeld's Transvestites case studies”. Journal of Lesbian Studies,
• Wissen schafft Akzeptanz: Bundesstiftung Magnus Hirschfeld. Tätigkeitsbericht 2017.
• Darryl B Hill. “Sexuality and Gender in Hirschfeld's Die Transvestiten: A Case of the ‘Elusive Evidence of the Ordinary’”. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 14, 3, 2018.
• Rainer Herrn. Der Liebe und dem Leid: Das Institut für Sexualwissenschaft 1919-1933. Suhrkamp, 2022.
• Brandy Schillace. The Intermediaries: A Weimar Story. W W Norton & Company, 2025
• Daniel Brook. The Einstein of Sex: Dr Magnus Hirschfeld Visionary of Weimar Berlin. W W Norton & Company, 2025

Magnus Hirschfeld’s Die Transvestiten – some observations

Part 1:  3 misconceptions

Part 2: 2 more misconceptions

Hirschfeld’s other Books

Misconception #1: the claim that Die Transvestiten is Hirschfeld’s definitive work on trans topics.

The Bulloughs, Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender, 1993 describe the book as “may well be the key work on cross dressing, even to this day”.

Most accounts of Hirschfeld on trans topics rely only on this 1910 book, Die Transvestiten, and sometimes the 1912 pictorial supplement, Der erotische Verkleidungstrieb. This is especially so with writings in English, in that these two are the only ones from Hirschfeld with a proper translation.

A list of Hirschfeld’s writings on trans and other Zwischenstufen persons (intermediaries) – the last two are in French as Hirschfeld spent his last years in exile in France:

• 1899. „Die objektive Diagnose der Homosexualität“. Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, 1.

• 1905. Geschlechtsübergänge: Mischungen männlicher und weiblicher Geschlechtscharaktere (Sexuelle Zwischenstufen). Verlag der Monatsschrift für Harnkrankheiten und sexuelle Hygiene, W. Malende, Leipzig.

• 1906. Berliner Tageblatt, 11. December, cited from Monatsbericht des Wissenschaftlich-humanitären Komitees, VI, 1,

• 1910. Die Transvestiten: Eine Untersuchung über den erotischen Verkleidungstrieb, mit umfangreichem kasuistischem und historischem Material. Verlag Alfred Pulvermacher, Berlin.

• 1912. with Max Tilke. Der erotische Verkleidungstrieb: Die Transvestiten. Verlag von Alfred Pulvermacher & Co., Berlin.

• 1912. with Ernst Burchard. „Zur Kasuistik des Verkleidungstriebs“. Ärztliche Sachverständigen-Zeitung, 18(23).

• 1913. with Ernst Burchard. „Ein Fall von Transvestismus bei musikalischem“. Neurologisches Centralblatt, 52.

• 1918. Sexualpathologie. Ein Lehrbuch für Ärzte und Studierende. Bonn. Volume II: Sexuelle Zwischenstufen. Das Mannlicher Weib und der Weiblicher Mann. (5 Sections: Hermaproditismus, Androgynie, Transvestitismus, Homosexualität, Metatropismus)

• 1926. „Ein Transvestit“ in Ludwig Levy-Lenz (ed). Sexualkatastrophen. Bilder aus dem modernen Geschlechts- und Eheleben. A H Payne.

• 1930. Geschlechtskunde, auf Grund dreißigjähriger Forschung und Erfahrung bearbeitet. Stuttgart. Volume IV Bilderteil.

• 1933. 'L'amour et la science'. Voila, 3, 199, 1 Juli.

• 1935. translated by W R Fürst. Le Sexe Inconnu. Éditions Montaigne.

For his more considered thoughts, it is essential to consult Sexualpathologie, Geschlechtskunde and Le Sexe Inconnu.

------

Hirschfeld’s opinions, jargon and influence also appear in publications by his associates, which should also be considered.

Rainer Herrn. Schnittmuster des Geschlechts 2005:73:

“Hirschfeld's construction of transvestitism initially found its way into the discourse of sexual science and psychiatry only hesitantly. In 1911, the psychiatrist Theodor Ziehen was the first to use Hirschfeld's term in a textbook (Ziehen 1911, p. 622-3). Primarily due to the lack of published case studies, Hirschfeld tried to convince some of his sexually scientific colleagues of his new discovery through direct contact with transvestites. To this end, he invited sexologists who were friends or well-disposed towards him to a meeting. The renowned psychiatrist Paul Näcke reports on this:

'I myself had not yet seen such a case [...] and was therefore very grateful to Hirschfeld when he introduced me and several colleagues to about ½ dozen transvestites in his flat on 19 October 1911, two of whom appeared in very elegant ladies' clothes.' (Näcke 1912, pp. 237-238)

Following this presentation, which was attended by “several sexologists” - Näcke only mentions "Dr. Burchard and Dr. Merzbach" - a dialogue developed between the scientists and the transvestites, who, with one exception, were heterosexual. After this meeting, Näcke, who had already written several reviews, wrote the above-mentioned approving report on Hirschfeld's transvestite concept, but with the reservation that not all transvestites were heterosexual, but that bisexual, homosexual and asexual ones also existed. Hirschfeld came back to this later.

A total of eleven reviews were found for the text volume Die Transvestiten (The Transvestites), and a further eight for the book published two years later (Hirschfeld & Tilke 1912) in leading medical, legal and criminological journals. The majority of the reviewers report approvingly on Hirschfeld's separation of transvestites from homosexuals, their assignment to the intermediate stages, and on his proposal to make the official legitimisation of wearing clothes of the "other" sex dependent on medical certificates.” (DeepL translation)

• 1911. Theodor Ziehen. „Psychiatrie für Arzte und Studierende“. Vierte, vollständig umgearbeitete Auflage.

• 1912. Ralph Pettow. „Zur Psychologie der Transvestie“. Archive für die gesamte Psychologie, XXII.

• 1912. Paul Näcke. „Zum Kapitel der Transvestiten nebst Bemerkungen zur weiblichen Homosexualität“. Archiv für Kriminal-Anthropologie und Kriminalistik, 47 (3/4).

• 1913. Ossian Oehmig. „Beitrag zur Lehre vom Transvestitismus“. Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie, 15.

• 1916. Max Marcuse. „Ein Fall von Geschlechtsumwandlungstrieb“. Zeitschrift für Psychotherapie und medizinische Psychologie, VI.

• 1920. Hans Abraham. „Einige Bemerkungen über den weiblichen Transvestitismus“. Mitteilungen aus dem Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, X(4).

• 1921. Hans Abraham. Der weibliche Transvestitismus. Dissertation at Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universität, Berlin.

• 1930. Felix Abraham. „Transvestiten!”, Die Aufklärung 2: 165.

• 1931. Felix Abraham. „Genitalumwandlungen an zwei männlichen Transvestiten”. Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft und Sexualpolitik, 18: 223-226.

The translations that we do have :

• 1931. French translation by Pierre Vachet. Perversions sexuelles, d’après l’enseignement du docteur Magnus Hirschfeld, par son premier assistant le docteur Félix Abraham. Paris: François Aldor. Discussion.

• 1932. English translation by Jerome Gibbs. Sexual Pathology: A Study of Derangements of the Sexual Instinct, Julian Press. Some extracts from Sexualpathologie, but no trans content.

• 1936. Magnus Hirschfeld, edited and translated by Dr Costler (Arthur Koestler), revised by Norman Haire. Sexual Anomalies and Perversions: Physical and Psychological Development and Treatment : a Summary of the Works of the Late Magnus Hirschfeld. Francis Aldor. The closest that we have to a translation of Sexualpathologie. Discussion.

• 1991. English translation by Michael A Lombardi-Nash. Tranvestites: The Erotic urge to Crossdress. Prometheus Books.

• 1998. Anonymous English translation. Felix Abraham. “Genital Reassignment on Two Male Transvestites”. The International Journal of Trangenderism. 2, 1. Archive

• 2022. English translation by Michael A Lombardi-Nash. The Erotic Drive to Cross-Dress Illustrated Part (Supplement to Transvestites). Urania Manuscipts.

• English translation by Ericka Christie & Anne M Callahan of “Chapter XII: Androgyne Mania” from Le Sexe Inconnu. Online.

The Title

Misconception # 2: the assumption that the title is accurate

The full title is Die Transvestiten: Eine Untersuchung über den Erotischen Verkleidungstrieb which translates as The Transvestites: An Investigation into the Erotic Disguise Drive. Michael Lombardi-Nash slightly revised this for his 1991 translation: Transvestites: The Erotic Drive to Cross-Dress.

An ongoing problem was and is created by the word Erotischen.

It is generally accepted that being trans* is not a sexual orientation. Trans persons may be androphilic, gynephilic, asexual, hypersexual. None of these is part of the definition of being trans. For sure some persons do find cross-dressing arousing, but it is a severe distortion to put it in the title. Trans persons, however dressed, at work, shopping, walking in the street, visiting others etc, are not doing something erotic. Transvestitenscheins were issued to enable working in the desired gender – not an erotic activity.

Initially, Hirschfeld had complied with the general opinion at that time that Geschlechtsverkleidung (German for cross-dressing) was a type of homosexuality. However among his patients and elsewhere he encountered trans women who were not at all androphilic, and objected to the assumption. For 1910’s Die Transvestiten, Hirschfeld overcompensated, and for the 17 case studies that comprise Part 1, he systematically excluded gay trans persons. This created a problem re ‘female transvestites’, almost none of whom went with men or had a husband. Only one such case was included: his 15^th case, Helene N, who alternated between men and women.

Rainer Herrn: (Schnittmuster des Geschlechts 2005:57-8)

“Hirschfeld had described cross-dressing as a characteristic typically associated with homosexuals around 1900, and in 1906 he distinguished for the first time between homosexual and heterosexual cross-dressers. And although there were enough homosexual men in the environment of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee who presented themselves in women's clothes - not only at balls - including Hermann von Teschenberg and Willibald von Sadler-Grün - Hirschfeld chose for his casuistry of seventeen cases exclusively those who neither exhibited same-sex inclinations nor had corresponding experience. At the same time, he also knew other homosexual transvestites personally, as can be seen in Volume II of his Sexual Pathology” (DeepL translation)

Hirschfeld of course reverted back in Sexualpathologie, 1918. As quoted in Koestler-Haire’s Sexual Anomalies and Perversions, p197 hard copy, p167 ecopy:

“From the comprehensive data at our disposal we find that about 35 per cent of transvestites are heterosexual and an equal percentage homosexual, while about 15 per cent are bisexual. The remaining 15 per cent are mostly automonosexual, but also include a small proportion of asexuals”.

Hirschfeld had altered the meaning of ‘transvestism’ by making it by definition an erotic activity. The Transvestitenscheinen were issued - at least nominally - for mainly vocational reasons. They were not regarded as erotischen Verkleidungstrieb (erotic urge to dress up). They were issued so that the trans person could live, work and get on with life - the frequency or lack of a sex life did not come into it.

Darryl Hill questions just how heterosexual, the 16 male-born cases studies in Die Transvestiten were? He writes (p324)

“Despite the fact that Hirschfeld wanted to differentiate transvestites from homosexuals, a minority of the cases described homosexual experiences and fantasies. Vern and Bonnie Bullough [p210] observed homosexual fantasies in six of the cases: Messrs. C, D, F, I, J, and P. Including Mr. J, however, is a mistake, since he did not relate any homosexual fantasy. Only one case study, Mr. F, clearly desired men and had had both previous experiences and fantasies. Hirschfeld recorded this: "At twenty-one, on vacation in the Orient, he consented to anal intercourse by Arabians" (51).

Even more problematic for Hirschfeld's contentions was the fact that many of the male cases entertained sexual desires for men but only when presenting themselves as women. Since the man-to-woman crossdressers largely see themselves as women, this desire is probably best understood as heterosexual, but even in that day it was probably partly seen as homosexual. Following this rationale, Messrs. B and M expressed desires to be with men when dressed as a woman. Mr. B indicated a willingness to flirt with men only when dressed as a woman: "I have never had an inclination toward men; only when dressed as a woman do I like to flirt and play with them" (27). Mr. M, who desired to be the passive partner in a heterosexual encounter, said that he was willing to give sex with men a try but only as a woman.

…

Hirschfeld's contemporaries criticized him for not seeing the latent homosexual tendencies in most of his respondents, mainly because he failed to use deep psychoanalysis, but these tendencies are obvious even without psychoanalysis.”

Some may see most of Hirschfeld’s 16 case studies in Part One of the book as Autogynephiles or something similar (this is not my opinion) and therefore Erotischen as an appropriate label. Even if this were the case, it would apply to Part One of the book only, and not to Part Two “Criticism (Differential Diagnosis)” or Part Three Ethnology and History”. So Arguably Erotischen could be acceptable in the subtitle for Part One, but is definitely inappropriate in the title of the entire book.

However, it is Die Transvestiten that is mostly read, and Kurt Freund and Ray Blanchard in the 1980s, as they developed their concept of Autogynephilia, were able to cite Hirschfeld as a pre-cursor.

• Kurt Freund, Betty Steiner & S. Chan. Two types of cross-gender identity. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 11, 1982:49–63.

• Ray Blanchard. “Origins of the Concept of Autogynephilia”. Feb 2004. 

• Darryl B Hill. “Sexuality and Gender in Hirschfeld's Die Transvestiten: A Case of the ‘Elusive Evidence of the Ordinary’”. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 14, 3, 2018.

Trans words in German

Misconception # 3: the claim that Hirschfeld ‘coined’ transvest* words.

Book after book after book claims that Hirschfeld ‘coined’ Transvestiten, etc. The earliest claim that I have found re Hirschfeld supposedly coining Transvestiten (not Transvestitismus) is in Charlotte Wolff’s 1986 biography where she simply says on p107 that he coined it, but gives no support to the claim. The problem of course, as I have pointed out several times, is that one cannot coin a word, or group of words, that already exist. It seems that he did introduce the transvest* words unto German, and they quickly did replace the rather cumbersome Geschlechtsverkleidung. He also altered the meaning to make transvesting an erotic activity.

However various transvest* or travest* words had existed in Italian, French and English since the 17^th century, sometimes but not always meaning gender crossing. Those who claim that Hirschfeld ‘coined’ the terms implicitly imply that he was so badly read that he was unaware of the various forms of these words. For a man of his education, who had travelled in the US, England, France and Italy, this is unlikely.

Then there is the word Transvestitenschein, the licence or permission to transvest. The Paris Préfecture de Police had been issuing Permissions de Travestissement since 1800, and Transvestitenschein is a translation of Permissions de Travestissement (altering the emphasis from the permission to the actual licence). Hirschfeld rendered the French word travestissement into German as Transvestismus, and travesti/e as Transvestiten.

Hirschfeld had an extended stay in Paris in 1892 while studying for his medical exams, and would have become aware of the French practice. He made contact there with the eminent Jewish physician Max Nordau. In 1910 just before finishing Die Transvestiten, Hirschfeld spent a few months in London and then Paris.

Hirschfeld was also an active nudist, and German and French nudist groups had joint meetings. We know that it was at such a meeting that Hirschfeld met the French future sexologist Pierre Vachet. Vachet was still a teenager in 1910 (he was born in 1892) but as he was training to become a doctor, he would have talked about medical practices in Paris.

Hirschfeld mentions the French Permissions de Travestissement in his Die Transvestiten, although he does not give the French expression.

P274-5 in the Lomabardi-Nash translation, “There are cases in which women work in bricklayers’ suits and driving uniforms, and the police overlook that. At the governor’s office they said that strictly speaking the present question could only be decided by a police regulation dated November 7, 1800, that made the authorization of the many frequent masquerades at the time subject to a physician’s certificate that the male or female applicant needed the special clothing for reasons of health. Exceptions to this have occurred from time to time, for example, Aurore Dupin (George Sand), Rosa Bonheur and Marguerite Bellanger, the Margo of Napoleon III, who made the empress jealous. In earlier days there were more applications for permission to wear men’s clothing, but since the introduction of clothing that easily reminds a person of the stronger sex, for example, for women who ride bicycles, the desire of women for other manly apparel appears to have decreased.”

P384: “A French farmer from the suburbs of Paris went to the police for permission to wear women’s clothing and received it, for “business reasons” no less. He said that a woman’s dress was necessary as a part of his equipment to do his kind of work at a nursery garden. Permission for the same thing was granted to a Paris potato merchant.”

P385: “Rosa Bonheur, too, in her petition to the government for permission to wear men’s clothing, gave as her reason that dresses prevented her from finding artistic motifs in nature.”

A US visitor present at the burning of Hirschfeld's library

 A US visitor present at the burning of Hirschfeld's library, asks what is happening:

"Ach! we are burning all the books of the Jews!" the woman told him enthusiastically.

"! see.  But it seems too bad to be burning the Bible," remarked the American professor.

The German woman was horrified.  "The Bible! Nein! Good God! Burning the Bible? Nein! Nein! Nein"

"But didn't the Jews write the Bible?"

"The Jews write the Bible!" The woman could hardly master her stupefaction.  "Nein! Nein! Dr. Martin Luther, he the Bible wrote - Ya! Ya! Ya!".

------------

This was in the Richmond New Leader, 15 July 1933. p10.

A.C. (1920 - ?) day laborer

A.C. (a name assigned by the psychologist) was the ninth of 12 children. The father, who was mean and beat all the children, ran a cotton gin and store in Arkansas. A.C. was assigned female, but even as a small child refused to wear dresses, even when starting school, where it was required for the girls. A.C. was so embarrassed and hid under a desk. The mother was able to arrange a transfer to another school where all the farm children, male and female, wore overalls. In 1932, when A.C. was 12, the father age 53 was shot to death by a drunken employee, which A.C. experienced as a relief. A.C. suffered earaches and headaches, and attributed them as nervous strain in not being accepted as male, and also suffered from malaria. A.C. was a loner, and would go to movies alone, read the Bible and attended church, although expressing the opinion that "preachers are merely money crazy”.

When A.C. was 17 there was an operation for appendicitis, and A.C. later reported that the attending physician had said that he found "internal male sex organs but they were in some way diseased or injured, and were removed". 

The mother died of cancer age 66 when A.C. was 23 years. A.C. said that the mother "was ignorant and did not understand my situation. She stated over and over again it was her fault for bringing me into the world". 

A.C. married a woman who had a daughter from a previous marriage. However their marriage was unhappy, and ended after A.C. found out that his wife was doing sex work on the quiet. At age 26, he attempted suicide by slashing his wrists, and was admitted to a mental hospital, and underwent shock treatments. He was discharged after a week with the diagnosis of “a psychopathic personality, with homosexual complications”.

He had a discontinuous relation with another woman six years younger than himself, who likewise had a child from an earlier marriage. They were ‘legally married’ in 1952, despite hostility and threats from the bride’s parents. The new wife had a few hundred dollars saved, and they invested that in a clothing business – but the business failed. A.C. sought work as a day laborer in farms, but was not always engaged. They sought a loan from the wife’s parents, although the daughter stayed away concerned that her parents would trap her in their home. A.C. went to visit them having sent a telegram to himself referring to the financial need to provide for the health of his wife’s child. The mother-in-law intercepted the telegram, and did give some money for the child’s benefit. However she then thought again, and accused A.C. of obtaining money under false pretenses in that he did not pass the money to his wife. Despite the wife’s statement that she had been given the money, A.C. was arrested, and by court order was committed to the Arkansas State Hospital in Little Rock where he was assessed by psychologist Robert S Redmount, who applied a battery of psychological tests.

The wife was by then with her parents in that she had nowhere else to go. Redmount’s final question to A.C. was: If you were granted three wishes in life, what would you want most?

(1) I want to see that professor in New York, to see if he can help me.

(2) I want them to leave me alone after I serve my time.

(3) I want my wife and I to live together and be happy, and everybody keep their mouths shut and leave us alone.

Redmount wrote up the case and published it in a psychology journal in 1933. His conclusion:

 “Underlying psychologic factors indicate that the patient's problems are of a more complicated nature. Her life-long adjustments seem to represent less an attempt to accept reality and more of a protest against it. … The process of maturation in the male role was additionally complicated by the patient's apparent underlying motivations for marital status as a husband. She needed the utilization of her marriage and her marriage partner predominantly in order to gain the support, acceptance, and protection that she originally sought in her mother. Her own immature and incomplete psychologic growth process seems to preclude the possibility of devoting herself to the role of a husband in terms of any value or goal beyond her own passive- receptive needs. That the marriage was able to maintain itself at all attests to the needs of both the patient and her wife to escape from shattering, unkind realities.

It is quite possible that, unless society provides the patient the opportunity for a social or a psychologic solution to her problems, she will culminate her protest in a fantasied retribution on society through her own self-destruction.”

-------

Redmount leaves the story hanging: was there a trial?; was A.C. convicted?; did he restart his marriage or did the mother-in-law keep them apart thereafter? What happened to A.C. later in life?

Of course a middle-class cishet person in 1933 Arkansas would not be subjected to a court-ordered psychological evaluation following such a dispute over money. Was the mother-in-law ever so evaluated?

Incidentally, was electro-shock treatment followed by being told that one is a 'psychopathic personality'  the standard reponse to suicide survivors in 1946?

Was the 1946 suicide attempt brought on by the break-up of the first marriage? Redmount’s account does not clarify this, but the dates fit. Lothstein attributes it to the mother’s death from cancer, although that was three years earlier.

“professor in New York”. Harry Benjamin? Was Benjamin sufficiently well-known in 1953?

-------

Redmount’s paper is included in Richard Green’s Bibliography addendum to Harry Benjamin’s The Transsexual Phenomenon, 1966, but is not mentioned in the text.

Joanne Meyerowitz’ How Sex Changed, 2002: 130, 136, 137, 159, 314n1, 315n15n19, 319n86 has disconnected quotes from Redmount’s account, but in such a way that the reader will not realize that they are from the same case.

Lothstein, 1983: 

“This case history is a pivotal one in that most of Redmount’s conclusions about the dynamics of the case have been accepted and supported by other investigators (oftentimes with little or no mention of Redmount’s contribution to our understanding of female transsexualism). … The importance of this case focused on two factors. The first factor was Redmount’s recognition of the psycho-dynamic triad in female transsexualism: an abusive father with whom the patient identified; a warm supportive mother who needed to be rescued (the patient reported that mother ‘was the only friend I had. When I lost her I had none.’); and a daughter who attempted to rescue her mother and protect her from the father’s onslaughts.” Lothstein’s position was that [intrafamily] “dynamics involved the transsexual-to-be identifying with a physically assaultive father who was unavailable to his weak, emotionally withdrawn wife, and having a need to rescue the mother from him (playing the role of a surrogate husband). In effect, the family dynamic, first reported by Redmount, has remained unchallenged up to the present time.”

!!!

Henry Rubin, 2003: 

“This choice, between viewing the patient’s claims as delusional or strategic, is found in many of the accounts, but nowhere as starkly as in the aforementioned report on an FTM criminally accused by his mother-in-law of fraudulent financial affairs. Dr. Robert Redmount concludes his remarks on this case with this pithy summary: ‘Her life-long adjustments seem to represent less an attempt to accept reality and more of a protest against it’ (110; emphasis added). Redmount hardly concurs that this protest is viable. His ultimate aim would be to help the patient avoid ‘her own self-destruction’ (111). The use of the female pronoun throughout these cases, plus the ubiquitous comments on the normal physiological condition of these patients, indicates the psychologists’ beliefs that these patients are delusional. Endocrinologists might defer to the patient’s desire for treatment based on the likelihood that a physiological etiology for their condition would eventually be uncovered. The psychologists could only view their patients as at worst deluded, and at best strategic.”

 

• Robert S. Redmount. “A Case of a Female Transvestite with Marital and Criminal Complications”. The Journal of Clinical and Experimental Psychopathology, 14, 2, 1953:95-111.

• Leslie Martin Lothstein. Female-to-Male Transsexualism: Historical, Clinical and Theoretical Issues. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983: 23-4, 37.

• Henry Rubin. Self-Made Men: Identity and Embodiment among Transsexual Men.Vanderbilt University Press, 2003: 56-7.

Amandus Balitzki (1890 - ?) postal clerk

Balitzki was born in the then German city of Stettin, the illegitimate, later legitimate, child of a railway man and a nurse. Although raised as a girl, Balitzki had no interest in dolls or cooking, and when playing family with other girls was usually given the role of ‘father’. Comments by others re a lack of femininity were defiantly taken as a complement. At the age of 17 Balitzki was supposed to learn bookkeeping, but not liking arithmetic, gave up this occupation after half a year, then learnt floristry at the age of 19, in the belief that there was more ‘manly work’ to be done. 

With the outbreak of war in August 1914, Balitzki obtained a Transvestitenschein and was able to work as a postal clerk. From 1917 Balitzki was a patient of Magnus Hirschfeld, who presented Balitzki in his Sexualpathologie, 1918 as an example of a ‘hermaphroditic preliminary stage’ and showed the patient in a series of specially produced photographs. 

In October 1919 the Berlin Chief of Police permitted a change of first name from Amanda to Amandus, and the birth certificate was amended accordingly. This was based on an expert opinion by Hirschfeld and Arthur Kronfeld, psychiatrist and co-founder of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, that although born female, the ambiguity of the adult's sexual characteristics now justified assigning him to the male sex. 

However Balitzki’s mother, not only a nurse, but a midwife whose profession required the sexing of babies, did not agree. She applied for a further medical examination of her ‘daughter’ in February 1921. Amandus was then examined by the district physician Dr Schreber, who alleged fraudulent intentions, as ‘the applicant was undoubtedly of the female sex and she had led the doctors to a false opinion by providing incorrect information’. The following April, Balitzki’s authorization to use the name ‘Amendus’ was withdrawn, and his Transvestitenshein was revoked. 

Walther Niemann, a lawyer with close ties to the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (WhK), had campaigned for name changes for several trans persons. In November 1921 he applied again for Balitzki to be allowed to be Amandus: “correction of the birth certificate [...] to the effect that a child was not born of the female sex, but of the male sex”. Niemann enclosed with his application a copy of the cited decree of the Minister of Justice on the change of first name as well as a new expert opinion by Hirschfeld who attested - without mentioning Schreber's expert opinion - that Balitzki had ‘a certain discrepancy in the physical and mental sexual characteristics’, whereby Amandus ‘was to be attributed to the male sex for predominant reasons’. It was therefore ‘medically justified and better suited to the facts to correct his sex designation in the civil register to that of the male sex’. Niemann also referred to an analogous case, namely Berthold Buttgereit, in which ‘the correction order had been issued in the same situation’. 

Niemann followed this up in January 1922 enclosing a ‘certificate of recognition’ dated 1 December 1921, in which Amandus Balitzki declared that he was ‘the father of the illegitimate child born to the seamstress Erna Blumenthal on 24 May 1921’. As such Balitzki was obliged by law to provide the child with the support ‘corresponding to the mother's position in life’. However this was too much, and the authorities did not buy it. The manoeuvre was too transparent. Balitzki was threatened with being charged with Falschbeurkundung, (false certification). In May the Ministry of Justice stated that there was no reason to grant the ‘authorisation to use the first name Amandus’ and that the ‘applicant’ should continue to use the female first name. However the letter was returned with the note ‘moved on 29 April 1922 [...] unknown’. Amandus was not accepting the result.

• Magnus Hirschfeld. „Hermaphroditismus“. Sexualpathologie Volume 2: Sexuelle Zwischenstufen, A Marcus & E Webers Verlag, 1918: 21-3.
• Magnus Hirschfeld. Geschlechtskunde, Volume 4, Bilderteil. Julius Puttman, 1930: 471.
• Rainer Herrn. Der Liebe und dem Leid: Das Institut fur Sexualwissenschaft 1919-1933. Suhrkamp Verlag, 2022.

-------------- 

There seems to be no record of what happened to Amandus after1922. There is a short mention in Hirschfeld’s Geschlechtskunde, but no futher details. Herrn found the applications and replies in the official records, but again nothing after 1922. Did Amandus leave Berlin? Did he survive the Third Reich? Did he and Frau Blumenthal raise the child together?