Anton Hermann (1846-1905) artist

Hermann was born in Vienna and raised as Hermine Gartner. The father was a government councillor, and the elder brother was Theodor Gartner who became a noted linguist and philologist specializing in the Ruthenian (Ukrainian) language.

Hermann studied painting under Josef Hoffmann and Joseph von Fuhrich. Using the excuse that male attire made for easier working conditions, he adopted the pseudonym ‘Antonius Hermann’.  Hermann succeeded in being admitted at the  Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien (Vienna Academy of Fine Arts) to study even though no women were then admitted.

As Hermine Gartner, Hermann was engaged to the painter Carl Hofman in 1871, but that did not work out. Gartner became known as a painter of religious motifs and of portraits, taught painting in Munich, and carried out restorations in Kremsmünster Abbey in Upper Austria.

In 1899 Hermann retired to the Italian Riviera, and bought a house in Sori, south of Genoa. Hermann now dressed as male consistently, and often wore a black moustache – although he was sometimes spotted without it, and once it came off while he was in church. He worked as a language teacher.

Hermann died age 59, possibly of cancer. He was outed on his death-bed, which created quite a stir and was reported in Italian and German-language newspapers. Theodor Gartner, summoned by telegraph, came from Innsbruck and registered the death of his sister Hermine Gartner.

• Magnus Hirschfeld: Die Transvestiten: eine Untersuchung über den erotischen Verkleidungstrieb. Mit umfangreichem casuistischen und historischen Material. 2. Auflage. Verlag Wahrheit Ferdinand Spohr, Leipzig 1925: 404–405.

• Hanna Hacker. Frauen und Freundinnen: Studien zur "weiblichen Homosexualität" am Beispiel Österreich 1870-1938. University of Virginia, 1987: 146.

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