Seppel was born Maria Mayer, the eldest child of a factory worker and a housewife, in Bruchsal, 20 km from Karlsruhe in the state of Baden-Württemberg. At age 27 in 1912, Mayer was working in Karlsruhe doing ironing, when she married Joseph Einsmann, a plasterer and one year older. The marriage did not go well, and they used the occasion of the husband’s military service during the Great War to separate. Herr Einsmann applied for an official dissolution of the marriage in 1923, but Frau Einsmann did not find out until much later.
During the War, Frau Einsmann worked in an ammunition factory in Pforzheim, and there met Helene Müller (né Banz) who likewise had separated from her husband during the war. When the War ended in late 1918, Frauen Einsmann and Müller and many others were obliged to give up their jobs in favour of the returning soldiers. Einsmann and Helene Müller moved to Mainz, in Rhineland-Palatinate, where they lived together. As in Pforzheim, the better jobs in Mainz were reserved for men. Einsmann had kept one of Joseph’s suits, and in one of its pockets were his pre-war identification documents. With a suitable haircut, Einsmann, using the name Joseph, obtained employment with the occupying French military forces – at a wage that supported two persons. Later Einsmann moved to a security and locking company. Einsmann was generally known to his fellow workers as ‘Seppel’. Helene worked as chambermaid.
In 1921 Helene gave birth to a girl, and Seppel registered the girl’s parents as Joseph and Maria Einsmann.
In 1925 Seppel took a position at Werner & Mertz which made shoe polish under the brand name Erdal. He was promoted to foreman supervising 20 workers. He was regarded as hardworking and always punctual, and was an active union member. He also sang tenor in two Mainz church choirs.
A second daughter was born in 1930. This time the Registry Office noticed that Joseph and Maria Einsmann were listed as divorced. Seppel therefore said that he had fathered the child illegitimately with ex-wife Maria Mayer, and the child was recorded with Maria Mayer as the mother. The tax office was notified so that Seppel paid less tax. He was regarded as a good example of a father.
In August 1931, Seppel had a work accident. His hand went into a cutting machine, and the little finger on the right hand was lost. The stay in the men’s ward at the hospital went smoothly. However the subsequent claim for temporary incapacity insurance ran into a problem. The Reich Insurance Office in Berlin realised that they had two disability cards both of which had been issued to a Joseph Einsmann and with identical data. This led to Seppel being questioned and thus outed. He was charged with false certification in changing civil status and lying about the parentage of the two daughters. There was also the matter that he had been Best Man at a wedding and thus signed that the marriage was legitimate. Seppel’s story was repeated in the press in subsequent months, both in Germany and abroad.
Seppel sold photographs showing his masculine self, along with Helene and their two daughters. The court appointed two psychologists to give an opinion. The county medical officer Dr Wagner accepted Seppel’s claim that her cross-dressing was only to find work and to gain a family wage. Seppel was also sent to see Dr Felix Abraham at Berlin’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft. Abraham diagnosed a „transvestite predisposition“. This opinion Seppel rejected.
The trial, 20 August 1932, lasted only three hours. Seppel, as obliged, was present in female clothing. The court accepted Dr Wagner’s opinion, not that of Dr Abraham. Maria’s ex-husband declined to testify. Both Einsmann and Müller were given suspended sentences – to the applause of the court visitors - but had to pay court costs.
Werner & Mertz continued Seppel’s employment. Seppel, after consulting with the employer, took a vacation that was due, and then returned to work, this time as Maria. Maria and Helene continued to live at the same flat throughout the duration of the Third Reich, and moved to a different address in Mainz in 1945. Maria was referred to as ‘aunt’ by the children, and then by the grandchildren. She died in 1959 age 74. Helene died in 1991 age 98.
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Apparently Helene almost never spoke to her children about Seppel’s life as a man.
There is no record from Helene or elsewhere about who did father her children.
“Einsmann” means ‘one man’, but ironically was two.
Abraham’s diagnosis of “transvestite predisposition” was rather blunt, but as Seppel maintained his male persona outside work as well as in, and kept it up day and night 365 days a year, for 12 years, – and sang tenor in two church choirs - he probably was a type of trans. After 1932, social pressure and public knowledge compelled adherence to a female presentation. The mainstream press went along with the opinion expressed in the court that the male presentation dressing was only to find work and to gain a family wage. However Paul Weber, writing in the lesbian/trans Die Freundin shortly after the trial, wrote “For all of us this matter is no ‘exceptional case,’ but rather the dream of what the reality of a thoroughly masculine woman can look like.”
Would it not have been easier to list Helene Müller, the actual mother, as the mother on the birth registration?
- „Frau Vater. Eine als Mann verkleidete Frau arbeitet seit 12 Jahren auf dem Bauplatz und in Fabriken“. Mainzer Tagesanzeiger, 16 August 1931.
- “Feminine ‘Father’: Woman Who Worked as Man Since the War”. Birmingham Evening Despatch, 16 April 1932: 1.
- “12 Years Pose as Man“. Swindon Evening Advertiser, 22 August 1932: 4.
- "Maria Einsmann, eine tapfere Frau!".Mainzer Volkzeitung. 22 August 1932.
- “Josef Maria Einsmann,” Die Freundin, 35, 2 September 1931: 2f.
- Paul Weber, “Das Urteil gegen Frau Einsmann,” Die Freundin, 36, 7 September 1932: 2.
- Katie Sutton. The Masculine Woman in Weimar Germany. Berghahn, 2013: 113, 115.
- Eva Weickart, (2020). "Die Frau in Männerkleidung. Der Fall Maria Einsmann. Presseberichte aus den Jahren 1931 und 1932". mainz.de, 2020. Online. (The enclosed PDF includes a lot of press reports on the cas)
- Barbara Trottnow (dir). Frau Vater – Die Geschichte der Maria Einsmann, ZDF German 29 mins 2022.
DE.Wikipedia(Maria Einsmann) EN.Wikipedia(Maria Einsmann)
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The expatriate writer Anna Seghers used Einsmann’s life as the basis of her 1940 novel Der sogenannte Rendel, written while she was in exile in Mexico. She also wrote a film script based on the story, Hier gibt's keine Katharina ('There is no Katharina here'), but it was never filmed.
Berthold Brecht, the German playwright, also wrote a fictional version of Einsmann, Der Arbeitsplatz oder Im Schweiße Deines Angesichts sollst Du kein Brot essen, which is included in the collection of the same name. It was translated into English in 1983.
Barbara Trottnow, a filmmaker from Mainz, made a film in 1995 based on parts of Segher’s script. 25 years later she made a 29 minute documentary directly about the Einsmanns, which included a contribution from Helene’s granddaughter, Erkens.
In 2014 the city-district of Mainz-Altstadt named a square after Einsmann and called it Maria-Einsmann-Platz, using only what should have been his dead name, and with no mention of his wife, Helene.
- Anna Seghers. Der sogenannte Rendel. Volk u. Wissen, 1940.
- Bertold Brecht. The job or By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou fail to earn thy bread. Methuen, 1983.
- Barbara Trottnow (dir). Katharina oder: Die Kunst, Arbeit zu finden. Scr: Anna Seghers, with Heidi Ecks as Katharina. ZDF German 80 mins 1995. IMDB
- Barbara Trottnow (dir). Frau Vater – Die Geschichte der Maria Einsmann, ZDF German 29 mins 2022. Webpage.
