Dorchen Richter/Dora Richterov (1892 - 1966) waiter, cook, maid.

Original July 2008.  Revised to include information from Rainer Herrn, Raimund Wolfert - and Clara at Lili-Elbe-Bibliothek in particular for her discovery of Dora's documents in the Czech archives.

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Rudolph Richter, the second of six children of a musician-farmer and his lace-maker wife, was born and raised  in Seifen (now Ryžovna in Czechia) (map), a village of some 600 persons in Bohemia close to the German border, which was then part of Austria-Hungary.  Germans referred to the high-altitude region on both sides of the border as Erzgebirge.

Dora, as she would become, once attempted to tourniquet her penis. She expressed a strong dislike of male clothing, and was permitted to live as female. She showed a preference for girls' clothes, girls' games and girls' company, as well as a deep aversion to everything rough, coarse and crude that was considered typical of boys. Her favourite occupations were typically feminine tasks such as cooking, cleaning and other household chores. Richter was brought up as and remained a Catholic.

After an apprenticeship as a baker, Richter moved to a city- probably the nearby Bohemian spa town of Karlsbad (now Karlovy Vary) in 1909, and was able to dress as female in his spare time.  Later he was in a travelling theatre and moved to Leipzig in Germany and worked checking tickets in a cinema, and then in a chocolate factory.  Then she was able to find work as a woman – as a waitress.  She was successful in sexual contacts with men who in some cases did not realise her non-standard anatomy.

Called for military service, Rudolph was twice suspended because of his "feminism" – wearing female clothing.  By 1916 as the war dragged on, the authorities became more desperate and standards were lowered. Richter he was now "found fit" "after some reservations" and was then drafted after all. But only two weeks later he was discharged “home” because of a severe fainting spell, and returned to Leipzig.

After the war, Richter returned to Seifen in the newly independent Czechoslovakia.  A friend, who hoped that Dora could also be "helped by an operation", told her of the 1922 Steinach film, a popular version of the scientific film Steinachs-Forscbungen. The film briefly featured images of trans women and mentioned the possibility of a change of sex and named the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, at In den Zelten 9A-10 in the Tiergarten area of Berlin. She registered there and in May 1923 was assessed at the Institut, where surgeon Heinrich Stabel suggested that she could be castrated [orchidectomy] by year’s end.  This was done.  Stabel was of the opinion that he always succeeded in:

“dissuading the patients concerned from their urgent desire for penile amputation, by insistent and serious references to the dangerous possible consequences. So far it has always turned out that after castration the patients always felt such a great relief and liberation of their condition that in time the desire for amputation of the penis disappeared completely”. 

He reported to Werner Holz that this was the situation with Dora also – although her life would be otherwise.

Having no other source of income, she worked as a maid at the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft.  Magnus Hirschfeld gave her the affectionate name of Dorchen, and arranged for her to gain a Transvestitenschein.

Werner Holz, at the time an assistant physician at the Oberlin district hospital in Nowawes near Potsdam,  had come to the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft  to write what is probably the first dissertation on a trans topic.  It is mainly an individual case study and biography of one person, Dorchen, whom he refers to as “Rudolph R”.  His primary focus is on her desire for castration, and it is also the first major work to use Hirschfeld’s terms “extreme” and “total” transvestites.  Holz uses male pronouns for Dorchen throughout.

“From that moment [when as a child he became aware of the difference between male and female sexual organs] he had acquired a direct hatred of his genitals until the present day. [...] Since then, all his thoughts and efforts had been directed towards freeing himself from those genitals he hated so much, which did not at all want to fit his mental constitution. At the age of 13, he had once made warts disappear by cutting them off with a thread. He therefore had the idea of freeing himself from his genitals in the same way by tying them off with a strong thread. Since this intention failed, he is said to have been quite depressed and then several times seriously thought of cutting off his genitals with a razor. Only the fear of bleeding to death is said to have prevented him at the last moment from cutting off his genitals. Even today he would give anything if he could be freed from his genitals by an operation. He had also come to Berlin for this purpose.” (Holz 1924, p 8)

"In our patient, the mental feminism is so pronounced that in conversation with him, one completely forgets that he is a man.” (Holz p 27)

Dorchen working as a waitress 

In April 1925 Richter applied to the Czechoslovakian consulate in Berlin for two passports, one as Dora for her stay in Germany, and a second in her male name for visits home to the family.  A copy of the Institut's report, describing her as intersex and that she had a Transvestitenschein,was attached.  The request was passed to the Ministry of the Interior in Prague.  They took six months to reply, and then declined the request in that Dora had not changed her legal name,

Hirschfeld had initially been opposed to surgical changes, but the castrations for Dorchen and others had gone well – in particular threats of suicide had declined. 

"In the beginning I was strongly opposed to these methods, which I judged to be very dangerous to health and, on the other hand, considered unnecessary" (Hirschfeld, 1933:6)

However Werner Holz, Felix Abraham and Heinrich Stabel gave positive reports and Hirschfeld changed his mind.

“But the more I got to know of these individuals, the more I realised that some of them were ready to commit suicide in the event that their desires for the transformation of their sexual identities were not satisfied. So I told myself that in view of this I must give up my hesitation.” (ibid.).

Arthur Kronfeld, psychoanalyst, co-founder of the Institut, left in 1926.   He was the major advocate of ‘curing’ queer people through psychoanalysis.  Such conversion therapy ceased with his departure.

In 1926 the Hamburg doctor, Otto Kankeleit, gave a paper on self-damage and self mutilation at the Internationalen Kongress für Sexualforschung, which was then organised by Albert Moll.  Kankeleit included photographs, and reported on ‘transvestites’ including cases which he had learned about at Hirschfeld’s Institut.  One of these was Dorchen referred to as “Rudolf Ri”. 

“His sexual attitude was passive female to the point of bondage. He turned to Dr Magnus-Hirschfeld to have his testicles removed, as otherwise he would have to do it himself.”

In January 1928, Toni Ebel’s wife Olga died, and Toni met Charlotte Charlaque.  They both came to the Institut, were employed and given room and board and 24 Reichsmarks a month.  They met Dorchen and the three became friends.

In spring 1930, the nascent Lili Elbe (actually Lili Elvenes) was sent by her doctor, Kurt Warnekros, to Magnus Hirschfeld for a second opinion.  In the waiting room, Elevenes encountered trans women, and it is highly likely that they included  Toni Ebel and Dörchen - Charlotte Charlaque was working as the receptionist.  All three had had a first operation by this date. Lili did not relate to them: “The manner in which they were conversing disgusted him; their movements, their voices, the way in which they were attired, produced a feeling of nausea.”  In addition, Ellen Bækgaard, a Danish dentist who stayed at the Institut, said later that Elbe expressed discomfort at being classed with Dorchen Richter.

Dochen, Magnus and one other

In 1931 at the latest, Dora Richter moved to the Kempinski restaurant at Kurfürstendamm 27 as a kitchen maid.  This was the year that her father died,

Dorchen was offered vaginoplasty that year, and so was one of the first persons to have a sex-change completion. The surgeons were Hirschfeld’s colleagues, Ludwig Levy-Lenz  who did the penectomy and Erwin Gohrbandt, the director of the Urbank Hospital in Berlin-Kreuzberg who did a vaginoplasty a few months later.  Felix Abraham wrote up two cases as "Genitalumwandlung an zwei männlichen Transvestiten" in the Zeitschriflfiir Sexualwissenschaft in 1931, naming the two cases as "Rudolph (Dora) R." and "Arno (Toni) E.".

Pierre Najac, a young French doctor who had spent an internship year at the Berlin Institute for Sexual Science, also wrote a report on Dorchen and Toni Ebel, which was published in 1931.

An anonymous article "Operative Umwandlung von Männern in Frauen gelungen" („Operative transformation of men into women successful") appeared in the medical journal, Die Geburtenregelung in 1933 and discussed the operations on Dorchen, Toni Ebel and Charlotte Charlaque.

Toni, Charlotte & Dorchen in Mysterium des Geschlechts

Lothar Golte put together a film in Austria released in 1933, Mysterium des Geschlechts, with input from Felix Abraham & Serge Voronoff.   The story features two medical students who learn about "most interesting questions of sexology" and fall in love in the process. Documentary sequences show sex reassignment surgery and transplants of animal testicles and explanations about abortion and contraception.  Included are scenes filmed in the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft  featuring Dora Richter, Toni Ebel and Charlotte Charlaque – both nude and clothed. A voice-over proclaims: "We see three people here who, according to their clothes, appear to be women. In fact, however, these are three men who, as a result of their mental attitude, have possessed feminine tendencies since birth and have surgically become women through their desire."

In April 1933 the film was shown in Vienna cinemas for two weeks before it was banned. In Germany, it was not even shown in public, as it was banned by the censors.

Also that year, Magnus Hirschfeld, in exile in Paris, commented to Voila magazine:

“Dorchen, as ex-Rudolf now called himself, feels completely like a woman. He is very happy and works in a woman's profession, having modified his marital status. Dorchen shows no symptoms of mental disturbance, she is hard-working and intelligent.”(p6)

Norman Haire, the London sexologist and associate of Magnus Hirschfeld wrote an introduction to the 1933 English version of the Lili Elbe autobiography.  Therein he wrote:

“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.”

Not the nicest comment, but some have taken this as a reference to Dorchen.  (See the note p 59 of Caughie and Meyer).

6 May 1933 the Deutsche Studentenschaft made an organised attack on the Institut, followed by the Sturmabteilung (SA).  They destroyed many of the books and put an end to the Institut.

When Toni Ebel and Charlotte Charlaque fled Germany, they chose Karlsbad in Czechoslovakia, partly because it was a hub of German speaking emigrants, but also because they thought that was where Dorchen was from.  Charlotte, writing in 1955, said of Dorchen:

"Because she is an excellent cook, she soon took over a small restaurant in the town of her birth” - meaning Karlsbad.

In February 1934, Richter applied for a legal name change “Due to congenital intersexuality – established at the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft  Berlin”, which was granted by the office of the president of Czechoslovakia in April 1934. At this time, her address was still listed in Berlin. From then on, her legal name was Dora Rudolfine Richter (in the Czech form: Dora Rudolfa Richterová).  The approval letter asks the parish office to correct the baptismal entry – although that was not done at that time.  Also corrected at this time was Dora's Heimatschein, the Czechoslovak homeland certificate that gives the right to reside in Czechoslovakia, to vote and, if necessary, to social welfare.  The Heimatschein described Dora as a domestic servant and as unmarried.

 Charlotte, writing in 1955, said of Dorchen:

"Because she is an excellent cook, she soon took over a small restaurant in the town of her birth” - meaning Karlsbad.

Dora's mother died in 1938.  

By 1939 Dorchen was living in Seifen as documented in the German census of that year (which included Austria and the Sudetanland) but not in her parents’ house  No 12.   She is at No 61, previously the home of a master baker - presumably the baker who had trained her in the 1910s.  She earned a living as a lace maker working at home.  

The correction in the Seifen/Ryžovna records had not been done, but was finally recorded in January 1946 – perhaps Dorchen herself produced the approval letter from Prague.  There was an urgency for the Germans in Bohemia, the Sudeten Germans, to have their papers in order. 

With the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans (whose location had been used as an excuse for the German annexation of Czechoslavakia in 1938), Dorchen moved to Allersberg, Bavaria in May 1946, where she lived until her death at the age of 74 on 26 April 1966.  Her final years were spent in a seniors' care facility.

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Dorchen was played by Tima die Goettliche in Rosa Von Praunheim’s movie about Hirschfeld, The Einstein of Sex, 1999, IMDB.

Several sources claim that Dorchen was medically castrated in 1922 by Dr Erwin Gohrbandt at the Charité Universitätsmedizin in Berlin.   This is not the account in Holz, 1924 – the earliest account, which gives the surgeon as Heinrich Stabel.

Herrn says: “After Dorchen had been at the institute for assessment since May 1923, waiting for the doctors' decision, Heinrich Stabel held out the prospect of castration to her at the end of the year.” (p182). However Pierre Najac provided an exact date eight years later. According to this, the operation took place on 22 May 1923 (p184).

Richter was drafted, apparently, by the German army, although technically at that time he was an Austrian citizen. After 1918 Richter would of course be a Czechoslovak.  The EN.Wikipedia article simply declares Richter to have been German.

How did Dorchen get to Hirschfeld’s Institut?  I have gone with the version in Holz, 1924 based on interviews with Dorchen.  There is an alternate account:

She worked as a waiter or a cook in the fancy hotels in Berlin in the summer, and lived as a woman in the off-season. The police arrested her several times for cross-dressing, and she was sent to a male prison. Eventually a judge took pity on her and referred her to Magnus Hirschfeld who helped her obtain an official permit to dress in women’s clothes.

These two accounts are not necessarily mutually exclusive.  This other account was included in older versions of the EN.Wikipedia article and other secondary sources.  What is missing is a provenance, who first said or wrote that.  So I have not used that version in the account above.

It is not conceivable that Dorchen having returned to Seifen – a small village - at the end of the Great War could have seen the Steinach film there.   It must have been on a trip to Berlin.

Should ‘Dorchen’ be spelt with an umlaut: ‘Dörchen’?  EN.Wikipedia does so; DE.Wikipedia does not.  Neither does Herrn nor Wolfert, so I have not done so.

Bibliography

• Curt Thomella, Leopold Niernberger, Nicholas Kaufmann (dir). Steinachs-Forscbungen.  Germany BW silent 83 mins 1922.
• Werner Holz. Kasuistischer Beitrag zum sogenannten Transvestitismus (erotischen Verkleidungstrieb) mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Aetiologie dieser Erscheinung.  Diss. Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universität zu Berlin, 1924.
• Otto Kankeleit. „Selbstbesch~idigungen und Selbstverstiimmelungen der Geschlechtsorgane“. Zeitschrift fur Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten, 79, 1927: 431-2
• Felix Abraham. “Genitalumwandlungen an zwei männlichen Transvestiten”. Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft und Sexualpolitik, 18: 223-226. 1931. English translation as “Genital Reassignment on Two Male Transvestites”. The International Journal of Trangenderism. 2, 1. Jan-Mar 1998. Case 1.   Archive.
• Pierre Najac. “L’Institut de la Science Sexuelle à Berlin” in Janine Merlet (ed). Vénus et Mercure, Editions de la Vie Modern, 1931 : 165-192.
• Felix Abraham, translated by Pierre Vachet. Les Perversions Sexuelles, d’apres les travaux de Magnus Hirschfeld. Paris: François Aldor, 1931:245-7.
• Lothar Golte (dir).  Mysterium des Geschlechtes.  Scr: Felix Abraham, Lothar Golte, Professor Peham, Hofrat Teilhaber & Serge Voronoff, with Charlotte Charlaque, Toni Ebel and Dorchen Richer (all three uncredited). Austria 63 mins BW 1933.  
• Magnus Hirschfeld. 'L'amour et la science'. Voila, 3, 199, 1 Juli 1933: 6.
• "Operative Umwandlung von Männern in Frauen gelungen" Die Geburtenregelung, 1, 4, 1933:33
• Norman Haire.“Introduction“ to Neils Hoyer (ed).  Man Into Woman. Jarrolds, 1933.
• Pierre Vachet. Psychologie du Vice : Les Travestis. Éditions Bernard Grasset, 1934: 216-9,
• Charlotte Charlaque writing as Carlotta, Baronin von Curtius. "Reflections on the Christine Jorgensen Case". One, the Homosexual Magazine, March 1955: 27-8.
• Rosa Von Praunheim (dir & scr). Der Einstein des Sex - Leben und Werk des Dr. M. Hirschfeld (The Einstein of Sex: Life and Work of Dr. M. Hirschfeld). Scr: Chris Kraus, Valentin Passoni, Friedl von Wangenheim, with Tima die Goettliche as Dörchen. Germany/Netherland 100 mins 1999.  IMDB 
• Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press. 363 pp 2002: 19-20, 292n13.
• Rainer Herrn. Schnittmuster des Geschlechts. Transvestismus und Transsexualität in der frühen Sexualwissenschaft. Giessen, 2005: 96, 176-7, 181-3, 201-4, 217.
• Elena Mancini. Magnus Hirschfeld and the Quest for Sexual Freedom. A History of the First International Sexual Freedom Movement. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010: 69-70.
• Heika Bauer. The Hirschfeld Archives: Violence, Death, and Modern Queer Culture. Temple University Press, 2017: 86-7.
• Pamela L Caughie & Sabine Meyer.  Lili Elbe : Man into Woman: A Comparative Scholarly Edition.  Bloomsbury Acdemic, 2020: 59, 80.
• Raimund Wolfert. Charlotte Charlaque: Transfrau, Laienschauspielerin, „Königin der Brooklyn Heights Promenade“. Hentrich & Hentrich, 2021: 37-9, 42-8, 52-3, 56-8, 59, 63-7, 72-3, 76-7.
• Leah Tigers. “On the Clinics and Bars of Weimar Berlin”.  Tricky Mother Nature.  Nd.  Online.
• Clara. "A Puzzle Piece for the Trans* History".  Lili-Elbe-Bibliothek, 25. April 2023. Online. 
• Oliver Noffke. “Was wurde aus Dora?“.  rbb24-de, 01.06.23.  Online
• Oliver Noffke. "Pioneer of trans* history Dora went to Bohemia". rbb24-de, 02.04.24.  Online.  
• Clara. "Neue Dokumente zu Dora Richter gefunden – und ihr späteres Leben aufgeklärt".  Lili-Elbe-Bibliothek, 30 August 2024.  Online. 

  Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (1919-1933)        EN.Wikipedia     DE.Wikipedia

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Fritz Kitzing (1905 – 199?) bookkeeper, sex worker, shop assistant

Kitzing was born and raised with the name Fritz in the garrison town of Neuruppin, northwest of Berlin. Kitzing trained as a bookkeeper and moved to Berlin in the late 1920s. In late 1933 Kitzing was arrested on Augsburger Straße while in female clothing and charged with prostitution under §361/6 (which dealt with female but not male prostitution) which led to four weeks in jail and then six months in the Rummelsberg workhouse as “protective custody”. Kitzing managed to escape 16 March 1934 while en route to the dentist, and with family help made it to England. However an arrest in London for prostitution led to deportation back to Berlin, although not to re-imprisonment.

Fritz, realising the political situation, was now mainly wearing male clothes. However in June 1935 it was alleged that while walking in female dress near Kurfürstenstraße, he met a Sturmabteilung (SA) man, Herman Rank, out of uniform, and made a pass. Kitzing admitted being gay but denied solicitation. Simply being gay was not a crime up to that point but the Nazi government was about to change the rules. Kitzing was dismissed with a warning.

The police kept watch on Kitzing, but did not catch him in female dress. However, in July 1935 a neighbour complained to the police of a transvestite making trouble. This was taken to be Kitzing, but arrest was eluded until March the next year. A search of her apartment revealed her female clothing, which was confiscated and put in storage. After finally being arrested Kitzing was obliged to dress in the stored clothing and be photographed. 

The police wrote to the Gestapo that “It would be a great service to the public—and even to these morally depraved people themselves—if we sent Kitzing to a concentration camp”. Despite this, Kitzing’s family, especially the brother Hans Joachim, continued to be supportive. Kitzing served five months in the Lichtenburg camp, and was then transferred to Sachsenhausen, before being released in April 1937.

In March 1938, a fellow inmate from Sachsenhausen recognised Kitzing although she was then dressed as female, and informed the police, who told the Gestapo who made an arrest. They discovered letters to friends in London describing conditions in Sachsenhausen. Kitzing was accused of distributing “atrocity propaganda”. He, as were many others, was compelled to enlist in the Wehrmacht, and was in occupied Belgium for most of WWII. 

Afterwards he returned to West Berlin and worked in an antique shop. Kitzing lived until the 1990s. The brother Hans Joachim, a writer, was a war correspondent in Rostov. He never returned from the war.

• Andreas Sternweiler. “Er ging mit ihm alsbald ein sogenanntes ‘Festes Verhältnis’ ein: ganze normale Homosexuelle”in Joachim Müller & Andreas Sternweiler, eds. Homosexuelle Männer im KZ Sachsenhausen. Berlin: Rosa Winkel, 2000: 58-78.
• Clayton J Whisnant. Queer identities and politics in Germany : a history, 1880–1945. Harrington Park Press, 2016: 231
• Jennifer Evans & Elissa Mailänd. “Cross-dressing, Male Intimacy and the Violence of Transgression in Third Reich Photography”. German History, 39,1, June 2020: 2-10, 19, 22-4.
• W Jake Newsome. “Fritz Kitzing”. LGBTQ+ Stories from the Holocaust, Online.
• Jennifer V Evans. The queer art of history : queer kinship after fascism. Duke University Press, 2023: 36, 92-7.
• Joanna Ostrowska. “Non-heteronormative victims of the Nazi regime” 39-45 Chronicles of Terror. No date: 3. Online.
• Jennifer Evans summarises Kitzing’s story in Twitter/X.

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Whisant assumes that Kitzing was a trans woman in the modern sense.   Evans expresses caution in doing so:

"And yet, using Kitzing’s images as ‘proof ’ of homosexual or trans persecution carries the risk of freezing the historical subject in an identity that is not in line with other ways of seeing him. Similarly, viewing Kitzing solely as a male to female transperson, alienated from self and society, belies the fact that he may not have understood himself in these terms. Placing Kitzing within either of these two identity categories cuts him off from other, perhaps simultaneous, identities with which he may have moved through Nazi Berlin. As Jin Haritaworn warns, there is an epistemological side effect to reducing ‘queer’ to an identity category for emancipatory projects.‘Queering up’ for purposes of inclusion has the potential to homogenize dissonance anew. "

Kitzing never applied for a Transvestitenschein.  She may have had a female name for herself, but it is not recorded.

Evans incorrectly claims that Hirschfeld had coined 'transsexual' and, despite her paragraph that I have just quoted, uses it re Kitzing.   See my Did Hirschfeld coin the word and concept ‘transsexual’?

Felix Abraham (1901 - 1937) doctor, Hirschfeld associate

Part I: life

Part II: book

Initial version: February 2016.

Felix Abraham and his older sister, Erna, were the children of a Dutch mother and a Frankfurt am Main doctor, the Jewish medical councillor (Sanitätsrat) Dr. Siegmund Abraham (1866-1929). The mother died when Felix was eleven. At school he got good grades in religion, Latin, singing and gymnastics, but in those only. Erna married an engineering entrepreneur, Erich Marx, in 1919. Felix studied medicine at Heidelberg, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin from 1920 onwards and finally obtained his doctorate in his home town in 1928 with a thesis on the mortality statistics of the first year of life. He completed his practical year at the Municipal Hospital and the Israelite Hospital in Frankfurt am Main. Whilst a student he had already published a paper in Therapie der Gegenwart on “Surgical interventions in abnormalities in sex life”.

Shortly afterwards he started working at Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, which had been re-oriented from a scientific-practical institution to one mainly for treatment, which also provided educational courses and political activities. Hirschfeld had known Felix’s father Dr. Siegmund Abraham, before he died in 1929. However Hirschfeld was soon less than happy with the son. He claimed that Abraham was "not hardworking enough" and "too passive" - yet he loved him "in his awkwardness and eagerness". Nevertheless Abraham became an independent associate of the Institut, took over from Arthur Kronberg the specialization in working with transvestites, and became head of the sexual forensic department. For this purpose, he was provided with his own consulting room and a living room and bedroom in the Institut. Adelheid Schulz (1909-2008), the housekeeper in the Institut from 1928 to 1933, reported that Abraham was listless in fulfilling his duties and was known to take drugs and be drunk on occasion.

However he was active as an expert witness in court cases, wrote expert opinions so that Toni Ebel, Charlotte Charlaque and others could obtain a Transvestitenschein. He and Hirschfeld were on the honorary committee of the transvestite association Club D'Eon, and he prescribed that trans persons should go to other transvestite bars in addition to the Club D'Eon. He, like Karl Giese, became concerned about marriage issues for trans persons, and a special marriage counselling centre for transvestites was set up in the ten-point programme of the D'Eon association. Abraham was also responsible for indictable "sexual offences" as well as infantilism, exhibitionism and flagellation. He was a close friend with the noted pianist Ellen Epstein, who had played with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra.

With Hirschfled and Charlotte Charlaque, acting as interpreter, he attended and gave a lecture at the World League for Sexual Reform in London, 8-14 September 1929. In 1930 he was quoted in Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft und Sexualpolitik: "The number of transvestites is greater than one would expect. In Berlin alone, 1000 cases have become known to us". He advocated “emergency surgery” - castration and sometimes penectomy - to forestall self-mutilation or suicide that desperate trans women might turn to.

In 1930 there was a sensational murder in Berlin. Fritz Ulbrich, a watch repairman, was an adventurous amateur erotic photographer who persuaded over 1,000 teenage girls to pose nude and in lesbian and S&M stagings. In 1929 he recruited the 15-year-old Lieschen Neumann and photographed her for many months. In 1930 she decided to steal his money. She got her boyfriend and his friend to do the deed, but Ulbrich woke up and they killed him. They were quickly apprehended and at a sensational trial in early 1931 the pregnant Lieschen was sentenced to 8 years 3 months, the second friend to 6 years 3 months and the boyfriend to be hanged. Abraham worked with the criminologist Erich Wulffen (who in his 1923 book, Das Weib als Sexualverbrecherin [Women as Sex Criminals], had depicted women as being of less intelligence and sensitivity, with an innate disposition to prostitution) to edit Ulbrich’s collection of photographs. This came out as a book later in 1931 with 150 of Ulbrich’s photographs, with some photographs depicting Ulbrich and his environment, some facsimile reproductions of his correspondence and a court drawing. The first edition was retracted by the publisher and 20 of the plates removed. Many years afterwards copies were still being confiscated by police in Germany and Austria.

Abraham’s four-year contract was not extended by Hirschfeld in the run-up to its expiry in 1933 - for whatever reasons. Hirschfeld was considering Dr Josef Weisskopf (1904-1977) from Brno/Brünn in Czechoslovakia - who organised the 1932 World League for Sexual Reform conference - as Abraham's successor. However when Hirschfeld left on his world tour in November 1930, Abraham officially became Hirschfeld's deputy.

In 1931 he wrote up a report on the first sex-change operations arranged by himself, with surgery by Ludwig Levy-Lenz and Erwin Gohrbandt. Both Dörchen Richter and Toni Ebel had recently had vaginoplasty and their operations were featured. This report was the only account of male-to-female surgery published in a medical journal in this period. In the report he says: 

“I just wanted to give a description of the procedure itself, because I believe an infinite number of patients with these same inclinations exist, who desire similar procedures, but do not know of any means and ways to achieve same. (1931, second page)”

The report concluded: 

“Both cases are part of a larger book that I am working on at this time. I have extracted these cases because they seem to me of principle value and general interest.” 

The expansion came out later that year published in Paris as Les Perversions Sexuelles translated into French by Dr Pierre Vachet. It was in effect a summary of Hirschfeld's work.

At the end of 1931, Eric Thorsell, a Swedish metalworker and later a homosexual activist, came to Berlin for study purposes and took a room at the Institut. Abraham was holding public evening events where he answered questions from the audience. Eric and Felix thus met and became friends.

In August 1932, Abraham and Toni Ebel (using the pseudonym "Wally, formerly Leo E.”) were interviewed by a journalist from Das 12 Uhr Blatt. Abraham said: 

“Of course we could not make a woman out of the man Leo E. who would be able to bring children into the world. At least cosmetically, if you want to call it that, Wally E. has become completely like a woman through the operation. Above all, she now feels herself to be one hundred percent woman, and the man who loves her can, with a little illusion and imagination, find in her the woman he wants her to be.”

Abraham attended the fifth and last World League for Sexual Reform conference in Brno 20-26 September 1932. For the first time the WLSR was allowed to meet in a state university institute, namely in a lecture hall of Masaryk University.

The 1933 film by Lothar Golte, Mysterium des Geschlechts, features two medical students who learn about "most interesting questions of sexology" and fall in love in the process. Documentary sequences show sex reassignment surgery and transplants of animal testicles and explanations about abortion and contraception. Abraham is listed as contributing to the script, presumably the sexual surgery segments (in which Dora Richter, Toni Ebel and Charlotte Charlaque can be seen) - presumably film archives from the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft. The premiere was in Vienna 27 April 1933, but due to massive protests it was removed by police intervention after only a few days. In Germany, it was not even shown in public, as it was banned by the censors.

Abraham was one of only three doctors (with Ludwig Levy-Lenz and Bernhard Schapiro) still at the Institut when it was destroyed by the Nazis on 6 May 1933. By this time he was in financial difficulties and turned to his sister’s husband, Erich Marx, for help. He was also said to be taking morphine and Veronal.

He survived and continued working in Berlin as a doctor, but changed addresses several times, and was unable to continue working with transvestites. Writing in 23 September 1933, the Swedish journalist Ragnar Ahlstedt (1901-1982) gave the following mood and situation report in a letter to Eric Thorsell:

 "The Institut, as you know, is completely destroyed. Abraham, however, has opened his own practice - as long as he is allowed to run it now. He receives patients in Fasanenstraße, a cross street to Kurfürstendamm, not far from the zoo, and his home address is Budapester Straße 21. But I haven't heard from him for several weeks and therefore fear that something has happened. But it may also be that either his letters or mine have disappeared. At least his letters often have the 'bad luck'. My trip to Berlin in July was actually for him personally. I wanted to make sure that no harm had come to him and to encourage him to persevere. But the blow hit him hard too, you could tell, even if he tried to hide it in every way. Only a few days ago, however, I received a letter from mutual friends saying that he could hardly bear the strain without breaking down. And to save him from a nervous breakdown, they want him to go to France. I was asked to influence him in this direction, but I could not decide to do so, because basically it is a matter between him and his conscience. I believe that he would rather fall at his post than abandon his German patients. Surely you too know how dependent they are on him as a spiritual support. I feel so sorry for Abraham, because he is after all a person who is special in every way. Sometimes one hardly dares to think of the future."

Around this time Abraham met Pini Engle, also Jewish, who later became his wife.

In 1936 Abraham attempted to emigrate to Sweden. He knew doctors and journalists there including Ragnar Ahlstedt. He applied for a residence permit at the Swedish Supreme Social Authority in Stockholm on 12 August 1936, giving "medical work and studies" as the reason for his entry. However his application was rejected on 5 December 1936 without further explanation. Eric Thorsell wrote in his journal: 

“He tried to get work as a doctor here in Sweden, but it didn't work out. He was Jewish and almost the entire medical profession was Nazi influenced. So he had to get by with the support of his friends. His friends in Germany sent him a ten-kroner note hidden in a newspaper every time. He lived in a boarding house in Wallingatan, where I visited him a few times. Abraham's fate was tragic - he didn't manage to keep the spark of life glowing after everything fell apart for him in Germany."

In sadness, he returned to Berlin, and for a while lived with Pini’s father, Alexander Engel, a publishing bookseller.

In April 1937 Abraham moved to Florence, Italy with the intention of taking the Italian state medical examination. However the Berlin police had filed charges against him for abuse of narcotics. He took his own life in September.

His sister, Erna, her husband, the mechanical engineering entrepreneur Erich Marx, and their two children, managed to emigrate to England in November 1937.

The commemorative plaque in Florence

Alexander Engel died on 1 July 1939 in the hospital of the Israelitische Privat-Klinik e.V. in Munich.

Abraham’s friend Ellen Epstein died in a slave work camp in Latvia in 1942.

There is commemorative plaque for Abraham’s burial in the Cimitero Israelitico di Caciolle in Florence.

* not the Felix Abraham who wrote about South Africa.

• Felix Abraham. “Chirurgische Eingriffe bei Anomalien des Sexuallebens” (Surgical interventions in abnormalities in sex life) Therapie der Gegenwart, 67, 1926: 451-5.
• Felix Untersuchungen über die Veränderungen der Sterblichkeitsstatistik des ersten Lebensjahres in Frankfurt a.M. MD Thesis,1928. (Studies on the changes in mortality statistics of the first year of life in Frankfurt a.M.). Published by Druck, 1928.
• Felix Abraham. “Auf den spuren des Sexualverbrechens”.(On the trail of the sex crime) Die Aufklarung, 1,8,1929: 232-5.
• Karl Plättner, with Forwards by Magnus Hirschfeld and Felix Abraham. Eros im Zuchthaus. Sehnsuchtsschreie gequälter Menschen nach Liebe. Eine Beleuchtung der Geschlechtsnot der Gefangenen, bearbeitet auf der Grundlage von Eigenerlebnissen, Beobachtungen und Mitteilungen in achtjähriger Haft. Mopr-Verlag, 1929. English translation: Eros in prison : tormented cries of yearning for love.Redlines Press, 2020.
•  “Ein interessanter Tranvestit”. Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft und Sexualpolitik, XVI, 2, 1930: 145-6.
• Felix Abraham. “Transvestiten!”, Die Aufklärung 1930; 2: 165.
• Erich Wulffen & Felix Abraham (eds). Fritz Ulbrichs Lebender Marmor: Eine Sexualpsychologische Untersuchung Des den Mordprozess Lieschen Neumann Charakterisierenden Millieus und Seiner Psychopathologischen Typen - Photomaterial aus den nichtbeanständeten Aufnahmen des Ulbrich'schen Nachlasses (Fritz Ulbrich's Living Marble: A Sexual Psychological Investigation of the Millieu Characterising the Murder Trial of Lieschen Neumann and its Psychopathological Types - Photographic material from the uncaptioned photographs of Ulbrich's estate.).Verlag für Kulturforschung, 1931.
• Felix Abraham. “Genitalumwandlungen an zwei männlichen Transvestiten”. Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft und Sexualpolitik, 18: 223-226. 1931. English translation as “Genital Reassignment on Two Male Transvestites”. The International Journal of Trangenderism. 2, 1. Jan-Mar 1998.  Archive.
• Félix Abraham translated into French by Pierre Vachet. Les Perversions sexuelles d'après les traveauxdu docteur Magnus Hirschfeld .  Editons internationales François Aldor,
• L Rhan. “Gespräch mit einer Frau, die einmal ein Mann war” (Conversation with a woman who was once a man). Das 12 Uhr Blatt,2 August 1932.
• Lothar Golte (dir). Mysterium des Geschlechts. Scr: Lothar Golte, Felix Abraham & Professor Pehem, with Dora Richter, Toni Ebel and Charlotte Charlaque. Austria BW 1933.
• Charlotte Wolff. Magnus Hirschfeld: A Portrait of a Pioneer in Sexology.Quartet Books, 1986: 178, 426, 432, 436-7.
• Rainer Herrn. Schnittmuster des Geschlechts: Transvestitismus und Transsexualität in der frühen Sexualwissenschaft. Giessen: Psychosozial-Verlag, 2005: 115-6, 120-6, 153-6, 183, 185, 192, 195, 197-8, 203, 210, 217.
• Raimund Wolfert & Ralf Dose. “Felix Abraham”. Stolpersteine in Berlin, 12.11.2016. Online.
• Herbert Henck. Ellen Epstein (1898-1942): A Jewish artist from Silesia.  Online.

DE.Wikipedia     Institut für Sexualwissenschaft      Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft e.V.    Frankfurter Personenlexikon

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Also at the Institut were Karl Abraham and Hans Abraham. It is not known if they were related.

While Felix Abraham was the Institut doctor with special responsibilities for ‘transvestites’ for only four years, 1929-1933, he did more for trans persons than any other doctor before Harry Benjamin almost three decades later. He certainly did more than his predecessor Arthur Kronberg who as a psycho-analyst preferred the ‘talking cure’ to practical help. Abraham was more in line with Hirschfeld’s approach to allow patients to dress as they pleased and to acquire a Transvestitenschein.

There are no documents about the time and place of the Abraham-Engel marriage - it may not have taken place until the beginning of 1937. Pini Engel's life and fate are otherwise also unknown. The fact that they were married can only be deduced from a few preserved private letters and Felix Abraham's Italian death certificate, in which he is referred to as "marito di Pini Engel".

The Israelitische Privat-Klinik in Munich continued taking Jewish patients after they lost their entitlement to treatment in public hospitals after 1933.   In May 1942 Heinrich Himmler ordered the hospital to be evacuated. The patients, nurses and doctors housed in the house, including the chief physician Dr. Julius Spanier, were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in three successive transports in June 1942. 

Transvestitenschein - Part II Third Reich

Part I: Weimar Republik

Part II: Third Reich

 Background: While the Nazi party was - with a few exceptions such as Ernst Röhm, leader of the Sturmabteilung [SA] - mainly anti-queer, its persecution was mainly aimed at gay men. Some trans persons were sucked into this persecution and were imprisoned and died. However others managed to get their Transvestitenschein approved or renewed. A very small number managed to gain legal name changes and even gender-affirming surgery. In this and other ways the Third Reich was inconsistent, both in its tolerance and in its murderousness.

30 January 1933: New Cabinet sworn in, with Adolf Hitler as Chancellor.

Hermann Goering was appointed Minister of Interior. He ordered the closure of gay bars. He sacked senior police officers in order to replace them with key Nazi supporters, and recruited 50,000 members of the SA to work as Auxiliary Police (this later became the Gestapo). Thus the police acceptance of the non-criminality of queer persons which had been hard-won during the Weimar-period was lost.

27 February. The Reichstag fire. Immediately before the federal election of 5 March. Nazi organisations monitored the voting, and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) gained a majority.

21 March. The Malicious Practices Act (Verordnung zur Abwehr heimtückischer Diskreditierung der nationalen Regierung) enabled "protective custody" (Schutzhaft - internment without trial on the pretence of protection from ‘the righteous wrath of the population’) of paupers, homosexuals and Jews.

24 March. The first concentration camp was opened close to Dauchau, near Munich. The Reichstag passed what became known as the Enabling Act which allowed laws passed by the government to override the constitution.

6 May. The Deutsche Studentenschaft made an organised attack on the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft.

10 May. Part of the Institut's library and archives were publicly hauled out and burned in the streets of the Opernplatz.

Gerd Winkelmann was working for the post-office in Berlin in 1933 when he first obtained a Transvestitenschein.

Gerd Kubbe had his Transvestitenschein withdrawn.

Toni Simon’s one-year Transvestitenschein was cancelled by the new regime. After a short prison sentence, Simon left for Spain.

Ossy Gades, who had previously worked as a taxi-dancer at the Eldorado but was then working as a man, was arrested several times and beaten for having dressed in women’s clothes. He explained that he was not homosexual, and went out en-femme only when accompanied by his wife. He was still regarded as homosexual.

1934 Toni [not Ebel] was allowed to take that name, and allowed to wear women's clothes. In the following years she felt 'balanced and happy'.

The number of men sentenced to prison under § 175 increased from 464 in 1932 to 575 in 1933 and 635 in 1934. There was as yet no systematic persecution of individual homosexual behavior, and until 1935, convictions remained below the high of 1,107 convictions set in 1925.

21 June. The Night of the Long Knives. The murderous purge of Ernst Röhm and other gay men in the ranks of the SA wing of the Nazis.

Toni Ebel and Charlotte Charlaque fled to Czechoslovakia.

October. Reinhard Heydrich, director of the Schutzstaffel (SS),ordered the police of all large cities to make a list of homosexuals. A separate Gestapo department, the Special Commission for Homosexuality in Berlin, was set up. In late 1934, the Gestapo targeted Berlin and Munich, raiding surviving gay bars and making mass arrests of homosexual men. Many accused of homosexuality admitted to acts that were not punishable under Paragraph 175 and expected to be released; instead, they were mistreated and held in protective custody (Schutzhaft) in Columbia-Haus, Lichtenburg, or Dachau concentration camp.

1935 Gerd Winkelmann applied for an extension of the Transvestitenschein. Winkelmann pleaded that the discrepancy between the name on his papers and his appearance prevented him from getting a job, and that he could not wear female clothing because he was always taken to be a man. He stressed that he was not a lesbian. Three officials found his case to be plausible in that he looked like and passed as a man. They ordered the police to keep an eye on him.

By early 1935, 80 percent of the prisoners held in 'protective custody' (Schutzhaft) in the concentration camps were there for alleged homosexuality. To convict these men, it was decided to change the criminal code.

Paragraph 175 was amended. The new version of the law punished all sexual acts, defined broadly; "objectively when a general sense of shame is harmed and subjectively when there exists the lustful intention to excite either of the two men or a third party". In theory, it became a crime to look at another man with desire. Men were convicted for mutual masturbation or simply embracing each other and in a few cases when no physical contact had occurred. Under the new law, typically all participants were viewed as equally guilty whereas under the previous law, the "active" and "passive" participants were differentiated. The new law made it much easier to arrest and convict homosexual men, leading to a large increase in convictions. Under a new section 175a, the law also introduced harsher penalties for male prostitution, sex with a man younger than 21, or sex with a student or employee. The change in the law was not publicized for fear of spreading knowledge of homosexuality. Most Germans were unaware the law had changed and many of those arrested under the new law had no knowledge they were committing a crime. The law was also applied retroactively.

Trans persons were then under more pressure to prove that they were not homosexual and not sex workers.

Ossy Gades was arrested again, and sent to Lichtenburg concentration camp. This camp was one of the first and housed mostly political prisoners and gay men. He died there a year later.

1936 In April the case re Gerd Winkelmann was passed to the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo), who requested a report from Professor Dr. Müller-Heß of the Berlin Institute for Forensic Medicine (Psychiatric division).

Mathias Robert S moved from Vienna to St Pölten, Lower Austria having had an operation to remove his internal female organs. He applied to have his first name changed. The Regional Sanitary Directorate argued his case as Hirschfeld had done for similar cases. However after a medical examination the request was declined. The Provincial Government emphasised that according to "current customs, the wearing of masculine dress by women occurs often enough, especially in the countryside and in spas and bathing resorts, and there are no police regulations against it. The application for a change of first name was therefore not granted in 1937 for lack of "merit"(rücksichtswürdigen).

Establishment of the Reich Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion (Reichszentrale zur Bekämpfung der Homosexualität und Abtreibung), which oversaw the registration of transvestites. It worked with Gestapo Special Bureau II S.

Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel (Protection Squadron; SS), was quoted in 1937 that it was a “catastrophe if we masculinise women in such a way that the difference between the sexes, the polarity, disappears over time” and "all things that move in the sexual sector" not to be a "private matter for an individual, but they mean the life and death of the people”.

1937 In England, a clergyman and his wife consulted psychiatrist and Hirschfeld associate Norman Haire and asked him to make an application to the Home Office for a transvestism permit such as had been available in Germany. Haire asked a Cabinet Member (and husband of another of Haire’s patients) to make the request. The reply was that it was quite impossible to issue such a permit because it was not illegal to go about in public in the clothes of the opposite sex, and the Home Office could not issue a permit to condone behaviour which was already quite legal.

Hertha Wind was called up for reserve training with the Navy. On arrival she was assumed to be Frau Wind who had called to collect her husband’s papers. By luck the former captain of the battleship Friedrich der Grosse (on which Wind had served) was in the building, and Wind was able to explain to him, and he got the situation put right.

Between 1937 and 1939, nearly 95,000 men were arrested for homosexuality—more than 600 per week—representing a major investment by the Nazi police state. From 1936 to 1939, nearly 30,000 men were convicted under Paragraph 175. Unlike in the past, these men were virtually guaranteed to receive a jail sentence. The length of sentences increased; many men were sentenced to years in jail. Prosecutors, judges, and others involved in the cases increasingly cited Nazi ideology to justify harsh punishment, adopting the regime's rhetoric of "stamping out the plague of homosexuality". The use of concentration camp imprisonment increased; after 1937, those considered to have seduced others into homosexuality were confined to concentration camps.

24 January 1938 when "on the basis of § 1 of the Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and the State of 28 February 1933” Gerd Kubbe was arrested for wearing men's clothing in public till recently, although her permission to do so had been withdrawn in 1933. Kubbe was incarcerated in the Lichtenburg Concentration Camp.

4 March. Mathias S formally applied to the Provincial Governor's Office for "written police permission to wear male clothing" - although this was still not required under Austrian law - and for "entry of the writer's name Mathias Robert S[...] in his passport or in a police identification document"

13 March. With the Anschluß Österreichs, the annexation of Austria, some German law was applied in Austria. That is Transvestitenscheins could now be issued, but Austria unlike Germany retained its own law against lesbianism.

Hertha Wind’s papers were still those of a man despite it being seven years since her completion surgery. Her doctor urged her to stage a showdown. She went to the public baths in Frankfurt and attempted to enter the men’s section, showing her id that said that she was a man. The kerfuffle seemed to be going nowhere, but a few months later she did receive official permission to wear women’s cloths, and the next year new identity documents but as Fraulein, not Frau. And she became Frau a year after that.

Kubbe was released on 12 October that same year, with a temporary permit, and instructed to report to the Berlin Gestapa Department II D. Kubbe was granted permission to wear men's clothing under the condition that she may not go to public places of need, baths and the like in men's clothing. In addition to the Transvestitenschein, Kubbe was allowed to take the gender-neutral first name of Gerd. In addition police surveillance was ordered.

Mathias Robert S again submitted an application to the competent authority for a change of documents or a change of the first name. S. then contacted the Institute for Forensic Medicine in Vienna where a professor agreed to provide an expert opinion free of charge. This led to provisional re-registration in November.

December. Rudolf K appeared “in men’s clothes” at the Vienna Criminal Police Headquarters. He explained that he had worn men’s clothes since 1920 "partly out of disposition, partly for the sake of easier advancement". He was actually using his brother’s papers and was registered with the police as a man. In November he had received a request from the military district command to present "for examination". However, since he knew everyone in his small town, he had "shied away" from complying with this request and turned himself in to the police. He had not applied for a Transvestitenschein, was employed as a photographer’s assistant and was supporting his blind elderly foster mother. On K’s behalf, a lawyer filed an application for a Transvestitenschein and for a legal name change.

Liddy Bacroft, who had had a Transvestitenschein in the early 1920s, but had served time for theft and ‘unnatural fornication’ was released from prison but later was re-arrested for solicitation. A few months into her new sentence, Liddy applied for "voluntary castration" in order to be cured of the "morbid passion that led me down the path to prostitution". She was forensically examined by a medical councillor who recommended subsequent preventive detention.

1939 The police surveillance of Gerd Kubbe was discontinued 25 February.

April. Rudolf K’s application was supported by an official medical certificate.

May. Rudolf K’s case was referred to the Reichsführer SS. The Reichskriminalpolizeiamt supported the application. In July the application to wear mens’ clothes was approved but with a caveat that K be instructed not to go to public places of need, baths and the like. In August the local police approved the change of name. However the Provincial Governor's Office disagreed. The the Ministry of the Interior and Cultural Affairs of the Province of Austria declined to decide and the case was submitted to the Reich Ministry of the Interior in Berlin.

June: “Agnes S” was detained in Berlin for wearing a man’s suit without a Transvestitenschein. S. feared losing his livelihood (selling fruit from a barrow).

August. The Regional Sanitary Directorate again applied for Mathias Robert S to be definitely assigned to the male sex based on the report from the Institute for Forensic Medicine. This was accepted three days later.

Toni [not Ebel] expressed a "wish for a functional vagina". In the same year, the penis was amputated, the urethra was implanted in the perineum, and "vaginoplasty by means of skin folds from the remaining scrotal skin and finally, in 1940, the creation of a vagina artificialis".

1940 February. Gerd Winkelmann’s application was reprocessed. However it was announced that Winkelmann was a woman and must dress accordingly. A change of first name from Gertrud to Gerd would not be allowed. Winkelmann attempted to live as a woman, but met great humiliation.

26 February. The Reich Ministry of the Interior in Berlin approved Rudolf K’s name change.

Mathias Robert S married.

August: “Agnes S” arrested again, but released after promising to dress as female.

Elisabeth and Hertha Wind applied to adopt a baby girl. After Hertha took a four-month Mothers’ Course and gained a diploma, they were permitted to do so.

It was later reported that in 1940 in the town of Gladbeck, North Rhine-Westphalia, two persons previously regarded as women, were declared to be men, and one of them joined the marines.

1941 The Standesämter persevered in the case of Alex Starke, arguing that it was not a private case but a matter of interest to the state. The Interior Ministry issued a ruling in May 1941. They ruled that as Starke had lived as a man since 1920, it would be an ‘unjustifiable hardship’ and maybe even ‘impossible’ for him to have to start living as a woman. The name change was not to be rescinded, however he was not to be allowed to marry.

1942 Henriett B. on completion of her sentence for draft evasion, requested castration. The health department went further and, as a matter of eugenics, did a penectomy. After returning to Hanover B. applied to change her first name from Hinrich to Henriett. No objections to this were raised.

1943 Mathias Robert S and his wife fostered a baby girl. A few years later they adopted her.

Liddy Bacroft completed her prison sentence. She was then transferred to the Mauthausen concentration camp where she was murdered.

1945. WWII ended 8 May. The concentration camps were liberated, and most surviving inmates freed. However queers, convicted under either the original § 175 or under the revised more inclusive § 175 of 1935, were transferred to regular prisons to complete their sentences.

20 September. The Malicious Practices Act, 1933 was repealed by the Allied administration.

1948 Toni [not Ebel]: Although the approval for the change of first name had been granted in October 1934, it was not until 1948 that the "rectification of the registry office records" took place, according to which the applicant was retroactively assigned to the female gender on the basis of a "medical determination". Now she also applied for "rehabilitation" and sought "judicial prosecution and punishment for the crime committed against me in 1933".

1949 After the founding of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR - East Germany) an omnibus bill was passed to repeal all Nazi legislation, thereby reverting to the original 1870 § 175. The Bundesrepublik (BDR - West Germany) retained most Nazi legislation including the revised § 175 of 1935.

1951 Toni Simon’s Transvestitenschein, cancelled in 1933, was restored.

1956 West Germany’s Bundesentschädigungsgesetz (BEG - Federal Compensation Act) offered compensation to victims of Nazism. However it specifically excluded Sinti/Roma/Gypsy/Tsigani, those who were considered asocial under the Nazi regime or men convicted under § 175 . In practice trans persons and female impersonators were also excluded.

Toni Ebel living in East Berlin applied to the DDR for and was granted compensation as a victim of Nazism.

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The following were consulted:

• Rainer Herrn. Schnittmuster des Geschlechts. Transvestismus und Transsexualität in der frühen Sexualwissenschaft. Giessen, 2005: .

• Jane Caplan. “The Administration of Gender Identity in Nazi Germany“. History Workshop Journal, 72, Autumn 2011.

• Katie Sutton. “ ‘We Too Deserve a Place in the Sun’: The Politics of Transvestite Identity in Weimar Germany”. German Studies Review, 35,2, 2012.

• Ilse Reiter-Zatlaukal. “Geschlechtswechsel unter der NS‐Herrschaft”. Beiträge zur Rechtsgeschichte Österreichs, 2014.

• Eva Fels. “Transgender im Nationalsozialismus”. 2014. Online.

• Natasha Frost. “The Early 20th-Century ID Cards That Kept Trans People Safe From Harassment”. Atlas Obscura, November 2, 2017. Online.

• Lisa-Katharina Nader. "Ein Mann in Frauenkleidern": Männliche Transvestiten in deutschsprachigen Printmedien der Habsburgermonarchie und der Österreichischen Republik 1895 bis 1934. Mag. phil, Universität Wien, 2017: 25-8. Online.

DE.Wikipedia

GVWW(La Préfecture de Police, Paris, and permissions de travestissement)