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’?

Lucy Salani (1924-2023) upholsterer, concentration camp survivor

Salani was born in Fassano in Piedmont, and raised in Bologna with the name Luciano. As a teenager Salani was unsure of what she was, information about Hirschfeld’s clinic and what it achieved being unavailable in Mussolini’s Italy. Salani adopted the self description of homosexual, even though it did not properly fit. Homosexuality as a crime had been removed from the 1889 Italian criminal code, although the Fascisti often acted as if it were still illegal. This self description led to estrangement from her family. 

In August 1943 the 19-year-old Salani was called to be conscripted into the army. As homosexuals were prohibited from the army Salani admitted being such, but this was ignored as many claimed the same to avoid being drafted. Salani was assigned to an artillery unit. A month later Italy surrendered to the Allies – the Armistice of Cassible. Germany quickly occupied most of Italy and set up a puppet state, Repubblica Sociale Italiana, also known as Repubblica di Salò. Salani, not wanting to fight for Germany, changed to civilian clothes and walked home to Bologna. The family was fearful of reprisals and Salani hid with another deserter. However they were found and beaten and Salani was inducted into the Wehrmacht, and was assigned to an anti-aircraft unit in a suburb of Bologna. After a bout of bronchitis, Salani was hospitalised and deserted again, and survived in Bologna as a sex worker with even German officers as clients. However she was recognised. Salani was sentenced to a forced labour camp over the border in Bernau am Chiemsee, working on parts for the V-1 rockets. With another inmate, Salani escaped. However they got on the wrong train and ended up in Berlin rather than Italy. When they were recaptured the friend ran and was shot dead: Salani was this time, October 1944, deported to the Dachau concentration camp, and had to wear a Pink Triangle. Salani had the task of marking corpses with number plates and transporting them to the crematorium or mass grave on carts. The camp was liberated by US troops 29 April 1945. While many inmates were compelled into death marches away from the camp as US 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. 

The Salani family was amazed at her return and actually threw a party in celebration, but the estrangement over her gender continued. She left Bologna, worked for a while in a drag show, and worked as a prostitute. In Turin she managed to find work in an upholstery shop that employed women – unusual at that time. Lucy made trips to Paris and met trans women there. In the 1980s she accompanied two trans friends to London where they had transgender surgery, and later she also had the operation. However she was left with no sensation in the genital area.

At the end of the 1980s, Lucy returned to Bologna to look after her elderly parents. By the 2010s she was living alone, until discovered by LGBT groups, Movimento Identità Trans and Arcigay. She became an advocate for concentration camp survivors criticising how they were ignored and forgotten. She did receive 5 million lira (less than €3000) compensation. She applied to enter retirement homes but was rejected in that she did not have a male body to use male toilets, and could not use the female ones in that it said ‘male’ on her identity papers.

In 2009 Gabriella Romano published Lucy’s biography in book form, and two years later as a documentary film. Lucy was featured in two other films: Felice chi è diverso and C'è un soffio di vita soltanto, and appeared on various television programs.

On 2020 Lucy was awarded the Turrita di Bronzo from the city of Bologna.

She died in 2023, at the age of 98.

• Gabriella Romano. Il mio nome è Lucy: L’Italia del XX secolo nei ricordi di una transessuale. Donzelli Editore, 2009 .
• Gabriella Romano (dir) Essere Lucy with Lucy Salani, Italy 2011.
• Gianna Amelio (dir). Felice chi è diverso, with Lucy Salani. Italy 93 mins 2014. IMDB 
  
  
  
• Matteo Botrugno & Daniele Coluccini (dir). C'è un soffio di vita soltanto, with Lucy Salani. Italy 95 mins 2021. IMDB.
• Noemi di Leonardo. “Addio a Lucy Salani, unica transessuale sopravvissuta al lager di Dachau”. Bologna Today, 22 Marzo 2023. Online.

IT.Wikipedia           DE.Wikipedia

Gerd Kubbe (1887 - ) from concentration camp to legal name change

Kubbe had had a Transvestitenschein in the Weimer Republic, but it was withdrawn in 1933 after the National Socialist takeover. He continued to live and work as male until 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” he was arrested.  In justification the charge stated:

“Kubbe has been convicted of wearing men's clothing in public till recently, although her permission to do so was withdrawn in 1933. Her behaviour directly endangered public safety and order. Signed:  Heydrich.” [DeepL translation].  

Kubbe was incarcerated in the Lichtenburg Concentration Camp, which was housed in a castle in Prettin, in Saxony-Anhalt, and had been converted to a camp for women in late 1937.  However Kubbe was released on 12 October that same year, with a temporary permit: 

“She was granted permission to wear men's clothing, which is hereby certified to her for identification with authorities on a temporary basis until an official permit is issued by the Berlin Gestapa. Kubbe is instructed to have this permit, issued on the basis of medical reports, shown to Gestapa Department II D immediately after her arrival in Berlin and to hand over this certificate to the aforementioned office for the purpose of confiscation. (DeepL)”  

This was followed by a letter six days later from the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo) to the Berlin Police Head Quarters:  

“By order of the Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police, the person named in the reference has been 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. Kubbe has received a corresponding certificate from here. I request that the local police stations in question be informed.(DeepL)”.  

On the rear of the letter it was noted that a corresponding note should be added to Kubb’s registration card.  On 25 November 1938, Kubbe was given permission, in addition to the Transvestitenschein, to take a gender-neutral first name - also to be documented on the registration card. 

“By decree of 1 November 1938 [...] the Reich Minister of the Interior approved that the transvestite, Erna, Anna, Marie Kubbe in Berlin, born on 5.5.1887 in Berlin, use the first name Gerd instead of the previous first names.”

In addition police surveillance was ordered and continued until 25 February 1939.  Kubbe's behaviour was found to be impeccable.

 

• Rainer Herrn. Schnittmuster des Geschlechts: Transvestitismus und Transsexualität in der frühen Sexualwissenschaft. Psychosozial—Verlag, 2005: 162-3.
• Rainer Herrn. “Transvestitismus in der NS-Zeit – Ein Forschungsdesiderat”. Zeitung fuer Sexualforschung 2013; 26; 357-8. 

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Gestapa is an office of the Gestapo.

Kubbe was prohibited from going to "public places of need (toilets), baths and the like in men's clothing" - that is to places that it is assumed where gay men would be found.

One problem with transitioning to male during wartime is that one may be conscripted and sent to fight.  However none of the trans men in the Third Reich seem to have run into that problem.

Lotte Hahm (1890 - 1967) activist, bar owner, ball organizer

Charlotte Hahm was born in Dresden. As Lotte – sometimes as Lothar - Hahm was a transvestite and lesbian activist in 1920s Berlin.

From 1926 she ran the DamenKlub Violetta which had 400 members. She often performed her own cabaret act at the club. She hosted a New Year’s ball at the end of 1926, and her balls became part of the lesbian scene.

She sought to organize lesbians together with transvestites of both sexes. Newly arrived male-to-female transvestites were advised to see Hahm for advice on where to buy female clothing.

From 1928, Hahm was head of the women’s group in the Bund für Menschenrecht (BfM; Union for Human rights – founded by gay publisher Friedrich Radszuweit (1876-1932) in 1923).

E.K., like Hahm, an out transvestite, wrote against the 1920s fashion of a skirt topped by a man’s jacket and tie. He wrote in Die Freundin (The Girlfriend – a women’s publication that contained material for both male and female transvestites):

“What good are tuxedos to me when they are not accompanied by trousers? I will do without the tuxedo, but not the trousers.”

In 1929 Hahm founded the Monbijou Association, which later in the same year was merged with Violetta after the members so voted. She founded the Transvestitenvereinigung D`Eon (Transvestite Association) for both male and female transvestites, and led it for a year. This was so successful that a few weeks later they had to find a larger meeting place. Later the Association had its own dance events at Violetta. Its events were reported in Die Freundin.

Radszuweit and Hahm launched a new association, Bund für ideale Freundschaft (“Union for ideal friendship”), whose statutes were published in Die Freundin, 22, 28 May 1930. Balls and parties were fun, and fine, but they must also think about fighting for their rights.

That was the same year that Hahm started organizing annual steamboat trips on the Spree river.

Later the same year, the sexologist Franz Scheda linked lesbianism and prostitution, and claimed that “50% of Berlin’s prostitutes are lesbians”. Hahm organized a rebuttal lecture.

Hahm left the BfM in 1931, and in 1932 opened the Manuela Bar, where she performed as a comic with an accordion.

That same year, Hansi (not Hansi Sturn, the Miss Eldorado of 1926) took a very different position to that of E.K. and Lotte. She wrote in Die Freundin:

“I declare that we are not transvestites, with only a few exceptions, we masculine women do not wear suits or shirts and ties in order to wear men’s clothing. We want to remain women, which is why we also wear skirts. It is only the masculine touch that we emphasize. Female transvestites are as rare to find as homosexual male transvestites.”

However change was coming. In late 1932, police licences were to be denied to bars where only homosexuals danced, and in 1933, all same-sex dancing was banned. The last issue of Die Freundin was 8 March 1933. By then the Nazi Party had become the government.

In 1935 a stranger approached Hahm in Alexanderplatz, and asked her to watch his baggage. She was then inspected by the Gestapo, who found communist flyers in the man's baggage. It is said that she had been denounced by the father of a lover, who may have been under age. Hahm was sent to the concentration camp for women at Moringen. Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler visited the camp in May 1937, and a few months later decided to close the camp and relocate its prisoners.

Hahm was one of the few who was released, albeit half-paralyzed, probably in 1938. She returned to Berlin and again organized social evenings for lesbians, but it did not last long.

In 1945, under the occupation she again led a women’s club. In 1958 she was part of a group that attempted to re-establish the BfM.

She died aged 77.

• E.K. “Meinungsaustausch der Transvestiten”. Die Freundin, 13, 11 July 1927: 6.
• Lotte Hahm. “Mondscheinfahrt fur unsere Frauen!”. Die Freundin, 25 June 1930: 6 .
• Lotte Hahm. “Mondschein-Dampferpartie von ‘Violetta’” Die Freundin, 2 July 1930:5.
• Hansi “Die Welt der Transvestiten”. Die Freundin, 23, 8 June 1932: 6.
• Florence Tamagne. A history of homosexuality in Europe : Berlin, London, Paris, 1919-1939, volume I & II. Algora Publishing, 2006: 79, 364.
• Katie Sutton. The Masculine Woman in Weimar Germany. Berghahn, 2011: 118-9.
• Julie Nero. Hannah Höch, Til Brugman, Lesbianism, and Weimar Sexual Subculture. PhD Thesis Case Western Reserve University, 2013: 102n334, 155, 374.
• Marti M. Lybeck. Desiring Emancipation: New Women and Homosexuality in Germany, 1890–1933. SUNY Press, 2014: 151-2, 163, 165-7, 181, 187, 195-6, 231 n2,3.
• Laurie Marhoeffer. Sex and the Weimar Republic: German Homosexual Emancipation and the Rise of the Nazis. University of Toronto Press, 2015: 56-8, 62-5, 200.

Lesbengeschichte

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Pronouns.   There is no mention that Lotte asked to be addressed by male pronouns.   So in German Hahm was sie not er.   Being also active in feminist organizing, it would have been difficult to take the extra steps into masculinity.   While Virginia Prince combined transvestity with men's rights, Prince was never involved with the men's rights organizations of the period, and is not at all mentioned in the men's liberation books of the 1970s and 1980s.

Hansi's dress style combining a skirt and stockings with men's jackets and ties was common in the 1920s.  So it was more a fashion statement than identity expression.    Almost all of the photographs of Radclyffe Hall show her in a skirt.

There is no mention at all of Lotte Hahm in Halberstam's Female Masculinity.

Ossy Gades (1902 – 1936) performer, barman

From 1929-31 Ossy Gades worked as the transvestite door-host and taxi-dancer first at the Eldorado nightclub at Lutherstrasse 30, and then at the new and larger premises at Motzstrasse.

Ossy was probably one of these

By 1933, Ossy was working as a man at the DéDé Bar on Bülowstrasse. It was part-owned by a Sturmabteilung (SA) Lieutenant and, by 1934 renamed the Bülow-Krug. Despite this Gades 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.

On 25 May 1935 he 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.

• Rainer Herrn. Schnittmuster des Gesch-lechts. Transvestitismus und Trans-sexualität in der frühen Sexual-wissenschaft. Giessen: Psychosozial-Verlag 2005: 159.
  
• C-J Charpentier. Isherwood och Berlin. 2015: 6. PDF

Cabaret-Berlin

Marie André Schwidenhammer (1909 – 1981) nurse, activist.

Georges Marie André Schwidenhammer was born into a rich industrial family in the Vosques. There were a few scandals before the war with regard to his crossdressing.

After studying physics and chemistry, he enlisted in the Army, where he attained the rank of captain.

Working with the Résistance in 1940, he helped several hundred prisoners-of-war escape the camp at Luneville. Then from late 1940 to 1943 he organized the production of a scouring powder, which employed a few dozen young people who would otherwise have been conscripted for compulsory labour in Germany. In 1943 he was arrested and sentenced to death by the Gestapo, and finally, interned at Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp (in Alsace which had been incorporated into the Reich). There he was subjected to experimental hormonal treatment.

After 1945, he was forced to resign from the Army, and his internment was not recognized by the Military Pensions office.

Schwidenhammer now chose to live as female, using the name Marie André. She obtained diplomas in para-medical specialities and practiced as a masseuse therapist nurse, first in Paris hospitals and Monaco, then she moved to private practice, establishing a practice in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, where she worked until her death. She was in contact with most French transsexuals and transvestites. She also worked with Mme Bonnet who did waxing and electrolysis.

In the early 1950s, Marie André happened to meet Coccinelle by chance on a train, and informed her of hormones, and of the possibility of transition.

In 1963 Marie André was decorated with the cross for voluntary fighters in the Résistance.

In 1965 she founded AMAHO (l'Aide aux Malades Hormonaux), registered under the law of 1 July 1901 regarding voluntary associations. She proposed that transsexuals and transvestites were the result of growth hormones injected into calves and chickens which were then eaten by pregnant mothers.

She was for many years the transsexual spokesperson, frequently quoted in newspapers and books. She did not hesitate to approach government ministries on behalf of transsexuals. AMAHO issued membership cards that closely resembled the French National Identity Card. This was tolerated by the Prefecture of Police.

With a judgement in cassation in 1975, and and a ruling in the Court of Appeal of Reims, 1979, she was able to remove her first name ‘George’ from her identity papers. This became a precedent for all French citizens.

She became strident as was probably necessary for her work, but this did alienate some.

She died in a car accident. Her grave, very simple with her birth name only, is located near Chartres.

• Joseph Doucé. La Question transsexuelle. Paris: Luminière et justice. 1986 :159.
• Maxime Foerster. Histoire des transsexuels en France. Paris: Harmatten 2003. Beziers: H&O 2006: chp 2.

FR.Wikipedia    

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While rarely remembered outside France, she is of course a pioneer trans activist, who was working at the same time as Virginia Prince, José Sarria and Reed Erickson in the US and Della Aleksander and Charlotte Bach in the UK.

Both Doucé and Foerster express skepticism re the hormonal treatments in the concentration camp.  We have only Schwidenhammer’s own word for this having happened.

Ovida Delect (1927 - 1996) poet and political activist.

Jean-Pierre Voidies was part of the French Communist Résistance to the German invasion. He was arrested and sent to Neuengamme concentration camp.


After the war Jean-Pierre was a political activist, a poet, a novelist, a husband and father.

At the age of 55 Jean-Pierre transitioned to female and became Ovida. She lives in Normandy with her ex-wife, Huguette Voidies.

• Ovida Delect. La prise de robe. Itinéraire d'une transsexualité vécue. Edité à compte d'auteur, 149 pp 1982.
• Françoise Romand (dir). Appelez-moi Madame. France 52 mins 1986.
• Ovida Delect. La Vocation d'être femme: itineraire d'une transsexualité vécue. Paris: Editions L’Harmattan 384 pp 1996. (includes La prise de robe).

FR.Wikipedia

Here is a poem that the 18-year-old Jean-Pierre wrote in January 1945 without pen or paper after being marched 5 kilometres, barefoot in the snow:

Sous l'étoile trop pure
Du grand ciel froid
La toile de la tente
Au vent qui tourmente
Claque - et c'est la voile
Des galères d'autrefois.
Oppressés, compressés
Les prisonniers s'irritent
Des toux rocailleuses
Et des voix pleureuses
Des mourants qui s'agitent.
Le projecteur est dur
La sentinelle boit
Je ferme mes gerçures
Et mes lèvres sans joie.
Le projecteur est dur
La sentinelle boit
J'étire mes jointures
Et fais craquer le bois.

Flossenbürg concentration camp

In February 1942 an SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer in full uniform, with silver ribbons and decorations, together with an elegant young lady in an evening dress, were arrested in a box at the Hamburg opera, following a denunciation, in that the lady was a young man of 19, a soldier in the Waffen-SS, and home on leave in Hamburg. His father owned a major nightclub on the Reeperbahn.

They were taken directly to Flossenbürg concentration camp in Bavaria, and locked in separate individual cells. They remained in solitary confinement until the camp was liberated in April 1945, other than an hour each night for exercise, but not at the same time. This was at the express command of SS-Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler who did not want such a prominent officer mixing with other prisoners and wearing the pink triangle.

The lady, who was very pretty, 'even for a girl', was allowed to live only in that his father had important connections in the Nazi party, and paid a large bribe. Money from the father, plus the trade of the jewellery that he was wearing ensured that these two prisoners got extra food.

The SS intended to have them shot before the camp was liberated in 1945, but in the general chaos of that time they managed to escape.

• Heinz Heger. Die Männer mit dem rosa Winkel : der Bericht eines Homosexuellen uber seine KZ-Haft von 1939-1945. Hamburg: Merlin-Verlag 1972. English translation: The Men with the Pink Triangle. Alyson Publications, Inc 1980 p65-6.