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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Toni Simon (1887 - 1979) cafe owner, high voltage tester, pornography smuggler

Simon was raised in Thuringia with the name of Anton. Father was a blacksmith. Even as a child Simon wore girls’ clothes whenever possible, and was pleased to do housework for mother. At age 17 Simon volunteered for the cavalry to avoid service in the infantry where his ‘girlish’ gait would be mocked, but was mocked anyway. After three years of service, Simon became a machinist in a bicycle factory. A marriage to a woman in 1908 resulted in five children. Simon worked in breweries and tanneries, went to sea as a stoker and herring fisherman, and worked as a bridge builder in northern cities such as Kiel, Wilhelmshaven and Bremen. When the war started in August 1914 Simon was running a business selling newspapers and maps – which was taken over by his wife when he was conscripted. After 1918 Simon opened a restaurant in the Ruhr area, and in 1923 opened Café 4711 in Essen's Segerothstraße, which also acted as a “neuer Damenklub” for Essen’s transvestites. Herr and Frau Simon separated in 1927 and their divorce was finalised in 1932. 

Simon was arrested several times for illegal beer sales from the secret bottle cellar of Café 4711. In August 1929, Simon was summoned to appear before the Essen district court, and appeared in women's clothes. The judge found this "improper", and imposed an administrative fine of 100 marks. Simon's appearance caused a stir not only in the Ruhr press, but also in the Berlin transvestite scene. Simon wrote an account which appeared in the magazine Die Freundin (The Girlfriend – a lesbian magazine with trans content) asking whether he should appear again "als Dame (as a lady)" at the next trial. A reader from Upper Bavaria, who would also "rather be a woman", expressed indignation at the judgement of the Essen district court and recommended that Simon obtain official permission to wear female clothing, a Transvestitenschein.

Toni Simon in the 1930s

In June 1930 Simon had written to the Friedrich Radszuweit (1876-1932) publishing house advising against a new magazine especially for transvestites in that "A transvestite doesn't read a transvestite magazine, because he'd rather spend his money on nice stockings". 

By then Simon was undergoing a deep personal crisis, and turned to Elsbeth Ebertin (more) (1880-1944) the most prominent of the first female astrologers and a prolific author who had achieved fame after she drew up a horoscope on an unnamed person who was later revealed to be Adolf Hitler, and who had published a book on homosexuality in 1909 (Auf Irrwegen der Liebe) where she counted transvestites among a sixth group of homosexuals: those who are "all too in need of love", and who only stray into "sexual aberrations" out of the "exuberance of their feelings" or out of "sexual need".

Simon told Ebertin how she had wanted to be a girl since early childhood, had often had thoughts of suicide, transvested on the street, and how having been in love only three times, always with a woman, but often fantasized about love with men. Simon claimed to have been the editor of a transvestite magazine (but which one was not specified). The actual editors of Die Freundin had been incensed by the letter to Radszuweit, but otherwise supported Simon who was open about transvesting, freely used her name and provided photographs. 

By 1932 Simon was completely impoverished and had had to close Café 4711. At the Essen criminal court 19 January 1932 Simon als Dame presented a Transvestitenschein. The charges of serving alcohol without permission, organising public dances and "insulting public officials in a way that was dangerous to the public" were upheld, but the charge of “groben Unfugs (gross mischief)” was dropped given that the accused had a Transvestitenschein. Simon was fined 25 marks. 

Based on the letters and newspaper articles that Simon had provided, Elsbeth Ebertin wrote a pamphlet Mann oder Frau! Das Schicksal einer Abenteurer-Natur (Man or Woman:The Fate of an Adventurer's Nature) which told of Simon and included two photographs and was published in Hamburg.

After the Nazi takeover in 1933, Simon’s Transvestitenschein was cancelled. After a short prison sentence, Simon emigrated to Spain, but returned after the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936, and obtained work as a fitter.

23 October 1937 Anton Simon was charged by the Special Court of Stuttgart with “Heimtücke (insidiousness - political insult according to § 2 paras. 1 and 2 of the Nazi law of 20 December 1934)” having been denounced for criticizing the then government as idiots and rascals. Simon was sentenced to one year in prison – this was served in the Rottenburg am Neckar prison. 11 May 1938 Simon was granted amnesty on the basis of the "Law on Obtaining Immunity from Punishment" of 30 April 1938 and the remaining sentence was commuted to three years' probation. After release, Simon worked in a metal processing company.

Simon was convicted again and imprisoned for six months in the Welzheim police prison/concentration camp at the end of 1939.

Toni Simon in the 1950s

In 1949 Simon was living in a caravan in Swabia and applied for reparations under the 1949 compensation law for the time in the Rottenburg prison and in the Welzheim police prison as well as for the three years spent in Spanish exile. The proceedings dragged on into 1952, with repeated appeals against the court decisions. Simon’s lawyer repeatedly obtained freeze periods during which the proceedings were suspended, while Simon was to produce new evidence, but was unable to do so. The previous convictions, especially the pre-1933 ones counted against her application.

Simon worked as a tester of high-voltage pylons. In this, and in the applications for reparations, she was referred to as Anton and Herr Simon. At the same time she was considered as a survivor of the pre-war queer scene in Stuttgart, and worked with the gay group Kameradschaft die runde which met in Stuttgart pubs. She arranged meetings and dances, and ‘Toni Simon’ was mentioned in advertisements in the local press. Her Transvestitenschein had been restored in 1951.

She supplemented her pension in the 1950s by smuggling in queer pornography from Denmark which at that time had a more liberal attitude to such publications.

Toni Simon died age 92.

• Toni Simon. „Angeklagter in Frauenkleidern. Die Welt der Transvestiten“. Die Freundin, 5,13, 1929.
• Elsbeth Ebertin. Mann oder Frau! Das Schicksal einer Abenteurer-Natur. Dreizack-Verlag, 1933.
• Rainer Herrn. Schnittmuster des Geschlechts: Transvestitismus und Transsexualität in der frühen Sexualwissenschaft. Psychosozial-Verlag, 2005: 140, 144.
• Raimund Wolfert: „Zu schön, um wahr zu sein: Toni Simon als ‚schwule Schmugglerin‘ im dänisch-deutschen Grenzverkehr“ Lambda Nachrichten 32, 133, 2010: 36–39. Online.
• Katie Sutton. “ ‘We Too Deserve a Place in the Sun’: The Politics of Transvestite Identity in Weimar Germany”. German Studies Review, 35,2, 2012.
• Julia Noah Munier & Karl-Heinz Steinle. “Wiedergutmachung von Transvestiten und Damenimitatoren nach 1945”. LSBTTIQ in Baden und Württemberg: Lebenswelten, Repression und Verfolgung im Nationalsozialismus und in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 21. Dezember 2017. Online.
• Karl-Heinz Steinle. “Toni Simon, geb. als Anton Simon”. Sie machen Geschichte: Lesbische, Schwule, Bisexuelle, Transsexuelle, Transgender, Intersexuelle, Queere, Menschen in Baden Württemberg.:22-3. Online.

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

Peggy Wijnen (1945 – 1967) barmaid.

Jean-Marie Wijnen, Antwerp, was the only boy in a family of several girls. Wijnen always preferred to play with girls, and later quit technical school after being deemed too frail to work in a steel mill, and then was discharged from military service.

As Peggy, Wijnen worked as a hairdresser and as a barmaid.

Peggy approached a clinic in Uccle, Brussels and was assigned three doctors: Andre Fardeau, plastic surgeon, Jean Slosse, endocrinologist and Victor Leclarc, urologist, and with the consent of the Wijnen family, they agreed to supply transgender surgery. This was done 13 October 1967. However 11 days later, Peggy died of a blood clot.

The three doctors were charged with inflicting fatal blows and wounds with premeditation and willingly but without intent to kill. Dr Leclarc died before the trial ended. Drs Fardeau and Slosse were acquitted in that consent, both of Peggy and her family, had been given, and that no medical mistake was noted.

• “Two Doctors Are Acquitted in Death Case”. Associated Press, Sep 28, 1969. Online
  
• Internacional Areco: entre o sítio e as eleições Bélgica Um Julgamento Transexual. Online

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The Internacional Areco article tells us that the going rate for transgender surgery in Belgium in 1967 was 100,000 Belgian francs, which at that time was about £725, which this site says would be the equivalent of £11,870 now.

Harry Sidney Foy (1901 – 1942) barman, female impersonator.

Harry Foy was born in Sydney, NSW. The son of a horse-trainer, Harry worked as a barman, but at night he was Sydney’s best-known female impersonator after Lea Sonia died.

He had appeared at various venues in Sydney since the mid 1920s. He often performed at the Ziegfeld Club where in semi-drag he flirted with the customers. A visiting US sailor, John Williams, took offence and struck him in the mouth. He fell and never recovered consciousness. Williams was charged with manslaughter, released on £40 bail, handed over to the US shore patrol and never seen again.

• Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 25 Dec 1942: 5.
  
• Truth (Sydney), 3 Jan 1943: 7.
  
• Sunday Telegraph (Sydney), 3 Jan 1943:18 .
  
• Garry C. Wotherspoon. 'Foy, Harry Sidney (1901 - 1942)'. Australian Dictionary of Biography, Supplementary Volume. Melbourne University Press, 2005, p. 134. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/foy-harry-sidney-12926.
  

Frédé Baulé (1914 - 1976) club owner

In 1936 Marlene Dietrich was in Paris for the opening of a new Maurice Chevalier musical at the Casino de Paris. Erich Maria Remarque, an ex-beau of Dietrich, also came to the show and the reception afterwards. His date for the evening was a 20-year-old woman, Frédérique Baule (born Suzanne Baulé). But it was Dietrich that Baule left with.

Frédé, as she preferred to be known, spent much of the next few years with Marlene who kept returning to Paris as often as her Hollywood career would allow.

In 1938 Marlene set Frédé up in business with a nightclub that was officially called La Silhouette (after Marlene's favourite bar in Berlin), but was generally known as Chez Frédé. It catered to lesbians and cross-dressing women, but also to celebrities.

Frédé's dress and haircut became quite masculine. Errol Flynn describes her in his autobiography:

"She dressed better than any man I had ever seen. … her over-all effect that of a sophisticated English schoolboy. Her man's haircut looked better on her than on any man."

Apparently La Silhouette was able to stay open during the German occupation. The club did so well that in the late 1940s Frédé moved to a larger place, Carroll's. Marlene, of course, was present for the opening, and also Erich Maria Remarque and Maurice Chevalier.

• Kenneth G. Mclain. "The Untold Story Of Marlene Dietrich". Confidential, July 1955. Online at: http://lastgoddess.blogspot.ca/2012/11/marlene-dietrichs-confidential-file.html.
• Errol Flynn & Jeffrey Meyers. My Wicked, Wicked Ways. NY: Berkley Publ. Corp, 1979. NY: Cooper Square Press, 2003: 221-3.
• Axel Madsen. The Sewing Circle: Hollywood's Greatest Secret : Female Stars Who Loved Other Women. New York: A Birch Lane Press Book published by Carol Publishing Group, 1995: 150. 
• Diana McLellan. The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood. New York: LA Weekly Books, 2000: 227, 244-5, 327-8, 355, 358.

• Denis Cosnard. Frede. Des Équateurs, 2017.

Michael Semeniuk (18??-1909) head-waiter.

Michael Semeniuk was head waiter at one of the most prestigious restaurants in Czernowitz in Austria-Hungary (Cernăuți in Romania after 1918, and Chernivtsi (map) in the Ukraine since 1944). He was well-regarded and popular.

In 1909 he fell ill. Neighbours summoned a doctor, but he met with such resistance when he attempted an examination that he had to leave without making a diagnosis. Michael poisoned himself overnight. Examination of the body disclosed that he was female-bodied.

• Arthur Koestler & Norman Haire based on the work of Magnus Hirschfeld. Sexual Anomalies and Perversions Physical and Psychological Development, Diagnosis and Treatment : a Summary of the Works of the Late Professor Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. London: Encyclopaedic Press, 1952: 223.

Ernest Wood (1900 – 1924) cellarman, waiter.

Ernest Wood was taken on by Pinoli's Italian restaurant in Wardour Street, Soho, London, when he was 14. He worked first as a cellarman, as which he had to roll heavy barrels and catch rats. and then as a waiter.

He shared a bedroom with a half-dozen workmates. Wood was described as a dandy, and was said to have three girlfriends whom he would take to the cinema or to the variety theatre. He also bred dogs. His workmates made fun of his light voice, and Ernest joked back that he didn't shave either.

In 1923 he moved to the Astoria hotel as a waiter, a job at which he was very successful.

Wood died of consumption at age 24, which led to the discovery that he was female bodied. No family came forward, and officials at the infirmary were at a loss how to bury the body as his female name was unknown. "Miss Ernest Wood" was suggested.

• The News of the World. 18 May 1924: 9; 22 May 1924:4.
• Wigan Observer and District Advertiser. 20 May 1924: 2,16
• Illustrated Police News. 22 May 1924: 4.
• Alison Oram. Her Husband was a Woman!: Women's gender-crossing in modern British popular culture. Routledge, 2007: 19, 23-6, 46.

Joseph Dean (188? – 1963) gigolo, bar owner.

Short and dark-skinned, possibly born in Egypt of mixed parentage, Don Kimfull met Reginald de Veulle in Paris. They shared an interest in social occasions where dressing as female was encouraged, and were present at such a party in Maidenhead when locals started throwing stones. However Don avoided Regie in later years.

Don became involved in London in drug retailing, as a gigolo and sometimes as a thief, but avoided the inquest into the death of Billie Carleton in 1919 by claiming that he had pleurisy.

After time spent in France and Germany, he arrived in Tangiers in the 1930s, using the name Joseph Dean and became head barman at the El Minzah Hotel. He opened his own Dean’s Bar in 1937. During the Second World War it was rumoured that he fed information to intelligence services. He was also said to be a drug addict, and that he had been jailed for trafficking.

Dean’s Bar thrived as part of the Interzone where Tennessee Williams, Ian Fleming, Francis Bacon, Jane Bowles etc drank at one time or another. Dean took against William Burroughs on sight however and did not want to serve him.

There is no mention of cross-dressing in later years.

• Robin Maugham. Escape from the Shadows; Robin Maugham, His Autobiography. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1972: 206.
• Michelle Green. The Dream at the End of the World: Paul Bowles and the Literary Renegades in Tangier. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1991. New York, NY: HarperPerennial, 1992: 46-7, 152, 229.
• Marek Kohn. Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1992: 21, 22, 78-9, 93, 108, 117-9.
• Francis Poole. Everybody Comes to Dean's: Dean's Bar, Tangier ; with Two Poems. Newark, Delaware: Poporo Press, 2009.
• Nicholas Kirshman. “Tangier”. Morocco Blog VIII. http://schools.webster.k12.mo.us/education/projects/projects.php?sectionid=4158&&PHPSESSID=0c55158418912c60064c970e167e82c4.

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Some point out that Dean was the real-life version of Rick in the film Casablanca.  However I was unable to find a statement that the authors of Casablanca did in fact have Dean in mind.

Alfred Taylor (1862 - ?) aristocrat, procurer, waiter.

Alfred Waterhouse Somerset Taylor was the son of a cocoa manufacturer. He served in the 4th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, City of London Regiment. In 1883 he inherited ₤45,000, which he proceeded to spend, and had become bankrupt.

He introduced several young men to Oscar Wilde, and ran a male brothel.

In 1893 he and Charles Mason were wedded, Taylor being the bride and dressed accordingly. 1894 he and Arthur Marling, a female impersonator, were arrested for wearing female clothing at a party given by John Preston on Fitzroy Street.

In 1895 when Wilde was arrested, Taylor was arrested with him, and charged with procuring. The police found a considerable collection of female clothing in his room. Taylor refused to turn Queen’s Evidence against Wilde, the two men were tried together, and both sentenced to two years with hard labour.

On release Taylor emigrated to the United States where nothing is known of him except that in the 1920s he was working as a waiter in Chicago, for by chance he served Alfred Douglas, Wilde's old lover, who was visiting the city.

*Not the surgeon at Guy’s Hospital, nor the Tennessee Governor.

• Alfred Taylor. “Testimony”. The Trials of Oscar Wilde 1895. www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/wilde/Crimtaylor.html.
• Rupert Croft-Cooke. Feasting with Panthers; A New Consideration of Some Late Victorian Writers. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968: 266-78, 280, 282.
• Richard Ellman. Oscar Wilde. Vintage Books 1988: 389-91,441,445,459,462, 474-9, 486.

Clementine Delait (1865 - 1939) café owner, bearded lady.

Clémentine Clattaux was raised in Thaon-les-Vosges in Lorraine. She shaved regularly and was married to Joseph Delait, a café owner, until she saw a bearded lady at a fair in Nancy.

She bet with her husband’s customers that she do better, and she won the wager. Her husband renamed the café to Café de la femme á barbe, and the curious came from all over France to see Clémentine.

She was also a keen cyclist.   In the Great War she was a famous Red-Cross nurse.

After her husband’s death in 1928, Clémentine appeared on stage in London and Paris. She obtained permission to wear male clothing, and paid the associated tax, so that she could dress as she chose.

In the 1970s, Thaon-les-Vosges opened a museum to its most famous daughter.

• Frederick Drimmer. Very Special People: The Struggles, Loves and Triumphs of Human Oddities. Bantam Books. 1976: chp 12.
• Joe Nickell. Secrets of the Sideshows. Lexington, Ky: University Press of Kentucky, 2005: 152.
• Tom Hernandez. “Sideshow X-Dressers IV”. Quasi-Modo. www.quasi-modo.net/Cross_Dressers_4.html.

FR.Wikipedia.

Charlotte Maria Beatrix Augusta Bach (1920 -1981) hotel employee, accommodation agent, hypnotherapist, would-be philosopher, fake baron.

See also Charlotte's Bach's Theory of Evolution. 

Karoly Hajdu, the son of a tailor, was raised in Budapest. Karoly did badly at school but read voraciously on his own.

After Hungary declared war on the Soviet Union in 1941 he managed to obtain a ‘student exemption’. In 1942 he forged a birth certificate that he was Karoly Mihaly Balazs Agoston Hajdu, son of the Baron of Szadelo and Balkany. Shortly afterwards he was conscripted into the Railway Builders Regiment, but managed to wrangle a transfer to the army propaganda unit – where he stole cameras and sold them on the black market. He later admitted that he had cold-bloodedly killed a teenage soldier because he could not show the right papers, and claimed to have been in the German SS.

After the war his sister emigrated to Venezuela, and later was joined by their mother.

Calling himself Karl Hajdu , Karoly managed to get to the British sector in Austria, and from there, as he spoke good English, to Britain in 1948 as a refugee. Presenting himself as Baron Carl Balkanyi who at been a university lecturer, he got a job at Harwich Labour Exchange, and then at the British Council.

He was experimenting with cross-dressing. A friend left a suitcase with his wife’s dresses and underwear and Carl tried them all on. He asked the friend to remove the case. He bought female clothing, and then purged them.

He worked in small hotels and nightclubs, and in Brighton met Phyllis Rogers. She and her son moved to London to be near him, and they were married in February 1953. Carl put his female clothing into storage.

He opened an accommodation agency in Paddington, illegally charging prospective tenants. He was taken to court several times on this charge and for not registering his business, being fined increasing amounts. Shortly after the 1954 conviction, he presented at the Hungarian Embassy declaring that he was a fugitive and prepared to go back. This was reported in the Daily Mail. The Sunday People sent a reporter to his agency, and ran a lengthy article on how he ran his business.

After the Hungarian Uprising, Hajdu collected ₤2,000 to send ‘freedom fighters’ into Hungary, and led a march to Downing Street. However he was not able to explain where the money went.

In 1957 he was pressed into bankruptcy listing 26 creditors. He retrieved his case of women’s clothing.

Shortly afterwards he took the name of Michael Karoly and took a course in hypnotherapy. He never graduated but set up in business as a hypnotherapist anyway. He also was taken on as a psychology lecturer at the Stanislavsky Studios in Knightsbridge, and wrote a column on psychology for Today magazine. He was also commissioned by Paul Elek, a Hungarian, to write a book on hypnosis. The book, the only one of his ever published, includes an early explanation of the joys of cross-dressing, and many of the patients in the book are aspects of himself.

Michael and Charlotte, both

In 1963 he was charged at Knebworth with a breach of the peace after being arrested dressed as female. He separated from his wife, founded Divorcees Anonymous and seduced several of the women who attended. After a denouncing article in the Sunday People, both his hypnosis patients and members of Divorcees Anonymous stayed away.

He attempted to return to his wife, but she had a new lover. She died of a severe uterine haemorrhage that erupted while she and her lover were on holiday in Germany. It then came out that she had embezzled thousands of pounds from her employer. Her son Peter died in a road accident a few weeks later.

In shock Michael retreated into Phyllis’ flat, avoided all contact and took lots of photographs of himself in his wife’s clothes. He wrote two novels in this period: One, Siobhan, was about one of his lovers. Although she was newly married, he sent it to her. She and her husband instantly contacted their solicitor, and warned Karoly off. The Second Coming was a science fiction novel with a sex-change theme.

In May 1966, he was charged with 13 offenses of obtaining credit under false pretences, and trading as a psychologist without disclosing that he was an undischarged bankrupt under another name. He was jailed for three months.

In 1967 he wrote to the prominent female impersonators Danny La Rue and Ricky Renée for advice on cross dressing.

He placed an advert in the New Statesman as a psychologist seeking transvestites, and got a dozen replies. One was from the person who would transition as Della Aleksander, but who at that time was a novice. Another, a silk fetishist, persuaded Michael that he could be a ‘spiritual transvestite’ for whom the clothes are merely an emblem. He acted as male escort for several of his new contacts, and started a book, Man and/or Woman: A Comprehensive Study of the ‘Tammuz Complex’ (Transvestism), using the anecdotes of his new contacts.

He also started to go out dressed as Charlotte. At the same time, as Michael, he took his last female lover. Through Della, Charlotte was able to obtain female hormones, although she persuaded herself that living as a woman in itself altered her hormones. Her method of coping with being read was to engage the person in conversation, and to repeat the story of how her husband and son had died. From 1968, Charlotte was more or less living fulltime as female. The major exceptions were signing on for unemployment pay, and Michael the psychologist’s one paying client.

Karoly’s mother in Venezuela had not heard from him since his bankruptcy in 1957. A friend from Caracas visited London and discovered Charlotte. The mother, at 82, accepted her new daughter. Two years later she came to visit.

Charlotte changed her name by deed poll in 1970 to Charlotte Maria Beatrix Augusta Hajdu, but normally used the surname Bach. She started writing the enormously long Homo Mutans, Homo Luminens which presents the transsexual urge as the key to human evolution, but could not interest any publishers. She also wrote an autobiographical novel Fiona which also has never been published.

Using the name Daphne Lyell-Manson she went into business as a spanking madam. She later wrote about the spanking trade: “On the Basic Axioms or Lemmata of a Universal Theory of Relativity”.

Charlotte started giving weekly talks in a friend’s flat. One of her acolytes, Don Smith, produced several pamphlets on Bach’s ideas, each of which sold between 500 and 1,000 copies. She was several times invited to speak to gay and lesbian groups. She wrote to television programs and the science editors of The Times offering her assistance, but was not taken up. She wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury to advise him that god is a human invention.

She sent a 521 page version of Homo Mutans, Homo Luminens, all in capitals and on orange paper, to the writer Colin Wilson, who eventually read it, and became an enthusiast. He interviewed her for the magazine Time Out, and featured her prominently in his book, Mysteries, 1978.

Brian Lewis, a professor at the Open University used his research budget to print 100 copies of her book, and she sold it at her weekly meetings. She was invited to give seminars at a few universities, and she upstaged the featured speakers at a debate at the Royal Institution. A wealthy doctor, Michael Kirkman, endowed the Kirkman-Bach College of Human Ethology, and Charlotte wrote to the eminent ethologist Desmond Morris to be a patron, but Morris was quite puzzled by the approach.

Charlotte died of untreated liver cancer, having refused to go to a doctor, at the age of 60. The revelation that she was a ‘man’ was a surprise to Wilson and Lewis.

She left her papers to Bob Mellors who had been a gay activist. He researched her life for several years until he was murdered by a burglar in 1996 in Warsaw where he was teaching English. A friend of Bob passed the papers onto Francis Wheen.

• Comer Clarke. “The Baron” The Sunday Pictorial 13 Jan 1957
• “Man Dressed as Woman Walks into Hotel”. Hertfordshire Mercury. 26 April 1963.
• Michael B. Karoly. Hypnosis.  London: Elek, 190 pp 1961. Hajdu/Bach’s only published book.
• Colin Wilson. Mysteries: An Investigation into the Occult, the Paranormal and the Supernatural.  Putnam, 1978 London: Grafton Books 1979: 514-523.
• Bob Mellors (ed). Extracts from an unpublished Work: An Outline of Human Ethology by Charlotte M. Bach. 4 Pamphlets London: Another Orbit Press. n.d.
• “Bent is best, said Charlotte Bach”. Gay News. Feb 18, 1982.
• Colin Wilson. The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders. Grafton Books,1988.  Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1989: chps 1-2.
• Colin Wilson. The Devil’s Party: A History of Charlatan Messiahs. Virgin, 2000: chp 12. Also published as Rogue Messiahs: Tales of Self-Proclaimed Saviors. Charlottesville, Va: Hampton Roads xxvii,274 pp 2000: chp 12.
• Francis Wheen. “Move Over Darwin”. The Guardian 28 Sep 2002. www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,4509155-103425,00.html
• Francis Wheen. Who was Dr Charlotte Bach? Short Books, 2002.
• Michael Roth. “Sex, Sin and Evolution: Dr Charlotte Bach and Emergent Evolution”. Apes, Angels and Outlaws: New Science, New Philosophy, New Directions. www.apesangelsandoutlaws.com/downloads.htm.

EN.Wikipedia  

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Although the Beaumont Society, the UK Princian group, had been founded in 1965, Michael/ Charlotte never bothered with it. Nor did she attend the Porchester Balls which started in 1969, nor the Gay Lib dances in the early 1970s. Nor Yvonne Sinclair’s TV/TS Support Group after 1976. She probably would not go to any event where she was not in charge.

Michael was charged with trading as a psychologist without disclosing that he was an undischarged bankrupt under another name. Should he not also have been charged with trading as a psychologist under false pretences?

There is no mention of Charlotte Bach in Kris Kirk & Ed Heath’s Men in Frocks, 1984. I was active in London Gay Lib in the early 1970s, but I never heard of Charlotte Bach until I read Colin Wilson many years later.

Some of our enemies would suggest that a fraudster is a natural for doing a gender change and getting away with it, as would be an actor. However the reality is probably that a person who is a fraudster in their life before transition, will use the same approach when they do transition. There are others, almost certainly greater in number, who strive for authenticity, and a gender change comes naturally, as part of that authenticity.

Amazon has a product review of Wheen's book that is so negative that I am going to reproduce it as a curiosity: “Mercifully published by Short Books, this nasty little work is not short enough. It is just possible that Wheen, formerly a Guardian columnist, may be writing a spoof but, even so, the point of the book escapes even the most generous reader. It's not funny, it's not interesting and it is stuffed with extremely tasteless photographs which leave a scummy feeling in the mind. According to Wheen, Charlotte Bach wrote unpublished and unpublishable books about sexual deviancy, both fiction and non-fiction, frequently using her own life as material while attributing her own experiences to other 'patients'. The relevance of the title escapes the reader for Wheen gives ample documentation about his subject.”

See also Charlotte Bach's theory of evolution.

José Sarria (1922 - 2013) caterer, drag performer, activist.

José was born in San Francisco, the child of unmarried Columbian and Nicaraguan immigrants. He was raised by his mother and then by his godmother for whom his mother worked as a live-in domestic. They combined their households and moved to Redwood City during the Depression of the 1930s.

They both indulged his fondness for dressing in their clothes, and encouraged his singing. He took lessons from a retired opera singer. In addition to English and his native Spanish, he also learned French and German.

His first lover was Paul Kolish, an Austrian refugee whom he tutored.


Sarria enlisted in the US Army during World War II, despite his short height, by seducing the major at the recruiting station. He was assigned to the Signals Corps. He was rejected for Intelligence for unstated reasons (probably for being fey), and was trained as a cook. He became a major’s orderly, and after the occupation of Berlin he managed an officers’ mess hall. He was discharged at the rank of Staff Sergeant.

Back in San Francisco Kolish was killed by a drunken driver on Christmas Day 1947. José enrolled in teacher training, but after being arrested for solicitation in a police sting in a hotel, he was now ineligible for certification as a teacher.

He found a lover, Jimmy Moore, who worked as a waiter and greeter at The Black Cat Bar, in San Francisco’s North Beach. José subbed for his lover at the bar. From there he started singing, moved onto the stage, and performed camp versions of operatic arias in drag. He continued performing until the bar closed in 1963. He would close the evening with a singing of “God save us Nelly Queens”.

In the 1950s, when cross-dressing was still illegal he distributed badges stating “I am a boy”, so that fellow drag queens could not be accused of “intent to deceive”. The police regularly raided gay bars and charged everyone found inside. José urged that they plead not guilty which overloaded the courts and judges started demanding actual evidence.

In 1961 he ran for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, winning nearly 6,000 votes. This makes him the first openly transgender, and the first openly gay person to run for public office. His campaign helped later gay campaigns, in particular that of Harvey Milk.

He was a co-founder of the League for Civil Education (LCE) which provided educational programs and support for those caught in police raids; of the Society for Individual Rights (SIR) which organized both social and political events; and of the Tavern Guild, the first gay business association which helped co-ordinate bar owners against police harassment.

José was crowned Queen of the Beaux Arts Ball in 1964, and took the name the Widow Norton (a reference to Joshua Norton, the self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States in San Francisco,1859). This led to the founding of the Imperial Court System which now has chapters across North America and puts on balls and raises money for charity.

Also in 1964 José went into partnership with restaurateur Pierre Parker who held the French food concession for the World’s Fairs. They worked the fairs in New York, 1964, Montreal, 1967, San Antonio, 1968, and Spokane 1974. Then they both retired to Phoenix, Arizona.

José returned to San Francisco in 1977 to endorse Harvey Milk running for the Board of Supervisors.

Mama José and other of the Court appear in the opening of the 1995 film To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar.
 
Sarria's lifetime of activism was commemorated when the city of San Francisco renamed a section of 16th Street in the Castro "José Sarria Court".

He died at age 90.

• Randy Schilts. The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk. New York: St Martin’s Press. Xvii, 388 pp 1982. London: Penguin 1993: 51-7.


• “Interview with Jose Sarria, A.K.A. the Widow Norton, the first Empress of San Francisco and founder of the Imperial Court System”. Seattle Gay News, 2/21/92.
• José Sarria as told to Michael Robert Gorman. The Empress Is a Man: Stories from the Life of José Sarria. New York: Haworth Press. xvi, 278 pp 1998.
• José Sarria. “Oral History” in Nan Alamilla Boyd. Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965. University of California Press 2005: 20-4, 57-62, 210-12, 220-2.


•  Christine Sismondo.  "The Queen of San Francisco:The first openly gay U.S. political candidate works to save a slice of gay history".  The Atlantic, November 2011.  www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/the-queen-of-san-francisco/308660.
• “Empress I Jose”. International Court System. www.impcourt.org/icis/who/founder.html. 

EN.WIKIPEDIA   QUEER MUSIC HERITAGE  IMDB  OUTHISTORY   GLBTQ   IMPERIAL COURT TRANS HEROES

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It seems to me that José Sarria parallells Virginia Prince. They were both active in the 1960s, one in each of the two major California cities, they were both persecuted by the prudish legal system, they both founded a system of social groups for transgender expression, neither became post-operative, both groups came to be seen as slightly embarrassing by more out transgenders of later generations. Both are still living.

Both Susan Stryker's Transgender History and Joanne Meyerowitz' How Sex Changed talk about Virginia Prince and are totally silent about José Sarria. Why is this? Is José Sarria not transgender enough? Are we discriminating on such a basis?

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A US company had a concession for French food at the World's Fairs! I wonder what the real French though about that. For some reason, all the World's Fairs 1964-74 were held in only two countries: the US and Canada.

Dora Ratjen (1918 - 2008) high-jumper, barman.

Gretel Bergmann (1914 - ) had won the German Olympic trials in 1936 in the high-jump, and was expected to be Germany's representative at the Olympic Games. However two weeks before the Games she was was dropped from the team because of 'mediocre performance'. The real reason, of course, was that she was Jewish. She was replaced by Dora Ratjen of the Hitler Youth, an odd woman with a deep voice and who never showered with the other women. The other German representative was Elfriede Kaun.

In the Berlin Olympic Games of that year, Ratjen came fourth. Only three jumpers cleared 1.60m : Kaun, the UK's Dorothy Odam and Hungary's Ibolya Csák (1915 - 2006). All failed 1.62m at the first attempt. At a jump-off, also at 1.62m, Csák was the only one to clear, and became the first Hungarian to win an Olympic Gold.

The irony for the the Nazis was that Bergmann had cleared 1.64m in the trials. And more than that, Csák was also Jewish

In 1938, Ratjen won the European championship in Vienna, beating Csák into second place. However she was later examined by a police doctor after being read at a railway station, and found to have ambiguous genitals. Her European championship was rescinded, as was her permit to compete – on the grounds of violating her amateur status. Csák was awarded the gold.

In 1957, Herman Ratjen, a barman in Hamburg, said that he was Dora Ratjen, that he had been raised as Horst Ratjen, and had lived as a woman for only three years and that the Nazis compelled him to compete as a woman.

----

Bergman emigrated to the US in 1937 and quickly won their national title in high-jumping. She married and became Margaret Lambert. She saw the story of Herman Ratjen in Time in 1966 in a story about the introduction of sex testing. She did not return to Germany until 1999 when a stadium in her home town of Laupheim was renamed in her honour.

Csák later worked at the Hungarian Banknote printing company, but remained an active spectator in Hungarian athletics until her death in 2006.


Herman Ratjen died at the age of 90.

• “Dora Ratjen”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dora_Ratjen.
• “Ibolya Csák”. The Daily Telegraph. 14/02/2006. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1510324/Ibolya-Cs%C3%A1k.html.
• Christopher Hilton. “Amazing tale of man called Hermann who finished fourth in women's high jump”. The Independent. 20 July 2008. www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/athletics/amazing-tale-of-man-called-hermann-who-finished-fourth-in-womens-high-jump-872322.html.

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This case is the one and only of gender imposture in the Olympics. The whole embarrasment of sex-testing rests on this case. However we do not know the details of Ratjen's intersex status. It could be that she is actually entitled to compete as a woman under modern rules. The claim of Herman Ratjen in Hamburg in 1957 to be Dora rests only on his say-so. No journalist seems to have actually checked it out.

The 2009 film Berlin 36 is the story of Gretel Bergmann. There is no character called Ratjen in the cast list.