US Post Office, censorship, sex and gender - Comstockery

First published March 2013.

Most countries use their postal systems to censor correspondence and publications.   This is in addition to censorship though the court system.  The usual excuse is that of security, but once censorship is in place it often extends to sex and gender topics.   And of course this censorship means that somebody at the post office opens your parcels to check inside.

Anthony Comstock

This article is just about the US.

1872.  Post Office Act, §148 made it illegal to send any obscene or disloyal materials

1873.  The Comstock Law.  An amendment to the Post Office Act of 1872 made it illegal to send any "obscene, lewd, and/or lascivious" materials “or any drug or medicine, or any article whatever, for the prevention of conception, or for causing unlawful abortion, or shall advertise the same for sale, or shall write or print, or cause to be written or printed, any card, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement, or notice of any kind, stating when, where, how, or of whom, or by what means, any of the articles in this section…can be purchased or obtained, or shall manufacture, draw, or print, or in any wise make any of such articles”.  The law was named after Anthony Comstock who became postal inspector,  He was also head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.  He prohibited the sending of anatomy books to medical students.  Comstock bragged in 1913, two years before his death, that he had been responsible for the criminal conviction of enough people to fill a 61-coach passenger train -- over 3,600 people.  He was responsible for the destruction of 160 tons of literature and pictures.

1876. A pamphlet by Edward Bliss Foote, inventor of the rubber diaphragm, was the first US publication on birth control to run afoul of the Comstock law. Foote was fined $3,000 for publishing his pamphlet, Confidential Pamphlet for the Married; Words in Pearl for Married People Only.  Birth control information went underground: even in medical textbooks, contraception was unmentionable.

1895. The English playwright, George Bernard Shaw wrote an editorial for the New York Times making fun of Comstock's rules, and mocked them as 'Comstockery'.

1897.  Henry Addis and Abner J. Pope, publishers of a Portland, Oregon anarchist newspaper, Firebrand were arrested and their paper closed for sending an allegedly obscene poem by Walt Whitman through the mail.

1901.  Lois Waisbrooker of Home, Washington (an anarchist colony) was fined $100 for The Awful Fate of a Fallen Woman.  The postmistress for Home, was also charged for mailing it, but was acquitted.

1902.  Discontent: Mother of Progress also printed in Home, Washington, an article written by James W. Adams defending free love and criticizing formal monogamous marriage as hypocritical. Federal officials charged the editor, James E. Larkin, the printer, Charles L. Govan, and Adams with mailing obscene literature.   However the judge deemed the article to be, though radical, not obscene.

1903.  Home, Washington, being ‘a settlement of avowed anarchists and free lovers, the members of which society on numerous instances, with the apparent sanction of the entire community, have abused the privileges of the post office establishment and department’ lost its post office and did not get it back until 1958, but even then was not allowed its traditional name.

1911.  A report by the Chicago Vice Commission, headed by Dean Summer of the Episcopal Church, was banned from the mails.

1915.  Architect William Sanger was charged under the New York law against disseminating contraceptive information.  Anthony Comstock, at the height of his power, appointed by President Wilson as the International Purity Congress delegate in San Francisco, testified at his trial. Sanger died shortly after on September 21st.

1916. Ricardo Flores Magón, anarchist and Latino activist, arrested on charges of defamation and sending indecent materials through the mail. He was sent to USP Leavenworth. In 1922, he died in his cell, maybe murdered by a guard.

1918. Sanger’s wife, Margaret similarly charged.  On appeal, her conviction was reversed on the grounds that contraceptive devices could legally be promoted for the cure and prevention of disease.

1920.  The US Post Office seized and burned four issues  of The Little Review, edited by Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, that contained excerpts from James Joyce’s Ulysses. The next year, they were tried and found guilty of obscenity, fined $100 and forced to discontinue serializing the book.

1921.  William Hays appointed new Postmaster General.  He was quoted in The New York Times:  “It is no part of the primary business of the Post Office Department to act as censor of the press. This should not and will not be”.  Mary Ware Dennett met with Hays who implied that he would recommend to congress that contraceptive information be removed from the definition of what is obscene.

1922.  William Hays quit as Postmaster General without keeping his promise to Mary Ware Dennett.  He became president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America.

Mademoiselle de Maupin by Théophile Gautier, a tale of a cross-dressing woman,was cleared of obscenity in the 1922 case Halsey v. New York.

Mary Ware Dennett’s pamphlet, The Sex Side of Life-An Explanation for Young People, after having been in circulation over four years, was declared unmailable as obscenity.

1927.  The Post Office and the Customs Bureau issued a list of 739 books and pamphlets to be banned by department officials. The arbitrary list included many foreign books that had been published in the US in English for years without prosecution. “Other volumes were passed in the English version and excluded in the French or Italian; or excluded in Spanish while being passed in French or Italian.”  However the list was withdrawn in 1930 after pressure from a New Mexico Senator.

H.L. Mencken, editor of The American Mercury was arrested for selling obscene literature. His April contained “Hatrack”, a chapter from an upcoming book about a prostitute by Herbert Asbury, and “The New View of Sex”, an editorial essay by George Jean Nathan. Mencken was tried and acquitted two days later. The day after the trial and after all the April issues were mailed to subscribers, the Solicitor of the U.S. Postal Service Department, Horace J. Donnelly, decreed the issue obscene and unmailable.

1928.  Mary Ware Dennett was fined $300, for distributing her pamphlet. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), appealed her conviction and won a reversal, in which the judge ruled that the pamphlet's main purpose was to "promote understanding".

1929.  Radclyffe Hall’s pioneering trans man novel, The Well of Loneliness, was published in the US after already having been banned in the UK. It was seized in New York.  This was successfully challenged in court.

1930. Ex-Postmaster General, William Hays, introduced the Motion Picture Production Code, known as the Hays Code, which removed most adult representation of sex and gender for the next few decades.

1932.  Margaret Sanger arranged for a shipment of diaphragms to be mailed from Japan to a sympathetic doctor in New York City. When U.S. customs confiscated the package as illegal contraceptive devices, Sanger helped file a lawsuit. In 1936, a federal appeals court ruled in United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries that the federal government could not interfere with doctors providing contraception to their patients.

1933. The Nudist was banned even though genitals were airbrushed.  The US Supreme Court disagreed.

1935.  Ban on contraceptives declared unconstitutional.

1938.  A Catholic Group, The National Office for Decent Literature, was founded with a list of topics including homosexuality and transvestism that were to be proscribed. To avoid trouble most publishers and editors engaged in self censorship, and avoided such topics.

1953.  The August issue of ONE Magazine, a homophile publication, was confiscated by the Los Angeles postmaster.  However the Federal Solicitor General determined in 3 weeks that the issue was not obscene, and the confiscated copies were returned.

1954.  ONE Magazine October issue was seized because of “Sappho Remembered”, an advertisement for a Swiss magazine, Der Kreis “with beautiful photos”, and a poem about homosexuality in England.

1957.  Samuel Roth’s American Aphrodite, containing literary erotica and nude photography was convicted.   The Supreme Court upheld the ruling.

Attorney Eric Jilber refused help from the ACLU, and lost ONE’s case in the Court of Appeal.  The three judges deemed the issue “morally depraved and debasing”

520 copies of Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl, being imported from a printer in London, were seized by US Customs.  Then the manager of City Lights Bookstore and publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, were tried for publishing and selling the book. The ACLU  supported the defendants and nine literary experts testified on the book’s behalf.  It was acquitted on appeal.

1958. The US supreme Court ruled, re One Magazine, in its first ever case involving homosexuality, that the Post Office was discriminating and denying equal protection.  Hence homosexual content is not obscene simply because it is homosexual.

1959. The US publisher of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover won his case and its appeal against the US Post Office’s censorship.

1960. Nan Gilbert in New England, a publisher of petticoat-punishment fantasies, had his mail stopped and was fined $500.

1961. H Lynn Womack, gay erotica publisher, successfully sued the post office for confiscating Grecian Guild magazine.

Susanna Valenti was summoned by postal officials. Two of her correspondents had been charged with mailing obscene materials, and Susanna’s name had come up. Tito, her male persona, pleaded respectability and denounced the obscenities.

Virginia Prince was actually arrested re personal correspondence to another transvestite, thought to be a woman, who was already under investigation. Prince pleaded guilty in a plea bargain to sending obscene material through the mail. With a five-year probationary sentence, he was liable to be imprisoned if caught cross-dressed in public. However his lawyer persuaded the court to include educating the public about cross-dressing as part of the probation order.

1963.  Sanford Aday & Wallace de Ortega Maxey, mail-order erotica publishers, both of the homophile Mattachine Society, indicted on 18 counts of Interstate Transportation of Obscene Material, convicted of 5.  Of the 8 books named, only Sex Life of a Cop was found obscene. They were fined $25,000 each and sentenced to 25 years in prison (although the conviction was reversed by the US Supreme Court a few years later).  There is now a Sanford Aday collection at California State University, Fresno.

1965. The U.S. Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut struck down one of the remaining contraception Comstock laws in Connecticut and Massachusetts. However, Griswold only applied to marital relationships.

1972. Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) extended its holding to unmarried persons as well.

1973.  Abortion became legal under privacy laws

1996.  The Comstock Act was revived into Title V of the Telecommunications Act.

2023.  Mifepristone, an abortion pill was subject to litigation, and the never-repealed Comstock laws were cited to ban its mailings.  If the right wing succeed in banning mailings of  mifepristone, will viagra, the drugs used by gay men and hormones for trans persons be likewise banned?

• Darrell Raynor. A Year Among the Girls. New York: Lyle Stuart, 1966. New York: Lancer Books, 1968: 74.
• Lori Klatt Maurice.  Stamping Out Indecency: The Postal Way. March 8, 2004.   Online
• Richard F Docter. “Battles with the Postal Authorities”.  Chp 12 in From Man to Woman: The Transgender Journey of Virginia Prince. Docter Press, 2004: 109-112.
• Jed Birmingham. “Obscenity and the Post Office”.  Reality Studio, 18 May 2006.  Online.
• Lillian Faderman & Stuart Timmons. Gay L. A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians. New York: Basic Books, 2006: 116-120.
• Susan Stryker.  Transgender History. Berkeley: Seal Press.  2008: 52-3.
• Stephen J Gertz.  ““Sex Life of a Cop” Chows Down Big Donuts at Paperbacks Show for Record $”.  Seattle PI, 2010/03/22.  Online.
• Tanya Lewis. "This 19th-Century Obscenity Law Is Still Restricting People's Reproductive Rights". Scientific American, April 28, 2023.

EN.Wikipedia(Postal_censorship.  Comstock_laws)

Countries where trans persons may self-id (no psychiatric or other medial assessment or treatment required)

2010 Council of Europe resolution calling for self-id

2012 Argentina

2014 Denmark

Slightly out of date: add Spain & Finland

Amnesty appealed for "quick, accessible and transparent procedures and in accordance with their own perceptions of gender identity"

2015 Colombia

         Ireland

         Malta

         Quebec

2016 Bolivia (a psychological examination attesting that the petitioner consents is required)

         Norway

2017 Belgium

         California 

         Newfoundland & Labrador

         France (application to a court is required)

2018 Brazil

         Costa Rica (after a ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights)

         Pakistan

States and provinces not shown

         Portugal

2019 Uruguay

         Chile

         India

         Iceland

         Tasmania

          Nova Scotia

2022 Switzerland

         Spain

         Finland

         British Columbia

         Scotland (vetoed by UK Govt)

2023 New Zealand/Aotearoa

Note re Mexico:  No national law as such, but 20 states/cities have introduced self-id.

2014 Mexico City

2017 Michoacan

         Nayarit

2018 Coahuila

2019 Hidalgo

         San Luis Potosi

         Colima

         Oaxaca

         Tlaxcala

         Chihuahua

2020 Sonora

         Jalisca

        Quintana Roo

2021 Puebla

         Baja California Sur

         Mexico State/Edomex

         Morelos

2022 Baja California

         Sinaloa

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.

-----------------

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)

Transvestitenschein, the German license to cross-dress - Part I Weimar Republic

Part I:  Weimar Republic

Part II: Third Reich

The legal position:   § 175 of the Prussian legal code, which criminalised male (but not female) homosexuality, had been extended to the whole of Germany following unification in 1870.   Cross-dressing (Geschlechtsverkleidung) was not as such illegal, but persons doing so could, at the whim of the arresting officer, be charged with public mischief under § 183 of the German legal code (which could mean six weeks’ imprisonment or a fine of 150 marks).    As such the legal situation was not dissimilar to that in England, where the fact that transvesting was not a crime had been definitely established by the 1871 trial of Stella and Fanny.  They had been charged with an 'unnatural offence' (that is sodomy) but this was not proved. Other than this, the prosecution was stuck for a crime. Dressing as a woman was not in itself a crime.  However arrests of transvesting persons for ‘public mischief’ continued for another century.

Both countries differed from France where The Penal Code of 10 June 1853, Article 471 §15 criminalised transvesting in public spaces and balls.

The idea of a licence to cross-dress is French. It was initiated by the Paris Préfecture de Police 7 November 1800 (well before the law of 1853), and continued through into the 20th century.

There is at least one recorded incident - in Austria - of a police permit to wear male clothes that predates the 20th century: that of the Viennese folk singer, Pepi Schmeer.

In Schliersee, district office of Miesbach, Upper Bavaria, a ‘lady’ named “Rosina Danner” had gone dressed as a man without any permission for 30 years before dying in 1908.

There is no proper account in Magnus Hirschfeld’s two major books on Transvestism, Die Transvestiten, 1910 and Sexualpathologie, volume II, 1919, of his negotiation with the Berlin Polizeiprasidium for the first Transvestitenshein in 1909. It is surely likely though that Hirschfeld, through his contacts with French doctors, and the Berlin Polizeiprasidium, though their contacts with the Paris Préfecture de Police, were aware of the French practice.

Anyway the French licence was called Permission de Travestissement. The German Transvestitenschein is a close translation of Permission de Travestissement - although the German refers to ‘transvestites’ rather than ‘transvestism’. The usage of Transvestitenschein is Hirschfeld’s first use of any Transvest* word, and the most likely assumption is that he took his usage of transvest* words from the French usage.

In 1909 Karl Kohnheim (born 1885), a trans man encountering repeated difficulties in having a female name on his papers, had a run-in with the Berlin police and the referral physician contacted Hirschfeld. Hirschfeld and psychoanalyst Karl Abraham (1877-1925) wrote an evaluation using the pseudonym ‘Katharina T’ and referring to him as 'Fräulein'. Working with a lawyer, they obtained first interim oral permission, then also written permission by the police chief Ernst von Stubenrauch. This was the first German Transvestitenschein, a legal acknowledgement of cross-dressing. The request to change his first name was not granted.

1910 Magnus Hirschfeld published Die Transvestiten: eine Untersuchung über den erotischen Verkleidungstrieb mit umfangreichem casuistischem und historischem Material. In this new book, Hirschfeld never uses the word ‘Transvestitismus’. He uses ‘Transvestiten’ only a few times. He mainly uses the established German words for cross-dressing: ‘Verkleidung’, sometimes ‘Geschlechtsverkleidung’. Transvestitenscheins as such are not discussed, although there is an account of Karl Kohnheim/Katharina T.

Josefine Meißauer, who was then 48 and had read Die Transvestiten, contacted Hirschfeld in early September 1911. The Berlin lawyer, Fritz Selten, took the case and submitted the application with a recommendation written by Hirschfeld and Iwan Bloch to the Prussian Police Präsidium, which on 27 September 1911, on the basis of this expert opinion, "granted permission to wear women's clothes”. The same written legitimation was also issued by the Munich police chief. Josefine Meißauer was the first trans woman in Germany to get a Transvestitenschein.

A letter from the Berlin police in 1911 read:

“According to the law and jurisprudence, the wearing of men's clothes by a woman is only punishable if public order is disturbed, for example, by causing a public spectacle, or in a similar way. If you wear men's clothing, you must ensure above all that the wearing of such clothing does not lead to any discord and that public order is not disturbed in any way. Only if unfavourable facts were to become known in the latter respect would you have to be prohibited from wearing men's clothing.”

This was published in the Berliner Tageblatt.

Another letter in 1912 read:

“I inform you that you are not prohibited from wearing female clothing per se. However, you will be liable to prosecution as soon as you cause a disturbance by your behaviour in women's clothing.”

(The documents issued thereafter by the police contained the personal data and the portrait photo - in the target-sex habit - of the person concerned and, stamped by the police headquarters, became a kind of identity card. This did not actually constitute permission to wear clothes of the opposite sex, as was often misunderstood (even by Magnus Hirschfeld), but it did identify the person as a diagnosed transvestite - and thus as a sex-driven repeat offender, and so an arrest could be dispensed with. For the persons concerned, this practice may have been a relief. But it also meant a multiple relationship of dependency: on the one hand on the examining doctor, who had to be paid a fee for the diagnosis, on the other hand on the police headquarters, which issued the certificate, and finally on the goodwill of the police and judicial officers, who could forego an arrest or even a charge if the certificate was presented. In this way, the authorities controlled abrogations of the public dress code.)

1912 Berthold Buttgereit (1891 - 1981) obtained a Transvestitenschein from the Berlin police, with an expert opinion from Hirschfeld and the neurologist Ernst Burchard .

Gerda von Zobeltitz acquired a Transvestitenschein in nearby Potsdam, and when called for military recruitment in 1913, she appeared as Gerda, and was deemed ineligible.

Louis Sch. successfully applied for a Transvestitenschein supported by Hirschfeld and Ernst Burchard, was allowed to change his first name to Louis, and as a man married his girlfriend.

Emilie Kellner, a retired police officer, gained a Transvestitenschein with the aid of Hirschfeld and Ernst Burchard, but was refused a name change to Emilie.

1914 Trans man “Elsa B”, who was taken to be a man in women’s clothes, was suspected of being a Serbian spy and severely beaten on the street. That was the first time that he begged the police for a Transvestitenschein so that he could legally wear male clothing. He was held for six days, at first examined by a police surgeon, and then by a psychiatrist. But he was not given a Transvestitenschein.

1915 Gerda von Zobeltitz lost her Transvestitenschein after a grand uncle's denunciatory intervention.

1915 Ernst, raised as female, registered with the military authority several times with an urgent request to be taken on as a soldier. The garrison doctor raised concerns as to whether there might be an erroneous gender determination . He was therefore referred to an expert, who found that male sex characteristics predominated. Ernst applied to the Potsdam government for a name change and a Transvestitenschein.

1917 Emilie Kellner had moved to Charlottenburg but descended to impoverishment because of the male name on his papers. The case was referred to the Ministry of the Interior, and was supported by the mayor of Charlottenburg. An expert opinion from the Royal Medical College disagreed with the Hirschfeld-Burchard report, and her application was denied.

1918 Berthold Buttgereit moved to Cologne and obtained a Transvestitenschein from the police there.

1919 Foundation of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft

Alex Starke moved to Berlin, where he worked as a dentist and, with expert evidence from Magnus Hirschfeld, he applied for a Transvestitenschein In September.

3 November 1919: a new regulation for the change of the family name within the jurisdiction of the district courts.

1920 The first official authorisation to wear women's clothes issued in Switzerland.

21 April: a decree of the Prussian Minister of Justice whereby the district courts were authorised to change the first name also. Walther Niemann, a lawyer with close ties to the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (WhK), campaigned for name changes for trans persons. The local court declared itself not competent despite this instruction. Niemann consulted the Ministry of Justice and found out that it wanted to decide about transvestites on a case-by-case basis. Initially, trans persons were only authorised to bear a first name that was not gender-specific, such as Alex, Toni or Gerd, and only later was this regulation extended to clearly female or male names.

September. Alex Starke successfully petitioned a local court in downtown Berlin to change his legal name to Alex, and in November the civil register in Erfurt was accordingly changed.

1921 Trans man “Elsa B” came to Emil Gutheil at the University of Vienna for therapy so that he could obtain a Transvestitenschein. B did attend 33 sessions with Gutheil, during which the psychoanalyst continued to refer to him as ‘she’ and as a ‘woman’.

1922 The Berlin Criminal Police published a statement in which they forbade arrest solely on the basis of wearing gender-atypical clothing, stating:

“Apart from male prostitution, transvestism in general has no criminal significance. The widespread public opinion that the disguised individuals are generally criminals in disguise (pickpockets, spies, pimps, etc.) is obsolete. With regard to the male transvestites, recent experience shows that even the view, formerly taken-for-granted, that men in women’s clothing are all homosexuals is no longer tenable. . . . On the basis of this insight emerges a duty of gentle treatment [schonenden Behandlung] of transvestites, as long as they are not engaged in male prostitution."

By 1924 the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft fee for arranging a Transvestitenschein was 150 Reichmarks.

1927 Toni F. (not the same person as Toni Ebel) attempted to change her birth certificate from male to female. Toni's application was denied on the grounds she was biologically male although she wore female clothing, looked completely female and thought of herself as female.

In the summer of 1927 several Viennese women applied to the police and the magistrate in Vienna to be allowed to wear men's clothes permanently, but this was rejected on the grounds that what was not forbidden could not be approved. The Berlin queer publication Die Freundin in September ran the headline: "Viennese women are allowed to wear men's clothes!"

1928 Olga Ebel died. Ebel became Toni again, Charlotte Charlaque introduced Toni to Magnus Hirschfeld. She obtained a Transvestitenschein.

1928 Gert Katter (1910-1995) had decided that he wanted to live as a man, and obtained a Transvestitenschein.

1929 Toni Simon, dressed female, appeared in court in Essen charged with gross mischief for appearing in public in female clothing. While the judge did fine her 100 marks, he otherwise dismissed the case saying that if the police issued Transvestitenscheins then the court should follow suit.

1930 Toni Ebel had her application to change her first name granted.

1931 A Swiss person having requested and received castration, then threatened suicide if not allowed a name change to Martha. This was approved by the government council of the canton in October.