Balitzki was born in the then German city of Stettin, the illegitimate, later legitimate, child of a railway man and a nurse. Although raised as a girl, Balitzki had no interest in dolls or cooking, and when playing family with other girls was usually given the role of ‘father’. Comments by others re a lack of femininity were defiantly taken as a complement. At the age of 17 Balitzki was supposed to learn bookkeeping, but not liking arithmetic, gave up this occupation after half a year, then learnt floristry at the age of 19, in the belief that there was more ‘manly work’ to be done.
With the outbreak of war in August 1914, Balitzki obtained a Transvestitenschein and was able to work as a postal clerk. From 1917 Balitzki was a patient of Magnus Hirschfeld, who presented Balitzki in his Sexualpathologie, 1918 as an example of a ‘hermaphroditic preliminary stage’ and showed the patient in a series of specially produced photographs.
In October 1919 the Berlin Chief of Police permitted a change of first name from Amanda to Amandus, and the birth certificate was amended accordingly. This was based on an expert opinion by Hirschfeld and Arthur Kronfeld, psychiatrist and co-founder of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, that although born female, the ambiguity of the adult's sexual characteristics now justified assigning him to the male sex.
However Balitzki’s mother, not only a nurse, but a midwife whose profession required the sexing of babies, did not agree. She applied for a further medical examination of her ‘daughter’ in February 1921. Amandus was then examined by the district physician Dr Schreber, who alleged fraudulent intentions, as ‘the applicant was undoubtedly of the female sex and she had led the doctors to a false opinion by providing incorrect information’. The following April, Balitzki’s authorization to use the name ‘Amendus’ was withdrawn, and his Transvestitenshein was revoked.
Walther Niemann, a lawyer with close ties to the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (WhK), had campaigned for name changes for several trans persons. In November 1921 he applied again for Balitzki to be allowed to be Amandus: “correction of the birth certificate [...] to the effect that a child was not born of the female sex, but of the male sex”. Niemann enclosed with his application a copy of the cited decree of the Minister of Justice on the change of first name as well as a new expert opinion by Hirschfeld who attested - without mentioning Schreber's expert opinion - that Balitzki had ‘a certain discrepancy in the physical and mental sexual characteristics’, whereby Amandus ‘was to be attributed to the male sex for predominant reasons’. It was therefore ‘medically justified and better suited to the facts to correct his sex designation in the civil register to that of the male sex’. Niemann also referred to an analogous case, namely Berthold Buttgereit, in which ‘the correction order had been issued in the same situation’.
Niemann followed this up in January 1922 enclosing a ‘certificate of recognition’ dated 1 December 1921, in which Amandus Balitzki declared that he was ‘the father of the illegitimate child born to the seamstress Erna Blumenthal on 24 May 1921’. As such Balitzki was obliged by law to provide the child with the support ‘corresponding to the mother's position in life’. However this was too much, and the authorities did not buy it. The manoeuvre was too transparent. Balitzki was threatened with being charged with Falschbeurkundung, (false certification). In May the Ministry of Justice stated that there was no reason to grant the ‘authorisation to use the first name Amandus’ and that the ‘applicant’ should continue to use the female first name. However the letter was returned with the note ‘moved on 29 April 1922 [...] unknown’. Amandus was not accepting the result.
- Magnus Hirschfeld. „Hermaphroditismus“. Sexualpathologie Volume 2: Sexuelle Zwischenstufen, A Marcus & E Webers Verlag, 1918: 21-3.
- Magnus Hirschfeld. Geschlechtskunde, Volume 4, Bilderteil. Julius Puttman, 1930: 471.
- Rainer Herrn. Der Liebe und dem Leid: Das Institut fur Sexualwissenschaft 1919-1933. Suhrkamp Verlag, 2022.
