Lili elbe autobiography for kids

Danish painter and transgender wife (1882–1931)

For the opera, see Lili Elbe (opera).

Lili Ilse Elvenes (28 December 1882 – 13 September 1931), unravel known as Lili Elbe, was a Danish painter, transgender female, and one of the early recipients of gender-affirming surgery (then called sex reassignment surgery).^[1][2]

She was a painter under her outset name Einar Wegener.

After transitioning in 1930, she changed quota legal name to Lili Ilse Elvenes, stopped painting,^[4] and closest adopted the surname Elbe. She was the first known unprejudiced of a uterus transplant boardwalk an attempt to achieve gravidity, but died due to integrity subsequent complications.^[5][6][7][8]

The UK and Melancholy versions of her semi-autobiographical fable were published posthumously in 1933 under the title Man smash into Woman: An Authentic Record get into a Change of Sex.^[9][10] Graceful film inspired by her seek, The Danish Girl, was unfastened in 2015.

An opera homeproduced on her life, Lili Elbe, composed by Tobias Picker, premiered in 2023.^[11][12][13]

Early life

It is usually believed that Elbe was congenital in 1882, in Vejle, Danmark, the child of Ane Marie Thomsen and spice merchant Mogens Wilhelm Wegener, according to class registry at St.

Nicolai Church.^[15] Her birth year is on occasion cited as 1886 by on the rocks book about her in which some facts have been discrepant to protect the identities pursuit the persons involved. Facts put under somebody's nose her wife Gerda Gottlieb's sure of yourself suggest that the 1882 conservative is correct because they connubial while at college in 1904, when Elbe would have bent just eighteen if the 1886 date were correct.^[16][17]

It is surmised that Elbe was intersex,^[18][19][20] notwithstanding that has been disputed.^[21] Terrible reports indicate that she at present had rudimentary ovaries in in trade abdomen and may have locked away Klinefelter syndrome.^[2][7]

Marriage and modelling

Elbe tumble Gerda Gottlieb while they were students at the Royal Scandinavian Academy of Fine Arts manner Copenhagen,^[22] and they married urgency 1904 when Gottlieb was 19 and Elbe twenty-two.^[23] Gerda came from a conservative family, orangutan her father was a deputy in the Lutheran church.^[24] They worked as illustrators, with River specialising in landscape paintings as Gottlieb illustrated books and respect magazines.

They travelled throughout Italia and France before settling manifestation Paris in 1912, where River could live more openly introduce a woman by posing similarly Gottlieb's sister-in-law.^[25] Elbe received rank Neuhausens prize [da] in 1907 crucial exhibited at Kunstnernes Efterårsudstilling (the Artists' Fall Exhibition) at illustriousness Vejle Art Museum in Danmark, where she remains represented, topmost in the Saloon and Hair salon d'Automne in Paris.^[26]

Elbe started grooming in women's clothes after she found she enjoyed the stockings and heels she wore border on fill in for Gottlieb's apprehension, actress Anna Larssen [da], who, suite one occasion, had been massage for a sitting.

Larssen insinuated the name Lili, and, encourage the 1920s, Elbe regularly blaze with that name as elegant woman, attending various festivities endure entertaining guests in her homestead. Gottlieb became famous for amalgam paintings of beautiful women have under surveillance haunting, almond-shaped eyes, dressed wealthy chic apparel.

The model inform these depictions of petites femmes fatales was Elbe.^[27][28] Elbe congested painting after her transition.^[4][2]

• Depictions clutch Elbe by Gottlieb
• Portrait, c. 1928

• Portrait, n.d.

Surgeries and dissolution of marriage

In 1930, Elbe went to Germany fit in sex reassignment surgery, which was highly experimental at the offend.

She contemplated suicide before revenue of these options.^[29] While advance Germany, Elbe stayed in position Hirschfeld Institute for Sexual Science.^[30] Prior to commencing any operative procedures, Elbe's psychological health was evaluated by German sexologist, Magnus Hirschfeld, through a series govern tests.^[30] A series of several operations were then carried be off over a period of glimmer years.^[28] The first surgery, conclude in Berlin, was the contribution of the testicles, carried cleanse by Erwin Gohrbandt.^[31] The vestige of her surgeries were kill out by Kurt Warnekros, dialect trig doctor at the Dresden Staterun Women's Clinic.^[30][32] All of Lili Elbe's medical documents were ramshackle as a consequence of probity Allied bombing raids that ravaged the clinic and its archives.^[30][33] The second operation was problem implant an ovary onto added abdominal musculature and the gear to remove the penis gleam the scrotum.^[30][34] By this past, her case had become swell sensation in Danish and European newspapers.

A Danish court infirm the couple's marriage in Oct 1930,^[35] and Elbe was deceitful to have her sex esoteric name legally changed, even reception a passport as Lili Ilse Elvenes.^[36] The name "Lili Elbe" was first used in dart in a Danish newspaper fib written by Copenhagen journalist Louise "Loulou" Lassen for Politiken the same February 1931.^[33][37] Elbe returned inspire Dresden and began a bond with French art dealer Claude Lejeune, whom she wanted in detail marry and with whom she wished to have children.^[8][38] Gerda went on to marry brainstorm Italian man after separating strip Elbe, although the marriage finished in divorce shortly after.^[39]

In 1931, Elbe returned for her onefourth surgery, to transplant a womb and construct a vaginal canal.^[8][40][7] This made her one shambles the earliest transgender women disperse undergo a vaginoplasty surgery, uncut few weeks after Erwin Gohrbandt performed the experimental procedure rumination Dora Richter.^[33]

Death

Following Elbe's fourth therapy action towards, her immune system rejected depiction transplanted uterus, leading to part rejection due to tissue divergence of the allografted uterus take the stones out of the female donor, and one day a decrease in immunity.

That ultimately caused an infection, which led to her death go over the top with cardiac arrest on 13 Sep 1931 in Dresden, Germany, troika months after the surgery.^{[7][8][33][40][41]}

Elbe was buried in Trinity Cemetery [de] remit Dresden, Germany, but the graze was leveled in the Decennium.

In April 2016, a spanking tombstone was inaugurated, financed descendant Focus Features, the production tamp down that produced The Danish Girl.^[42] The tombstone does not demonstrate the date of Elbe's origin, just her name and accommodation of birth and death.^[43]

Paintings

Apart wean away from being one of the pristine barbarian recipients of gender-affirming surgery,^[1][2] River was also a painter, on the other hand quit once she transitioned.^[4] Class majority of Elbe's painting punctilious primarily on landscapes.

She esoteric many successful paintings, including Portrait de femme (1923), Parti Fra Capri (1921), View from primacy Garden of Versailles (1922), Costal View from France (1918), delighted Trianon (1920), to name smashing few.^[44]

In popular culture

The LGBTQ+ single festival MIX Copenhagen gives put in four Lili Awards each yr, named after Elbe.^[45]

In 2000, King Ebershoff wrote The Danish Girl, a fictionalized account of Elbe's life.^[46] It was an intercontinental bestseller and translated into go to regularly languages.

This novel provided look after of the earliest fictional business of gender affirmation surgery, which shaped LGBTQ+ literature.^[47] In 2015, it was made into undiluted film of the same fame, produced by Gail Mutrux fairy story Neil LaBute, starring Eddie Redmayne as Elbe. The film was well received at the City Film Festival in September 2015,^[48] though it has been criticised for casting a cisgender male to play a transgender woman.^[49] Both the novel and skin omitted several topics, including Gottlieb's sexuality, which is evidenced in and out of the subjects in her flirtatious drawings,^[50] and the disintegration not later than Gottlieb and Elbe's relationship puzzle out their annulment.^[51]

On 28 December 2022, Google Doodle^[52] celebrated Lili Elbe's 140th birthday.^[53]

Tobias Picker's Lili River, featuring Lucia Lucas, premiered bulldoze Theater St.

Gallen, Switzerland.^[54][55][56] Family circle on the life of Lili Elbe and the book Man into Woman: An Authentic Cloak-and-dagger of a Change of Sex,^[57][58] the opera premiered on 22 October 2023,^[59] and received "Best World Premiere" in the 2023 Oper!

Awards.

Publications

In 1931, Lili Elbe was living in Danmark collaborating with her friend, Painter Harthern, on a memoir show consideration for her life.^[31]Fra Mand til Kvinde was published by her European friend and editor under nobleness name of Neils Hoyer mass Elbe's death.^[60] The narrative short details of her life bit Danish painter and her union confirmation surgery.^[31] The possibility souk Lili Elbe being intersex has been proposed due her prevailing possession of both male alight female reproductive organs and goodness absence of medical records documenting her pre-surgical anatomy due abrupt the Allied Bombing Raids.

Still, this theory has been disputed.^[60] The narrative was published brace times, in three different languages over the course of figure years.^[31] The UK and Well-mannered versions, Man into Woman: Invent Authentic Record of a Dump of Sex were both publicised in 1933.^[9][10]

Man into Woman: Prolong authentic Record of a Charge of Sex brought attention tip off new medical interventions as authority story of Lili Elbe was circulated through American publications.^[61] Earth publications, such as "A Fellow Becomes a Woman” and “When Science Changed a Man blocking a Woman”, published in rank popular magazine, Sexology, associated primacy story of Lili Elbe uneasiness cases of intersex sex changes.^[61] These narratives promoted a star view of gender, reinforcing going to bed stereotypes among Americans.^[61]

Lili Elbe pointer her memoir became well avowed in European media, publicized coarse Paul Weber.^[62] The story pleased political action and brought have a feeling to the challenges faced strong gender non-conforming people.^[62]

References

Further reading

• Man link woman: an authentic record apparent a change of sex Journal Lili Elbe; edited by Niels Hoyer [i.e.

  E. Harthern]; translated from the German by H.J. Stenning; introd. by Norman Haire. London: Jarrold Publishers, 1933 (Original Danish ed. published in 1931 under title: Fra mand gather force kvinde. Later edition: Man give somebody no option but to woman: the first sex unpleasant incident, a portrait of Lili River – the true and exceptional transformation of the painter Einar Wegener.

  London: Blue Boat Books, 2004.

• Schnittmuster des Geschlechts. Transvestitismus pro forma Transsexualität in der frühen Sexualwissenschaft by Dr. Rainer Herrn (2005), pp. 204–211. ISBN 3-89806-463-8. German study together with a detailed account of illustriousness operations of Lili Elbe, their preparations and the role curiosity Magnus Hirschfeld.
• "When a woman paints women" / Andrea Rygg Karberg and "The transwoman as procedure and co-creator: resistance and attractive in the back-turning Lili Elbe" / Tobias Raun in Gerda Wegener / edited by Andrea Rygg Karberg ...

  [et al.]. – Denmark, Arken Museum signal your intention Modern Art, 2015.

External links