On this date… 13 September 1931
Lili Elbe Dies
We’ve all felt like a fish out of water at some point in our lives. Whether it’s being the new kid at school or work, or a tourist in a new place, or some other reason for feeling out of place, it’s a normal human condition. It’s no surprise then, that Lili Elbe felt different most of her life. It was only during the last few months of her life that she felt truly accepted, becoming the first documented case of a trans woman undergoing sex reassignment surgery, now known as gender confirmation surgery. After complications from one of those surgeries she died on this date, 13 September 1931.
Born 28 December 1882 in southern Denmark, Elbe studied art at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in the early twentieth century. There, while still living as a man, she met Gerda Gottlieb. They were married in 1904, and both began successful art careers, Elbe specializing in landscape paintings and Gottlieb illustrating books and fashion magazines in addition to writing lesbian erotica.
During a session where Gottlieb was to sketch a model in lavish gowns and interesting ensembles for fashion magazines, the model failed to show up. Gottlieb persuaded her then-husband to wear stockings and heels so she could finish the drawing. The clothing opened up hidden feelings in Elbe, and “Lili” was born. From that point onwards, Elbe became Gottlieb’s regular model, and Elbe began dressing in women’s clothing more and more often. Elbe recounted this tale in her posthumous 1931 autobiography, Fra Mand til Kvinde, translated and published in English in 1933 as Man into Woman: An Authentic Record of a Change of Sex.
The couple moved to Paris in 1912, in part to get away from the conservative nature of Denmark. They were accepted into the avant-garde Parisian scene, with Elbe living an almost double-life, sometimes appearing in public as her assigned-at-birth male persona, sometimes as Lili Elbe.
Though the couple appeared happy and successful – Elbe had a showing of her art at a Salon in 1924, and Gottlieb had gained fame for her paintings of beautiful women with haunting, almond-shaped eyes, dressed in chic apparel – all was not as it seemed. Elbe was suffering from what we now call gender dysphoria – the severe distress or unhappiness caused by feeling that one's gender identity does not match one's sex as registered at birth. Elbe contemplated committing suicide she was in such distress. Then, she heard about a German doctor named Magnus Hirschfeld who had opened a clinic in Dresden known as the German Institute for Sexual Science in the early 1920s.
Elbe got to know Hirschfeld, under whose guidance she underwent four (possibly five, the records are unclear) surgeries to permanently transform her body from male to female, though they were all highly experimental at the time. After the first surgery in 1930, which caused a sensation throughout Europe, a Danish court annulled Elbe and Gottlieb’s marriage, and Elbe legally changed her sex and her name, receiving a passport under her official new name.
After the annulment Elbe began a relationship with a French art dealer named Claude Lejeune, to whom she got engaged. Gottlieb, too, went on to marry an Italian man named Major Fernando Porta. Neither ended up happy, however. Gottlieb’s marriage ended in divorce shortly after they wed, which left her broke, broken, and alcoholic. Elbe’s was worse. After her engagement she underwent a (fourth?) fifth surgery in September 1931 to implant a uterus and receive a vaginoplasty to construct a vaginal canal. She died of complications from the surgery soon after, never getting the chance to marry Lejeune.
A book, inspired by Elbe’s life, The Danish Girl was written by David Ebershoff was published in 2000. It became a film starring Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne in 2015. Elbe’s life also became the basis for the opera Lili Elbe, composed by Tobias Picker, which premiered in 2023. Being a huge part of popular culture sure is a good way not to feel out of place anymore.