Finding Dora
A story about trans history, photographs, “the firsts” and assumptions about unknowns.
Whether or not you know anything about trans history, you probably know the name Lili Elbe. You probably remember the one picture of her that is most commonly used — elegantly posed, with heavy makeup, fancy dress and pearls, holding an elaborate fan. This was the picture on A4 “know LGBT history” posters pasted around the office I worked in summer 2019 during the local Pride Week. I don’t remember if she was credited there as “The First trans woman to receive The Surgery(TM)”, or just “one of the first”, but it doesn’t matter now.
At this point, a reader with an interest in trans history, just like me, may barge in with “well actually, Lili was not The First Patient, it was a woman named Dora Richter”. Do you know the one photo of her that is on the net? Dora is not posing, she is caught on a grainy pic crouching over a pillow (for lacemaking), her hair is a short bob tied with a simple hairband, she has no seductive makeup. She wears a feminine shirt with puffed sleeve, but she is not the most “passing”, and definitely working-class, not artistic boheme. On Wikipedia, we would read:
In May 1933, with growing Nazi influence in Germany (Hirschfeld had fled the country), a mob of students attacked the institute, and the state authorities then burned its records. Richter’s fate after this attack is not known. It is presumed that she was either killed in the attack or was arrested after it and died in custody.[5][8]
I don’t know who or when first came up with this theory, but it kind of makes sense. Assuming that the “ugly”, “mannish” and “clocky” trans woman (come on, if not you, someone definitely thought those words upon seeing the photo) would stay living and working in a safe space of Hirschfeld’s Institute and then get killed when it came to an abrupt end makes sense, right? But what if someone had left a testimonial of another version?
Raimund Wolfert’s 2021 (German-language) book Charlotte Charlaque : Transfrau, Laienschauspielerin, “Königin der Brooklyn Heights Promenade” is a biography of another trans Hirschfeld patient. He identifies the German Jew Charlotte, who would flee to US to previously unknown fate, with Carlotta von Curtius, who in 1955 wrote an article Reflections on the Christine Jorgenson Case in American magazine ONE. Charlotte/Carlotta reminds her readers about four pre-Jorgensen Weimar Germany GRS-es (worth noting that presumably stealth Carlotta poses herself as a witness, and not one of the five cases). She twists spellings and some names, but other than that seems to keep her facts straight. So what about her claim that soon after her surgery Dora became a restaurant-owner in Karlove Vary? It would be strengthened by the facts that Charlotte knew Dora and first escaped Germany to Karlove Vary itself, in 1933. Also, according to Wolfert Dora worked in a Berlin restaurant as a “kitchen maid” in 1931, which implies she found an outside-institute job post-surgeries and possibly name-change (close to modern understanding to stealth?). Still, why did this idea not make it into popular internet narratives? How come the scan of the article was available on cis historian Jonathan Ned Katz’ page at least since 2019 without anyone making the connection?
I can’t help but wonder, is it a matter of presentation? Would more people be willing to research Dora Richter if there was another, “prettier”, and “more presentable” photo of her? Such as a film frame from 1933 Austrian “educational film” Mysterium des Geschlechtes (Mystery of Sex) that Wolfert presents in his book, after (presumably on his own) identifying three unnamed “man-women” as Hirschfeld patients: Charlotte Charlaque,Toni Ebel and Dora Richter. They are all wearing make-up, nice dresses and jewelry, a stark difference from caught unaware manual domestic worker by a lace pillow. The issue of “presentability” and passing and accessibility in the narratives we make about our history is important, but not the only one.
Another is class, as I already hinted at the beginning. Obviously besides the worldly painter Lili, who made her story public, it pops through the stories of other Hirschfeld patients. For Wolfert it is ultimately easier to track down fates of a stealth writer and actor Charlotte in USA and a stealth painter Toni in Germany. Tracking down a story of some early 20th century stealth restaurant-owner in a 50k Czech town definitely seems harder. We don’t know much at all about a “fashionable dress-maker” Hertha Haase (from ONE article) either.
Last but not least, what about the ~tragedy~ factor? Don’t cis people love to gawk at our sad sob stories? Arguably Lili’s popularity is influenced by her ultimate demise via uterus transplant, and by a very cis-gaze film that centers a fictional heterosexual woman’s pain (do I need to remind that historical Gerda was known for lesbian work sand loved Lili as a woman?). A tragic story, a pretty photo, a nice (“The First Patient”) title, perfect to put on a poster in a multinational monopolistic “LGBT-friendly” corporation office. Adding “eh, she was probably killed in 1933 anyways” ending to Dora’s story does not add her glam or class, but keeps her in the safe narrative vault of sad, tragic trans women. That’s why I feel like bringing up the mere possibility of Dora surviving (now also on Wikipedia) and other stories (such as how Charlotte and Judaism-convert Toni survived Holocaust and died of old age) is subversive. Especially today, in Trans Day of Visibility (and not of Mourning, this is November), we need this kind of historic visibility too.
