Lili Elbe

Lili Elbe

Lili Elbe (28 December 1882 – 13 September 1931) was a transgender woman and one of the first identifiable recipients of sex reassignment surgery. Elbe was born in Denmark as Einar Mogens Wegener and was a successful artist under that name. She also presented as Lili, sometimes spelled Lily, and publicly was introduced as Einar’s sister. After transitioning, however, she made a legal name change and stopped painting.

Elbe’s year of birth is sometimes stated as 1886. This appears to be from a book about her, which has some facts changed to protect the identities of the persons involved. Factual references to Gerda Gottlieb’s life indicate that the 1882 date is correct as they clearly married while at college in 1904.
Wegener met Gerda Gottlieb at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and they married in 1904, when she was 22 and Gottlieb 19. The two of them worked as illustrators, with Wegener specializing in landscape paintings while Gottlieb illustrated books and fashion magazines. They both traveled through Italy and France, eventually settling in Paris in 1912, where Wegener could live openly as a woman and Gottlieb could be actively lesbian. Wegener received the Neuhausens prize in 1907 and exhibited at Kunstnernes Efterårsudstilling (the Artists Fall Exhibition), Vejle Art Museum and in the Saloon and Salon d’Automme in Paris. She is represented at Vejle Art Museum in Denmark.

Wegener started dressing in women’s clothes one day filling in for Gottlieb’s absentee model; she was asked to wear stockings and heels so her legs could substitute for those of her model. Wegener felt surprisingly comfortable in the clothing. Over time, Gottlieb became famous for her paintings of beautiful women with haunting almond-shaped eyes dressed in chic fashions. In approximately 1913, the unsuspecting public was shocked to discover that the model who had inspired Gottlieb’s depictions of petite femmes fatales was in fact Gottlieb’s wife, “Elbe”.