Lili Elbe
1882(?)-
1931
Lili Ilse Elvenes, better known as Lili Elbe, was a Danish transgender woman and among the early recipients of gender confirmation surgery. Elbe was a successful painter under her male name. During this time she also presented as Lili (sometimes spelled Lily). After successfully transitioning in 1930, she changed her legal name to Lili Ilse Elvenes and stopped painting altogether. It is generally believed that Elbe was born in 1882, in Vejle, Denmark. (Her year of birth is sometimes stated as 1886.) It is speculated that Elbe was intersex, although that has been disputed.
Elbe met Gerda Wegener while they were students at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, and they married in 1904 when Gottlieb was 19 and Elbe was 22. They worked as llustrators, with Elbe specializing in landscape paintings while Gottlieb illustrated books and fashion magazines. They traveled through Italy and France eventually settling in Paris in 1912 where Elbe could live openly as a woman and Gottlieb identified as lesbian.
Over time, Gottlieb became famous for her paintings of beautiful women with haunting, almond-shaped eyes dressed in chic fashions. In 1913, the unsuspecting public was shocked to discover that the model who had inspired Gottlieb’s paintings was in fact Elbe. Starting in the 1920s, Elbe regularly presented as a woman named Lili, attending various festivities and entertaining guests in her house. Only her closest friends knew once she had transitioned.
In 1930, Elbe went to Germany for gender reassignment surgery, which was highly experimental at the time. She had several surgeries over several years. At the time of Elbe’s last surgery, her case was already a sensation in newspapers of Denmark and Germany. A Danish court invalidated the couple’s marriage in October 1930, and Elbe managed to get her gender and name legally changed, including receiving a passport as Lili Ilse Elvenes. After the dissolution of their marriage, Elbe returned to Dresden for her fourth surgery. This surgery was highly experimental and led to an infection. Three months after the final surgery, Elbe died in 1931.