Denmark: the small country with a giant impact on LGBTQ+ rights

A black and white photograph from 1935 in Denmark’s online historical archives depicts a sitting room in Vejle, Jutland. Two paintings of a beautiful woman with wavy hair hang on the walls. In one of the paintings, the woman lounges on a sofa, gazing directly at the viewer; in the other she is sitting on a wall. It’s a pleasant but fairly unremarkable room: at first glance there’s nothing to suggest the photograph would interest anyone other than a local history enthusiast. However, the ordinariness of the image conceals a remarkable story: of trans history and Denmark’s extraordinary place in it, of a woman’s courage and a family’s love and acceptance. 

Lili Elbe, the woman depicted in the paintings, was a celebrated painter who became one of the first trans women in the world to undergo gender-affirming surgery. She also authored the earliest known published narrative of trans experience. Whilst Lili’s story attracted much attention in Europe at the time, she languished in obscurity for much of the 20th century. The 2015 Oscar-winning film, The Danish Girl, revived this interest for a time and saw Lili become a modern trans heroine, but there are still many people unfamiliar with her story. Right now, with daily assaults on LGBTQ+ rights and particularly the transgender community, from the Trump administration, it’s a vital time to remember Lili Elbe.

Lili was born in 1882, the child of successful merchants in the Jutland city of Vejle. She studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, where she met Gerda Gottlieb, later known as Gerda Wegener, who also came from Jutland. The two married in 1904 and lived in Copenhagen until 1912, when they moved to Paris  to further their artistic careers. Whilst Lili’s childhood in Vejle continued to inform her art in the many landscapes she painted of the city under her former name E.Wegener, she felt freer to express her gender identity in Paris. Lili’s wife Gerda painted many highly regarded paintings of her, though Parisian society did not learn for some time that the model was actually Lili. Eventually Lili transitioned to live full-time as a woman, taking the name Lili Elbe and pursuing what was then highly experimental, dangerous surgery to physically transition. Between 1930 and 1931 Lili underwent four surgical procedures in Berlin and Dresden. She tragically died on 13th September 1931 from complications arising from her fourth surgery. 

“Lili was unquestionably a pioneer in her time and an icon for the trans community today,” says Clara Hartmann, a German researcher and collector of early transgender and intersex history who has spent some time researching Lili’s story and visited Vejle City Archives last year. Whilst Lili was not, as some believe, the first woman to have gender affirming surgery (Dora Richter, a German woman, underwent the procedure beginning in 1922), Lili was the first to record her transition in a full-length narrative. Her autobiography was finished and published posthumously as Fra Mand til Kvinde. “We don’t have any similar “ego documents” from other trans people at this time,” Hartmann says, “which makes Lili’s story so singular”. Lili was also the first known trans woman to speak openly about her life to the media, giving an interview to the Danish newspaper Politiken in February 1931. The interview also received detailed coverage in the Vejle local press.

What is so interesting and unexpected about this, says Pernille Schou, a historian and archivist at Vejle City Archives, is the national and local Danish press not only reported extensively on Lili’s story, but did so “in a far more progressive manner than trans stories and issues are often covered in the world’s media today”. In Louise Lassen’s long Politiken interview with Lili, conducted after Lili had undergone her first surgeries, she asks “Are you happy?”, concluding that Lili’s story will “arouse…compassion from a human perspective”. Reporting on Lili’s death, the local Vejle press used her chosen name as the headline rather than her previous name. On the publication of Fra Mand til Kvinde, one local Vejle newspaper reported that “this difficult subject is handled with great tact”. Another carried a lengthy interview with the editor of the book who, asked if the book could “end up as ugly speculation”, replied “It is quite unthinkable to me and in any case quite unjustified”. Lili and her wife Gerda were, Pernille Schou says, regarded as “children of the city” and Vejle continued to follow them, and write about them respectfully in the media, in life and death. 

Remarkably, Lili also found acceptance from her family, who were “esteemed and respected” people in the city. Before her final, fatal surgery, she returned to Vejle, staying for some time with her brother Henrik, whom she was close to, in the house at Torvegade 3 where the family lived and operated their successful manufacturing business. Henrik visited Lili in Dresden shortly before she died; the black and white photograph with the paintings of Lili is his sitting room. 

“The evidence is that Lili’s siblings accepted her, though it was probably not easy for them at the time,” says Clara Hartmann. “On the one hand, the paintings of her in her brother’s living room can be seen as a statement of trans acceptance, but they are also simply paintings of a loved and much missed family member. This is who Lili was to them.”

Whilst Lili had to travel to Germany to undergo surgery, two decades later Denmark again played a part in early trans history when Christine Jorgensen, an American trans woman whose parents came from Denmark underwent gender affirming surgery in Copenhagen in 1952. At the time, the surgery was not legally possible in the US. Jorgensen, whose treatment was the first known case to combine surgical and hormone treatment, obtained special permission from the Danish Minister of Justice, Helga Pedersen, to be cared for in Denmark. She was the first person in the world to have successful gender affirming surgery. She had a successful career as an actress, performer and lecturer on her experiences as a transgender woman, dying at the age of 62 of cancer. 

Jorgensen, who is named as one of the 50 “pioneers, trailblazers and heroes” on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor in New York City, was treated by Christian Hamburger, a Danish endocrinologist and specialist in rehabilitative hormonal therapy. Hamburger, who argued that to deny medical treatment to transgender people was “unethical”, has been credited by trans historians as a pioneering figure whose work is the model for today’s model of gender affirming care in the west. Following her surgery, Christine Jorgensen chose her first name in honor of Hamburger. Two years after Jorgensen, a second American woman, Charlotte Frances McLeod, travelled to Copenhagen from the US to undergo surgery performed by Christian Hamburger. When the cost of this turned out to be more than McLeod could afford to pay, Hamburger operated on her free of charge. McLeod went on to marry a man and lived to the age of 82. 

Significantly, both Jorgensen and McLeod found themselves stereotyped and ridiculed in the US media. Jorgensen was luridly caricatured as the “Ex GI” who became a “blonde beauty” whilst McLeod was compared disparagingly to Jorgensen as weak and less attractive. Their treatment contrasted starkly with the Danish press’s representation of Lili Elbe.

Whilst Denmark’s record as a trailblazing country for LGBTQ+ rights is well documented, the country’s role in early trans history is less known. “It’s really fascinating,” Clara Hartmann says. “Why is it that this tiny country was so pioneering and the site of so many significant moments for us? That is something I really can’t answer!”

Pernille Schou believes she can: “In Denmark a lot of people really don’t care whether someone is gay or transgender, or however someone might identify. The general notion is that we don’t believe in interfering or making judgements about how people want to live their lives. We care about if you’re a kind and caring person. That’s what matters to us.”

Denmark’s remarkable history regarding LBGTQ+ legal rights

In the years after Lili Elbe’s tragic death, Denmark established itself as a pioneer of LGBTQ+ rights, introducing laws with little fuss or debate that other countries around the world would still be wrestling with decades later. In many cases, they still are:

1933: Homosexuality legalised in Denmark. 

1948: LGBT+ Danmark, the world’s second oldest LGBTQ+ rights organisation, is founded. The oldest was founded in Germany by Magnus Hirschfeld, whose clinic performed Lili Elbe’s initial surgeries.

1989: Denmark is the first country in the world to introduce same sex legal partnerships. On 1st October 1989 Danish couple Axel and Eigil Axgil become the first same sex couple in the world to register their legal partnership in Copenhagen.

1999: Denmark becomes the first country in the world to recognise two legal parents of the   same gender.

2012: Marriage between two people of the same gender is legalised in Denmark.

2014: Denmark is the first country in Europe to allow legal self-identification of gender. Gender non-binary becomes a legally recognised category.

2016: Denmark legalises gender-affirming treatment for trans individuals under 18 years old.

2017: Denmark becomes one of the first countries in the world to remove “transgender” from the list of mental illnesses.

2022: The law makes it easier for trans individuals to change their names in Denmark.

2023: Persons under the age of 18 can legally change their gender in Denmark.

2024: Denmark becomes the first country in the world to make sharing of parental leave between more than two parents possible, making arrangements easier for LGBTQ+ co-parents.

Read more about Clara Hartmann’s research and collection here: Home · Lili-Elbe-Bibliothek

Read more about Lili Elbe here: Lili Elbe Digital Archive

Read more about Christine Jorgensen and Charlotte Frances McLeod here: Charlotte McLeod Collection – Digital Transgender Archive

Read more about Denmark and LGBTQ+ rights here: The Danish LGBT+ friendly culture | Read why Denmark is the third most LGBT+ friendly country in Europe

Vejle City Archives are open to the public. You can also search the archives online. Read more here: Forside – Vejle Stadsarkiv