Lili Elbe – Before
After
Despite being born Einar Wegener Lili found comfort in modeling women’s clothes. She did this for fellow artist Gerda Gottlieb and her wife. Besides that, for many years, Lili enjoyed a career as a European painter. However, she began posing as Einar Wegener’s sister in public in the 1920’s. In 1930, she became one of the first recipients of a sex reassignment surgery. Unfortunately, she passed away shortly after the surgery due to her immune system rejecting her new uterus. Her legacy lives on for her remarkable courage. She was portrayed in The Danish Girl, a movie based on David Ebershoff’s novel by Eddie Redmayne in 2015.