Lili Elbe(1882-1931)
Lili Elbe was a Danish artist and writer who was assigned male at birth, experienced what is now called gender dysphoria, and underwent the world's first documented sex reassignment surgery. Born as Einar Wegener studied art at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and met Gerda Gottlieb there. The two fell in love and got married about 1905. Wegener realized his true gender identity when Gerda, a successful painter and fashion illustrator, asked him to don women's clothing and sit as her model. The couple eventually moved to Paris, where Wegener felt free to appear in public sometimes as Einar Wegener and sometimes as Lili Elbe. The first of five highly experimental surgeries that Elbe underwent was performed in 1930. She died of complications not long after the fifth procedure in 1931. During her last year she published her autobiography "From Man to Woman: Lili Elbe's Confessions" under her pen-name Lili Elvenes. Einar Wegener/Lili Elbe's and Gerda Wegener's life was dramatized by David Ebershoff in his novel "The Danish Girl" published in 2000. The book was filmed by Tom Hooper in 2015 featuring Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander as the Wegener couple.