Dora Richter

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Dora Richter
Born16 April 1892[1]
Seifen, Kingdom of Bohemia, Austria-Hungary[1]
Dieddate unknown
NationalityGerman
Other names
  • Dörchen Richter
  • Dora Rudolfa Richterová
Occupations
Known forfirst known trans woman to undergo male-to-female gender confirmation surgery

Dora Rudolfine Richter[2] (16 April 1892 – date of death unknown) was a German trans woman and the first known person to undergo complete male-to-female gender-affirming surgery.[3] She was one of a number of transgender people in the care of sex-research pioneer Magnus Hirschfeld at Berlin's Institute for Sexual Research during the 1920s and early 1930s. She underwent surgical removal of the testicles in 1922, followed in 1931 by removal of the penis and vaginoplasty.[4] It is unclear what happened to Richter after 1939, and both the cause and date of her death are unknown.[1]

Early life

Richter was born as the second child of seven[1] in Seifen (now Ryžovna [de]), a small town Bohemian Ore Mountains region[5] to a poor farming family[6] on 16 April 1892.[1] Her mother was Antonia Richter (née Kraus; 1867–1938),[1] and her father, Josef Richter (1862–1931), was a musician.[1] She was baptized into the Catholic Church on 17 April 1892.[1]

Early in childhood, Richter displayed a "tendency to act and carry on in a feminine way".[7] At the age of 6, she apparently tried to remove her penis with a tourniquet.[8][9]

In 1909, after a baker apprenticeship, she left her small town and moved to a bigger one, where she continued to dress as a girl in her free time.[5] She joined a wandering theater troupe and moved to Leipzig, where she stayed for two years.[5] In 1916, she got drafted to the army, but was discharged in just two weeks.[5] From Leipzig she came back to her hometown, where she was encouraged by a friend to go to Magnus Hirschfeld's practice in Berlin.[5]

While living in Berlin, Richter worked as a cook and waiter at hotels using her birth name and presenting herself as a man.[8] She was arrested several times in Berlin for dressing in women's clothes in public and was sent to male prisons.[8][10]

Surgeries

In 1922, Richter underwent an orchiectomy,[5] a surgical removal of the testicles, performed by Berlin surgeon Erwin Gohrbandt at the Charité Universitätsmedizin.[8][11] From May 1923,[5] she worked with other transgender people as a domestic servant at Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Research, one of the few places where a trans person could be employed, where she was affectionately nicknamed "Dörchen" by Hirschfeld.[7]

In early 1931, Richter had a penectomy performed by Institute physician Ludwig Levy-Lenz, and in June that year an artificial vagina was surgically grafted by Gohrbandt,[7][11] making her the first transgender woman of whom records remain to undergo vaginoplasty.[2][12]

In 1931, Felix Abraham [de], a psychiatrist working at the institute, published a paper about Richter's (and Toni Ebel's) gender confirming surgeries as a case study in Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft und Sexualpolitik: "Her castration had the effect – albeit not very extensive – of making her body become fuller, restricting her beard growth, making visible the first signs of breast development, and giving the pelvic fat pad... a more feminine shape."[8][13][14]

Later years

In late 1931, Richter was working as a chef at Restaurant Kempinski (modern Hotel Bristol) at Kurfürstendamm 27.[5]

In 1933, footage of Richter and two other of Hirschfeld's trans patients, Toni Ebel and Charlotte Charlaque (all anonymously/uncredited) was used as a documentary segment in the Austrian film Mysterium des Geschlechtes (Mystery of Sex),[5] directed by Lothar Golte and Carl Kurzmayer about contemporary sexology.[15]

In May 1933, with growing Nazi influence in Germany (Hirschfeld had fled the country), a mob of students attacked the institute, and the state authorities then burned its records.[16][17] Richter's fate after this attack was unknown for many years and she was presumed dead.[18][2] However, in the March 1955 issue of American magazine ONE, Charlotte Charlaque, who fled Germany to Karlsbad in 1933, wrote in a pseudonymized article about Hirschfeld's trans patients, that Dora Richter, "[...]born in Karlsbad,[a] Bohemia[...] soon became an owner of a small restaurant in the city of her birth".[5][19][1][better source needed] Furthermore, in February 1934, Richter applied for a legal name change, granted by the president of Czechoslovakia in April 1934.[2][1] At this time, her address was still listed in Berlin.[1] From then on, her legal name was Dora Rudolfine Richter (in the Czech form: Dora Rudolfa Richterová).[2][1]

According to 1939 Census records from Prague's National Archives, Richter was living in a house that she owned in her birthplace of Ryžovna as of 17 May 1939, was unmarried and earned her living as a homework lace maker.[20] Her employer was listed as Berta Kolitsch, who traded in bobbin lace.[20]

As of 2023, Richter's whereabouts after 1939 and the cause and date of her death are still unknown.[2][1]

In popular culture

Richter was portrayed by German actor Tima die Göttliche [de] in the 1999 German film The Einstein of Sex, a biopic about Magnus Hirschfeld directed by Rosa von Praunheim.[8][21]

Notes

  1. ^ Some sources such as Charlotte Charlaque's 1955 article incorrectly list Karlsbad as Richter's birth place, but her baptismal record lists Seifen (later renamed as Ryžovna) as her birth place.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n "In böhmischen Dörfern – Dora Richters Taufeintrag gefunden" [In Bohemian Villages - Dora Richter's baptismal entry found]. Lili-Elbe-Bibliothek (in German). 21 April 2023. Archived from the original on 29 May 2023. Retrieved 6 June 2023.
  2. ^ a b c d e f "Was wurde aus Dora?" [What became of Dora?]. Tagesschau (in German). 29 May 2023. Archived from the original on 5 June 2023. Retrieved 9 August 2023.
  3. ^ "Magnus Hirschfeld - The Father of Transgenderism". Archived from the original on 14 October 2017. Retrieved 9 August 2023.
  4. ^ Mancini, E. (8 November 2010). "Magnus Hirschfeld and the Quest for Sexual Freedom: A History of the First International Sexual Freedom Movement". Google Books. ISBN 9780230114395. Archived from the original on 14 April 2023. Retrieved 14 May 2016.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wolfert, Raimund (2021). Charlotte Charlaque : Transfrau, Laienschauspielerin, "Königin der Brooklyn Heights Promenade" (in German) (1. Auflage ed.). Leipzig: Verlag Hentrich & Hentrich. ISBN 978-3-95565-475-7. OCLC 1286534661.
  6. ^ Ball, Edward (2010). Peninsula of Lies: A True Story of Mysterious Birth and Taboo Love. Simon and Schuster. p. 89. ISBN 9781451603712.
  7. ^ a b c Rimmele, Harald. "Rudolph R./Dorchen". Institute for Sexual Science (1919–1933). Archived from the original on 3 June 2018. Retrieved 13 October 2017.
  8. ^ a b c d e f Stroude, Will (16 November 2021). "The incredible story of the first known trans woman to undergo gender confirmation surgery". Attitude. Archived from the original on 20 June 2023. Retrieved 9 August 2023.
  9. ^ Thomasy, Hannah (28 March 2022). "A Rose for Dora Richter". Proto Magazine.
  10. ^ Sheldon, Natasha (8 October 2017). "11 Remarkable Transgender People from History". HistoryCollection.com. Archived from the original on 4 July 2023. Retrieved 10 August 2023.
  11. ^ a b "A Trans Timeline – Trans Media Watch". Trans Media Watch. Archived from the original on 26 December 2018. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
  12. ^ McCall, Vivian (1 August 2023). "So You Want a Vagina". The Stranger. Archived from the original on 7 August 2023. Retrieved 10 August 2023.
  13. ^ "Institute Employees and Domestic Personnel". magnus-hirschfeld.de (in German). Archived from the original on 5 June 2023. Retrieved 15 January 2024.
  14. ^ Abraham, Felix (1997). "Genital Reassignment on Two Male Transvestites". The International Journal of Transgenderism. Archived from the original on 2 May 2007.
  15. ^ "Mysterium des Geschlechtes". Filmarchiv Austria (in German). Archived from the original on 26 May 2022. Retrieved 9 August 2023.
  16. ^ Strochlic, Nina (28 June 2022). "The great hunt for the world's first LGBTQ archive". National Geographic.
  17. ^ Schillace, Brandy (10 May 2021). "The Forgotten History of the World's First Trans Clinic". Scientific American.
  18. ^ Caraballo, Alejandra (21 June 2023). "To protect gender-affirming care, we must learn from trans history". Harvard Public Health Magazine.
  19. ^ Baronin von Curtius, Carlotta (March 1955). "Reflections on the Christine Jorgenson Case". ONE. pp. 27–28. Archived from the original on 3 June 2019. Retrieved 28 March 2022 – via outhistory.org.
  20. ^ a b Lili-Elbe-Bibliothek (23 June 2023). "Neues von der trans Pionierin Dora Richter! Bisher verloren sich ihre Spuren 1933/34 in Berlin. Jetzt konnte ich eine Akte finden, wonach sie als Dora wieder in ihrem Geburtsort Seifen (Ryžovna) lebte. Die Geschichte geht weiter! (Quelle: Volkszählung 1939, Nationalarchiv Prag)" [News from trans pioneer Dora Richter! So far, her traces have been lost in Berlin in 1933/34. Now I was able to find a file, according to which she lived again as Dora in her birthplace of Ryžovna. The story goes on! (Source: 1939 census, National Archives Prague)]. Twitter (in German). Archived from the original on 23 June 2023. Retrieved 10 August 2023.
  21. ^ "TGIF: Trash Goddess in Film". magnus-hirschfeld.de (in German). 4 May 2018. Archived from the original on 18 January 2022. Retrieved 9 August 2023.
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