True story behind The Danish Girl starring Eddie Redmayne

Was it really possible, Danish artist Einar Wegener asked himself the first time he posed in makeup as a female model for his artist-wife Gerda, “that I could be so good looking?”

Danish artist Lile Ilse Elvenes, who became transgender woman Lile Elbe

Was it really possible, Danish artist Einar Wegener asked himself the first time he posed in make-up as a female model for his artist-wife Gerda, “that I could be so good looking?’ And so began the psychological torment that inspired Wegener to undergo the world’s first publicly revealed gender realignment in Dresden in 1931.

A “factional” account of Wegener’s transformation is told in The Danish Girl movie, opening in Sydney today. It is based on American author David Ebershoff’s Danish Girl novel published in 2000 as an imagined account of Wegener’s inner life as he transforms into Lili Elbe.

Born in rural Jutland, Denmark, in 1882, Wegener had two older brothers and an older sister. In his account attributed to Lili Elbe, he says his father was somewhat effeminate, while as a child Wegener was teased by his brothers for his girlish voice.

Enrolled at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen at 19, when he met Jutland-born Gerda Gottlieb, 17, “it was love at first sight... we immediately became inseparable”.

They married in 1904, a year after they met. Although Wegener was considered more talented, Gerda’s career flourished as a fashion magazine illustrator, renowned for whimsical paintings of beautiful, chicly-dressed women with haunting almond-shaped eyes. With finely-shaped legs, Wegener regularly donned stockings and heels to sit as Gerda’s leg model.

Danish illustrator Einar Wegener

In about 1908 Danish actress Anna Larssen was late for a portrait sitting. Wegener later wrote: “On the telephone she asked Grete (Gerda), who was somewhat vexed: ‘Cannot Andreas (Wegener) pose as a model for the lower part of the picture? His legs and feet are as pretty as mine’.”

Reluctantly, Wegener put on a dress, makeup and a wig for the sitting. He was still wearing them when Larssen arrived unexpectedly.

“You know, Andreas, you were certainly a girl in a former existence, or else Nature has made a mistake with you this time,” Larssen reportedly said, immediately naming him Lili.

Wegener enjoyed wearing women’s clothes and began accompanying Gerda, whose paintings and drawings also depicted explicit sexual scenes between women, to social events as a woman, introduced as her sister. When suspicions of his cross-dressing scandalised Copenhagen in 1912, the couple moved to Paris where Lili appeared more frequently.

Writing Man Into Woman in the late 1920s, Wegener explained that Gerda encouraged his transitions into Lili, who had become Gerda’s favourite female model. His account identifies Gerda as Greta, while his character becomes Andreas Sparre. His female self is Lili Elbe, rather than Lili Elvenes.

“Lili and I became two beings,” Wegener wrote. “If Lili were not there we spoke of her as a third person. And when Lili was there ... I was spoken of between her and Grete as a third person.”

As he appeared around Paris as Lili, Wegener found he was happier as a female, although as Lili he lost his artistic talent.

This photo provided by Focus Features shows, Eddie Redmayne, left, as Lili Elbe, and Alicia Vikander as Gerda Wegener, in Tom Hooper’s "The Danish Girl." The 73rd annual Golden Globe nominations in film and television categories will be announced Thursday morning, Dec. 10, 2015, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Agatha A. Nitecka/Focus Features via AP)

Gerda increasingly enlivened boring evenings by asking Wegener to “let Lili come over tonight”, while Wegener found that as a male he suffered coughing spells, lethargy and fits of depression. Doctors could not help, diagnosing hysteria and prescribing X-ray treatment. Feeling suicidal by 1929, he was told about Berlin doctor Magnus Hirschfeld, a gender researcher who founded the Institute of Sexology. Hirschfeld advised Wegener that his ill-health was caused by having male and female glands, which were fighting for control, and suggested surgeries to permanently transform Wegener into Lili.

Under Hirschfeld’s supervision, Elbe underwent surgery to remove his testicles in Berlin. No longer male, Lili was admitted to Dresden Women’s Clinic, run by gynaecologist Kurt Warnekros. With her marriage annulled by King Christian X, Lili had fallen in love with French art dealer Claude Lejeune and wanted to marry and have children.

After selling Wegener’s paintings to raise 5000 kroner, about $25,000, Lili returned to Dresden where Warnekros performed a womb and ovarian transplant in June 1931. With no medication to prevent organ rejection, she did not recover and died of heart failure on September 13, 1931.

Wegener’s friend Neils Hoyer in 1933 published Man Into Woman: An Authentic Record Of a Change Of Sex ... the miraculous transformation of Danish painter, Einar Wegener. In the forward, London-based Australian-born sexologist Norman Haire noted that Lili may have been better off seeking “psychological treatment”.

“I cannot help thinking,” Haire wrote, “that until we know more about sexual physiology it is unwise to carry out, even at the patient’s own request, such operations as were performed in this case.”

Correction: Yesterday’s history story said the Granville train crash occurred in January 1983. This date should have been January 1977.

Originally published as True story behind The Danish Girl starring Eddie Redmayne