From sensation to fluent identity – Lili Elbe’s life narrative between historical case and contemporary re-enactment*

Resumé

From Man into Woman: Lili Elbe’s Confessions (1931) describes the Danish painter Einar Wegener’s transformation into Lili Elbe and is the first (auto)biographical narrative of a subject who undergoes gender transformation surgery. It was published in parallel versions in Danish in 1931, in German in 1932, and in English in Britain and the U.S. in 1933. In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in Lili Elbe’s life story, and the historical case has become the subject of artistic re-interpretations in several media. The novel The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff was published in the U.S. in 2000, and the Hollywood movie by the same title, directed by Tom Hooper, appeared in 2015. In 2021, a dance performance, also by the same title and choreographed by Tim Rushton, was produced by the Holstebro Dance Company. Through the different historical representations, shifts can be traced in the perception of Lili’s transition from one gender to another, from the emphasis on the surgical transformation in the original narrative to the perspective of gender-confirmation of the most recent adaptation. Furthermore, the interpretations all relate to the question of authorship and access to artistic production.