Einar Wegener

The Danish Girl put off to May 2010, with new director

2 March 2010

It also helps to attach some big-name talent to the enterprise. People like Oscar-winning actresses Nicole Kidman and Gwyneth Paltrow and director Lasse Hallström. Hallström says that, if all goes well, shooting on The Danish Girl will begin in May in Europe, and he couldn’t be more enthusiastic about a project that’s already generating controversy, [...]

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Lili Elbe in her own words

13 November 2009

Below is reproduced a letter written by Lili Elbe née Einar Wegener in 1930 shortly before the surgery that would lead to her death. The searing tragedy of her situation could not be clearer. The dangerous medical advice she had already been given and that resulted in tissue necrosis was surpassed by the attempted transplant [...]

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Roberta Cowell’s story, by herself

20 September 2009

OII Australia has obtained a PDF rendition of the autobiography of British intersex woman Roberta Cowell. It was published in the UK in 1954 and has long been out of print. Roberta aka Betty underwent urogenital surgery in the early 1950s. She lived a long life, as a World War II fighter pilot and later [...]

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EarthAngel in LOTL Magazine: “The Legend of Lili Elbe”

31 July 2009

OII Australia is pleased to announce that an article on Lili Elbe, the first intersex person known to have undergone urogenital surgery, has been published in the August 2009 issue of LOTL magazine. LOTL can be read online or a free copy can be picked up in venues and stockists. The article by EarthAngel was [...]

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David Ebershoff’s novel “The Danish Girl” reissued

25 May 2009

Australian independent book publisher Allen & Unwin has re-issued The Danish Girl, the novel based on the life of Lili Elbe née Einar Wegener and her wife, the painter Gerda Wegener, written by David Ebershoff and first released by Viking in the United States in 2000. Lili Elbe was the first well-known intersex person to [...]

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Physical Culture, January 1937: “Can Sex in Humans Be Changed?” by Donald Furthman Wickets

22 April 2009

WE have found this remarkable magazine article, published in Physical Culture magazine in January 1937, during our online forays while looking for more information about Lili Elbe. Donald Furthman Wickets is the nom de plume of George Sylvester Viereck. Can Sex in Humans Be Changed? By Donald Furthman Wickets ALL the old landmarks are going, [...]

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[Opinion] Karin: Lili Elbe’s autobiography, Man into Woman

17 April 2009

PUBLISHED autobiographies written by intersex people are rare. Socially-imposed guilt and shame at being born intersex have led to fewer such books being published than one might wish for – we can learn so much from how others like us have lived. I’d always known Lili Elbe as being one of the few earliest publicly [...]

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First Hollywood bio about an intersex person, Lili Elbe

2 April 2009

LATE last year it was widely reported that Nicole Kidman and Charlize Theron are to star in a fictionalised though somewhat biographical feature film, about Lili Elbe née Einar Wegener. She was the first publicly known intersex person. The film is The Danish Girl, based on the novel of the same name by US author [...]

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