Lili Ilse Elvenes (28 December 1882 – 13 September 1931), better known as Lili Elbe, was a Danish painter, transgender woman, and one of the earliest recipients of sex reassignment surgery (gender-affirming surgery).[1][2]
She was a painter under her birth name Einar Wegener.[3] After transitioning in 1930, she changed her legal name to Lili Ilse Elvenes, stopped painting,[4] and later adopted the surname Elbe. She was the first known recipient of a uterus transplant in an attempt to achieve pregnancy, but died due to the subsequent complications.[5][6][7][8][9]
The UK and US versions of her semi-autobiographical narrative were published posthumously in 1933 under the title Man into Woman: An Authentic Record of a Change of Sex.[10][11] A film inspired by her life, The Danish Girl, was released in 2015. An opera based on her life, Lili Elbe, composed by Tobias Picker, premiered in 2023.[12][13][14]
^Hirschfeld, Magnus. Chirurgische Eingriffe bei Anomalien des Sexuallebens: Therapie der Gegenwart, pp. 67, 451–455
^Cite error: The named reference aj was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Worthen, Meredith (n.d.). "Lili Elbe – Painter". Biography.com. Archived from the original on 6 January 2019. Retrieved 15 August 2016.
^Elbe, Lili (2020). Caughie, Pamela; Meyer, Sabine (eds.). Man Into Woman: A Comparative Scholarly Edition. Bloomsbury. pp. Introduction. ISBN978-1-350-02149-5.
^"Lili Elbe". tobiaspicker.com. Archived from the original on 18 October 2022. Retrieved 11 January 2022.