"30 courageous, open, and unsparing letters describing the life and change of a transgender person in Germany between 1958 and 2000. 30 fictitious letters that Michaela Lindner never sent. But letters to people who really exist. Michaela Lindner has not changed any names or places. The 30 letters thus become a kind of "diary", but in annual and monthly steps. They are documentation of a life, psychogram of a human being, and an indictment of our society. But also an incentive to realize yourself and live your dream!
Michaela Lindner describes the deep pain, the suicidal thoughts, the despair, but also -- and this with truly heartfelt devotion, writing, and enthusiasm -- the love, affection, and support she experienced as she began her transition from man to woman. And Michaela Lindner does this in public. In her first life as a man, she was the mayor of Quellendorf. In the middle of life, in politics and publicity. And almost as a gift to herself, for his 40th birthday, Lindner lives, suffers, and fights through the rebirth as a woman: a new body, a new gender role, a new love. Michaela Lindner's book is not a "coming out" novel."
"Admittedly, Mrs. Lindner has experienced the problems that every gay man knows when he first confesses his gayness and "otherness" to family and friends in a similar way: She convincingly demonstrates that it goes on and on, even if one's own honesty leads to being rejected by a community, vilified by German philistines, not being accepted by one's own parents and harassed by the authorities. Lindner experiences this in extreme form: unemployed, homeless, and expulsion from health insurance. Lack of perspective, then self-help groups, psychotherapy, and the slow struggle with oneself, then the certainty: I dare the operation that finally makes me a woman! Michaela Lindner's book is more than just an autobiography. It is a part German-German history that shows more than history books and television films: growing up in the GDR, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the economic struggle for survival, and life between vision and village narrowness. And in all this time, Michaela Lindner masters her step to becoming a woman."
According to Wikipedia, Michaela Lindner is a former politician of the party Die Linke. She was born in Görlitz in 1958 as Norbert Lindner and grew up as a boy. She studied process engineering at the Technical University of Dresden. In 1994, she became aware of her trans identity and tried to suppress it. She was elected mayor of Quellendorf in Saxony-Anhalt for the PDS in 1996. In 1997, she realized that life could not go on like this and gradually prepared for her new life as a woman. In 1998, she was ready to face the public with her changes and appeared in appropriate clothing while on duty. Unknown persons then turned to the press. The municipal council initiated a dismissal procedure without giving reasons. She was voted out of office as mayor with 482 votes of the 782 eligible voters. She moved to Berlin in 1999 and became a member of the district assembly in Kreuzberg. She has been living in Erfurt since the summer of 2002.
In June 2003, she founded a company there, the TheaterAgentur Erfurt. She still runs it today (as of 2013). With her troupe, which addresses various social problems, she performs in schools. Michaela Lindner married a woman in May 2005. She had been married before; two children were born from this marriage. Michaela Lindner wrote a book titled "Ich bin, wer ich bin. Ein öffentliches Leben als Mann und als Frau" (I am who I am. A public life as a man and as a woman) ¹. The book is available in German language and can be found in the catalog of the German National Library.
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