Elsbeth Ebertin - Mann oder Frau! Das Schicksal einer Abenteurer...

1933, Elsbeth Ebertin, German, Toni Simon,

Original title: "Mann oder Frau! Das Schicksal einer Abenteurer-Natur" (Man or woman! The destiny of an adventurer nature) by Elsbeth Ebertin. 

The book (pamphlet) covers the story of Toni Simon (actually Anton Simon, 1887-1979), a man from Stuttgart, openly living as a transwoman. Simon was considered one of the most well-known transwomen of the first decades of the 20th century.

She ran the legendary Café 1930 in Essen's Segerothstraße and she published a magazine for transvestites. Simon gained further fame through this book, written by the Heilbronn-based writer and astrologer Elsbeth Ebertin (1880-1944), who presented Toni Simon's life and suffering and published two photographs of Simon.

According to Zagria, after Hitler came to power in 1933, Simon emigrated to Spain but came back after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, and ended up in prison a couple of times.

In the 1950s, she sued the German state under the 1949 compensation law for the time in the Rottenburg prison and in the Welzheim police prison as well as for the three years spent in Spanish exile. However, she was not successful. The next years were more promising for her as she was considered as an activist and survivor of the pre-war queer scene in Stuttgart. She died at age 92.

Available via lsbttiq-bw.de

A Gender Variance Who's Who

Photo via  zagria.blogspot