Original title: "Vom Hitlerjungen zur Domina: Ein transsexuelles Leben im 20. Jahrhundert (Lebensgeschichte)" (From Hitler Youth to Domina: A Transsexual Life in the 20th Century - Life Story)
Kirsten Nilsson was born in 1931 as Karl Erick Böttcher in a tranquil village in Germany. Shortly before the end of the 2nd World War in 1945, the family fled from the Red Army from Küstrin to Upper Bavaria, where Karl Erick first trained as a hairdresser, then a costume tailor.
In Munich, in the post-war period, he studied acting and dance, immersed himself in the gay scene, and worked at the circus in England and Switzerland before he found his vocation as "Sylvia" at the end of the 50s as a "lady impersonator" in the travesty clubs of Munich, Berlin, and Hamburg.