Lili Ilse Elvenes (1882–1931) wurde als Einar Wegener in Vejle in Dänemark geboren. In seiner Kindheit wurde er aufgrund der langen, lockigen Haare und seiner Stimme häufig für ein Mädchen gehalten und von seinen Brüdern gehänselt. Nach dem Abitur begann er ein Studium an der Königlich Dänischen Kunstakademie in Kopenhagen und lernte dort eine junge Frau namens Gerda kennen. Für beide war es Liebe auf den ersten Blick. Kurz darauf, in 1904, heirateten sie. Bald schon konnte das Künstlerpaar europaweit große Erfolge feiern. Während sich Einar der Landschafts- und Architekturmalerei widmete, galt Gerdas Leidenschaft der Illustration und Modegrafik. Sie reisten viel und zogen schließlich 1912 nach Paris. In dieser Zeit malte Gerda etliche Bilder, für die ein als Frau verkleideter Mann Modell stand, welcher sich Lili nannte. Nur wenige wussten, dass es sich dabei um Einar handelte, der sich zunehmend als Frau identifizierte. Wie in der posthum veröffentlichten biografischen Schrift Wandlung – eine Lebensbeichte (1933) zu lesen ist, wurde er mit der Zeit immer unglücklicher im Zwiespalt zwischen den zwei Rollen „Einar“ und „Lili“, weshalb er sich nach an einer körperlichen Anpassung an das gefühlte Geschlecht sehnte. „Seine letzte Hoffnung war, zu sterben, damit Lili zu einem neuen Leben erwachen könnte.“ Erfolglos suchte er etliche Ärzte auf, die ihn entweder für einen Hysteriker hielten, ihn mit den Worten „Scheren Sie sich um nichts, was auch mit Ihrem Körper vor sich geht“ abspeisten oder ihm prophezeiten „Nur ein kühner, waghalsiger Arzt kann Ihnen helfen.“ Jene Prophezeiung ging in Erfüllung, als er 1929 Kurt Warnekros, den Leiter der Dresdner Frauenklinik, kennenlernte. Dieser diagnostizierte sowohl männliche, als auch weibliche Geschlechtsorgane. Bei der ersten Operation durch Magnus Hirschfeld in Berlin handelte es sich um eine Kastration. 1930 wurden in Dresden schließlich zwei erfolgreiche geschlechtsangleichenden Operationen durchgeführt. Nach dieser Umwandlung zur Frau erhielt Einar neue Ausweispapiere und hie. nun Lili Ilse Elvenes. Bekanntheit erlangte sie jedoch unter dem Namen Lili Elbe, der ihre Dankbarkeit an die Stadt Dresden, welche ihr ein neues Leben geschenkt hatte, zum Ausdruck brachte. Zusammen mit Gerda lebte sie wieder in Kopenhagen, wollte jedoch für eine letzte Operation nach Dresden zurückkehren, um sich eine Gebärmutter transplantieren zu lassen. Einige Wochen nach dem Eingriff verstarb Lili Elbe an den Folgen dieser Operation. Auf ihren Wunsch hin wurde sie auf dem Trinitatisfriedhof begraben.

Madeleine Pelletier (1874 –1939) was born in Paris and as a teenager, attended feminist and anarchist groups. By 1900 Pelletier was actively involved in feminism and socialist activism. She was originally trained as an anthropologist studying the relationship between skull size and intelligence. When she left anthropology she attacked the concept of skull size as a determinant of intelligence distinguishing the sexes. Following her break with anthropology, Pelletier went on to become a psychiatrist. In 1906 she was the first French woman to take the examination to become a psychiatrist. She was also the first woman to work as an intern in state asylums. In 1906 she became secretary of La Solidarité des Femmes (Women’s Solidarity), and established the organization as one of the most radical feminist organizations at the time. During this period she also helped to found the unified French Socialist Party in 1905, sat on its national council until World War I, and represented the party at most international socialist congresses before the War. She worked for the Red Cross during the War, treating the injured from both sides. Her views in favor of birth control and abortion were closely aligned with the French néo-Malthusian movement, supporting the use of birth control and abortion by women; she also wrote for the periodical Le Néo-Malthusian. Pelletier wrote extensively on the subject of women’s rights. She also displayed her beliefs in her dress and social behavior. She wore her hair short and was known for her cross-dressing and celibacy. Her actions were perceived by her contemporaries as a challenge to gender identity. She traveled illegally to the Soviet Union in 1921, wrote Mon voyage aventureux en Russie communiste (My Adventurous Voyage in Communist Russia), first published in La Voix de la Femme (The Woman’s Voice) at the end of 1921, and published as a separate volume in 1922. She joined the French Communist Party upon its creation, but left it in 1926; following her break with Communism she embraced Anarchism. Pelletier wrote utopian novels following her return from the Soviet state, as well as her autobiography La femme Vierge (The Virgin Woman) in 1933. Pelletier was partially paralyzed by a stroke in 1937. However, she continued to openly practice abortion, and was arrested in 1939. Following her arrest, she was interned in an asylum and her physical and mental health deteriorated. She died within a year.

Margaret Alice Murray (1863–1963) was born in Calcutta, India. She attended the University College of London and was a student of linguistics and anthropology. During the late 1890s, she accompanied the renowned Egyptologist, Sir William Flinders Petrie, on several archaeological excavations in Egypt and Palestine. This helped secure employment at the University College as a junior lecturer. She became well known in academic circles for scholarly contributions to Egyptology and the study of folklore, which led to the theory of a pan-European, pre-Christian pagan religion that revolved around the Horned God. Her ideas are acknowledged to have significantly influenced the emergence of Wicca and reconstructionist neopagan religions. Murray’s best-known, but also most controversial text, »The Witch-Cult in Western Europe,« was published in 1921.
She was named Assistant Professor of Egyptology at the University College of London in 1924, a post she held until her retirement in 1935. In 1926, she became a fellow of Britain’s Royal Anthropological Institute. Murray became President of the Folklore Society in 1953. Ten years later and having reached 100 years of age, Margaret Murray published her final work, an autobiography entitled »My First Hundred Years« (1963). She died later that same year of natural causes.

Fossemalle collection,16, unknown women, Santander, Spain, ca 1915

Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) was born in Alabama, and moved to

Eatonville, Florida, with her family in 1894. Hurston was the sixth of eight

children of John Hurston and Lucy Ann Hurston. All of her four grandparents

had been born into slavery. When she was three, her family moved to

Eatonville, Florida, one of the first all-black towns incorporated in the United

States. In 1925 she was offered a scholarship to Barnard College of Columbia

University, where she was the college‘s sole black student. After graduating

from Barnard, Hurston spent two years as a graduate student in anthropology

at Columbia University. While in New York she became a central figure of the

Harlem Renaissance. Her short satires, drawing from the African-American

experience and racial division, were published in anthologies such as The

New Negro and Fire!! In 1927 Hurston interviewed Cudjoe Kazzola Lewis, of

Africatown, Alabama, who was the last known survivor of the Transatlantic

slave trade. The next year she published the article Cudjoe‘s Own Story of the

Last African Slaver (1928). Upon receiving a Guggenheim fellowship in In

1936 and 1937 Hurston traveled to Haiti and wrote what would become her

most famous work: Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). The novel tells the

story of Janie Mae Crawford, who learns the value of self-reliance through

multiple marriages and tragedy. Also published during this time was Tell My

Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica (1938), documenting her

research on rituals in Jamaica and Haiti. Her novels went relatively unrecognized

by the literary world for decades. Hurston died in poverty in 1960,

before a revival of interest led to posthumous recognition of her accomplishments.

Interest in her work revived after author Alice Walker published In

Search of Zora Neale Hurston in the March 1975 issue of Ms. Magazine.

Hurston‘s manuscript Every Tongue Got to Confess (2001), a collection of

folktales gathered in the 1920s, was published posthumously after being

discovered in the Smithsonianarchives. Her nonfiction book Barracoon was

published posthumously in 2018.

Aletta Henriëtte Jacobs (1854–1929) was born as the last of eight children of a Jewish doctor’s family. At the age of thirteen, she started to attend “The ladies’ school,” which became a nightmare for her, and after two weeks she refused to return to school. Aletta then stayed at home; during the day her mother taught her housework, while in the evenings she learned French, German, Latin, and Greek. In 1869, for the first time, a girl had taken the admission examination to become a pharmacist’s assistant; Aletta Jacobs did the same in 1870. After some efforts, she was also permitted to attend classes at Groningen University. She received her medical doctorate in 1879. During these years Jacobs became concerned with social injustice. She began to practice as a doctor on the Herengracht in a small room she rented. Through the leadership of the Dutch General Trade Union, Jacobs was introduced to other members of the trade union’s board. In the winter of 1880, Heldt made available several rooms in the union’s building, so that Jacobs could offer a course for women to teach them the rudiments of hygiene and the rudiments of caring for infants. One result of these classes was that she decided to hold a free clinic two mornings a week for poor women and children, a practice she continued for fourteen years and which brought her in close contact with the issue of birth control. In early 1882, she read about the use of the Mensinga pessary, which from then on she always prescribed. She maintained her clinic until 1904. In 1903, she accepted the association’s leadership of the Dutch Association for Woman’s Suffrage and also worked for the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA). Among other things, she made two trips with Carrie Chapman Catt to help women in their fight to vote. She traveled to Austria-Hungary and in 1912 through Africa and Asia.