Charlotte von Mahlsdorf
Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (born Lothar Berfelde, 1928 – 2002) was a famous German male-to-female transvestite and founder of the Gründerzeit Museum (a museum of everyday items from the Gründerzeit era) in Mahlsdorf, [[Berlin]]. She was one of the German Democratic Republic (GDR)'s best-known homosexuals and was also up-front about being a masochist and loved getting spanked.
Life
Lothar Berfelde was born in Berlin as son of Max and Gretchen Berfelde. At a very young age, she felt more like a girl and expressed more interest in the clothing and articles of little girls.
Max Berfelde, Lothar's father, was already a member of the Nazi Party by the late 1920s, and he had become a party leader in Mahlsdorf. In 1942, he forced Lothar to join the Hitler Youth. They often quarreled, but the situation escalated in 1944 when Lothar's mother left the family during the evacuation. Max demanded Lothar choose between her parents and threatened her with a gun. Shaken by this, Lothar struck her father dead with a rolling pin while he slept. In January 1945, after several weeks in a psychiatric institution, Lothar was sentenced by a court in Berlin to four years of detention as an anti-social juvenile delinquent. The defeat of Germany during the war and the Allied invasion set the boy free.
By 1946, Lothar came to identify herself as a feminine being in a masculine body and changed his name from "Lothar" to "Lottchen," which later became "Charlotte." She loved older men and became a well-known figure in the city as von Mahlsdorf. She began collecting household items, thus saving historical everyday items from bombed-out houses. Living in East Berlin (later the capital of the GDR), she was also able to take advantage of the clearance of the households of people who left for West Germany.
Her collection evolved into the Gründerzeit Museum. She had become engaged in preserving the von Mahlsdorf estate, which was threatened with demolition, and was awarded the manor house (Gutshaus Mahlsdorf) rent-free. In 1960, Von Mahlsdorf opened the museum of everyday articles from the Gründerzeit (the time of the founding of the German Empire) in the only partially reconstructed Mahlsdorf manor house. The museum became well known in cinematic, artistic and gay circles. From 1970 on, the East Berlin homosexual scene often had meetings and celebrations in the museum.
Private life
According to her autobiography (see below), von Mahlsdorf worked as a domestic in the household of Herbert von Zitzenau, an elderly equestrian officer. Her employer seduced her, and they started a sexual relationship. Von Mahlsdorf explained she preferred older lovers feeling protected by them the way women do. That affair lasted several years until Zitzenau’s health declined and death.
Then Charlotte met Jochen, a lover with whom she could be a real woman. Their relation with sadomasochistic roleplaying lasted for 27 years until Jochen's death.
Literature, film and play
In 1992 the same year, German filmmaker and gay rights activist Rosa von Praunheim made a film about her life under the title Ich bin meine eigene Frau. Shortly after, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf published her autobiography under the same title, translated to English as I Am My Own Woman.
In 2003, American playwright Doug Wright wrote the character play, I Am My Own Wife based on von Mahlsdorf's life from his research of her biography.
Links
Review Review Charlotte von Mahlsdorf on Internet Movie Database
- Staub wischen und Hintern versohlen (review of the premiere of the play in Berlin in 2007, in German)
- More information is available at [ Wikipedia:Charlotte_von_Mahlsdorf ]
- More information is available at [ Wikipedia:I_Am_My_Own_Woman ]
- More information is available at [ Wikipedia:I_Am_My_Own_Wife ]
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