Karl M. Baer
Encyclopedia
Karl M. Baer was a German-Israeli author, social worker, reformer, suffrage
tte and Zionist. Born female and named Martha Baer he became, in December 1906, one of the first people to undergo sex-change surgery, and one of the first, in January 1907, to gain full legal recognition of his gender identity
and to have a new birth certificate issued reflecting his new gender. Baer wrote notes for sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld
on his experiences growing up as a girl while feeling inside that he was male. Together they developed these notes into the semi-fictional, semi-autobiographical Aus eines Mannes Mädchenjahren (Man's Years as a Young Girl) (1907) which was published under the pseudonym N.O. Body. Baer also gained the right to marry and did so in October 1907.
, sociology
and pedagogy
in Berlin
and Hamburg
, and became a social worker ("Volkspflegerin") and confirmed Suffragette
. In May 1904 he was sent to Galicia
under the auspices of the Hamburg chapter of the B'nai Bith, to campaign against the trafficking of women from poor countries and for the rights of all women to education. Here, in Lemberg (now Lviv), Martha met the equally active Beile Halpern, who he was later to marry (as Karl Baer).
Baer's work included activism among local women. He encouraged them to campaign for kindergarten and school provision, which would allow women to hold jobs outside the home and reduce the financial hardship that prompted some to traffic their daughters or send them into service. Baer worked to oblige the authorities along established human trafficking paths to check ID documents and combat illegal movement. He also promoted the women's education movement, and became well-known as a reformist throughout eastern Europe and Germany.
Baer had initially been sent to Galicia for two years; he returned to Germany after only one, having attracted censure for his male body language, argumentative style, and forceful advocacy of the cause. According to case notes by Magnus Hirschfeld
, Baer then transitioned to his male identity and began living as a man. He was diagnosed as a man living in a woman's body after accidental hospitalization, when his female anatomy was discovered; at the same hospital he underwent multi-stage rudimentary sex-change surgery in October 1906. After convalescence he was released from hospital in December 1906, with a medical certificate of his new gender. His new identity was confirmed by the courts in Arolsen (his birthplace) on 8 January 1907.
on 19 April 1937. Baer was by then an important figure in Jewish society, and his influence on cultural life brought him into conflict with the Nazi administration. He was allowed to emigrate with his wife in June 1938 to Palestine
, later to become Israel
, where he worked between 1942 and 1950 as an accountant. By 1950 he was going blind and had to give up his job; nothing more is documented about him up to his death in 1956. He is buried in the Kirjat-Schaul-Friedhof in Tel Aviv
under the name Karl Meir Baer.
In 1919 Karl Grune
adapted Baer's book into a fictional autobiography, and into the script for a silent film starring the German actress Erika Glässner (1890–1959) as "Nobody". No copy of the film seems to have survived the Nazi period and Second World War.
Writer Hermann Simon, whose aunts and mother were friends of Baer and his wife, wrote a mini-book, Wer ist Nobody? ("Who is Nobody?") for inclusion in a 1993 print edition of Aus eines Mannes Mädchenjahren
An English translation by Deborah Simon, based on a German post-war reprint, was published in 2005 under the name Memoirs of a Man's Maiden Years.
Suffrage
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply the franchise, distinct from mere voting rights, is the civil right to vote gained through the democratic process...
tte and Zionist. Born female and named Martha Baer he became, in December 1906, one of the first people to undergo sex-change surgery, and one of the first, in January 1907, to gain full legal recognition of his gender identity
Gender identity
A gender identity is the way in which an individual self-identifies with a gender category, for example, as being either a man or a woman, or in some cases being neither, which can be distinct from biological sex. Basic gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to...
and to have a new birth certificate issued reflecting his new gender. Baer wrote notes for sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld
Magnus Hirschfeld
Magnus Hirschfeld was a German physician and sexologist. An outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which Dustin Goltz called "the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights."-Early life:Hirschfeld was born in Kolberg in a...
on his experiences growing up as a girl while feeling inside that he was male. Together they developed these notes into the semi-fictional, semi-autobiographical Aus eines Mannes Mädchenjahren (Man's Years as a Young Girl) (1907) which was published under the pseudonym N.O. Body. Baer also gained the right to marry and did so in October 1907.
Life
Martha Baer
Martha Baer studied political economyPolitical economy
Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
, sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
and pedagogy
Pedagogy
Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction....
in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, and became a social worker ("Volkspflegerin") and confirmed Suffragette
Suffragette
"Suffragette" is a term coined by the Daily Mail newspaper as a derogatory label for members of the late 19th and early 20th century movement for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom, in particular members of the Women's Social and Political Union...
. In May 1904 he was sent to Galicia
Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria
The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria was a crownland of the Habsburg Monarchy, the Austrian Empire, and Austria–Hungary from 1772 to 1918 .This historical region in eastern Central Europe is currently divided between Poland and Ukraine...
under the auspices of the Hamburg chapter of the B'nai Bith, to campaign against the trafficking of women from poor countries and for the rights of all women to education. Here, in Lemberg (now Lviv), Martha met the equally active Beile Halpern, who he was later to marry (as Karl Baer).
Baer's work included activism among local women. He encouraged them to campaign for kindergarten and school provision, which would allow women to hold jobs outside the home and reduce the financial hardship that prompted some to traffic their daughters or send them into service. Baer worked to oblige the authorities along established human trafficking paths to check ID documents and combat illegal movement. He also promoted the women's education movement, and became well-known as a reformist throughout eastern Europe and Germany.
Baer had initially been sent to Galicia for two years; he returned to Germany after only one, having attracted censure for his male body language, argumentative style, and forceful advocacy of the cause. According to case notes by Magnus Hirschfeld
Magnus Hirschfeld
Magnus Hirschfeld was a German physician and sexologist. An outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which Dustin Goltz called "the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights."-Early life:Hirschfeld was born in Kolberg in a...
, Baer then transitioned to his male identity and began living as a man. He was diagnosed as a man living in a woman's body after accidental hospitalization, when his female anatomy was discovered; at the same hospital he underwent multi-stage rudimentary sex-change surgery in October 1906. After convalescence he was released from hospital in December 1906, with a medical certificate of his new gender. His new identity was confirmed by the courts in Arolsen (his birthplace) on 8 January 1907.
Karl M. Baer
Karl Baer retained the middle initial "M", ostensibly stemming from 'Martha', to connect him to his earlier publications under the name M Baer. In later life he said the letter stood for 'Max'; on his gravestone the middle name is given as 'Meir.' In October 1907 he married Beile Halpern; she died in March 1909, and he remarried, with Elza Max (1887–1947). From 1908 to 1911 Baer was an insurance sales agent; on January 1, 1911 he took up a post as Consul for Jewish Life in Berlin. In December 1920 he became director of the Berlin Section of the Loge B'nai Brith, a post he held until the Section's forcible closure by the GestapoGestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
on 19 April 1937. Baer was by then an important figure in Jewish society, and his influence on cultural life brought him into conflict with the Nazi administration. He was allowed to emigrate with his wife in June 1938 to Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
, later to become Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, where he worked between 1942 and 1950 as an accountant. By 1950 he was going blind and had to give up his job; nothing more is documented about him up to his death in 1956. He is buried in the Kirjat-Schaul-Friedhof in Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
under the name Karl Meir Baer.
Book and Film
As part of his analysis and therapy, Baer wrote notes for Hirschfeld on his experiences growing up as a girl while feeling inside that he was male. He and Hirschfeld together worked up these notes into the semi-fictional, semi-autobiographical Aus eines Mannes Mädchenjahren, "Memoirs of a man's maiden years", published in 1907 under the pseudonym 'N.O. Body.' Details of Baer's background were also changed to prevent readers identifying him from the text. Hirschfeld, a keen advocate of the notion of a 'third sex', to which anyone uncomfortable with gender norms or sexual dichotomy could attribute themselves, hoped the book would explain the dilemma that many intersexed children suffered when forced into a two-gender system. The book went through several reprints and translations, earning Baer a continuing income in later life. Later editions, especially those published after the First World War, were rewritten in light of shifts in social acceptance and to fulfil new social and political aims.In 1919 Karl Grune
Karl Grune
Karl Grune was an Austrian film director and writer who made many silent films in the 1920s.Grune was born in Vienna, where he later attended drama school...
adapted Baer's book into a fictional autobiography, and into the script for a silent film starring the German actress Erika Glässner (1890–1959) as "Nobody". No copy of the film seems to have survived the Nazi period and Second World War.
Writer Hermann Simon, whose aunts and mother were friends of Baer and his wife, wrote a mini-book, Wer ist Nobody? ("Who is Nobody?") for inclusion in a 1993 print edition of Aus eines Mannes Mädchenjahren
An English translation by Deborah Simon, based on a German post-war reprint, was published in 2005 under the name Memoirs of a Man's Maiden Years.
Further reading
- N.O. Body: Aus eines Mannes Mädchenjahren. Preamble by Rudolf Presber. epilogue by Dr. med. Magnus Hirschfeld. Reprint issued by Hermann Simon with an extra commentary and closing discussion about "who was Nobody?" „Wer war N.O. Body?“ Berlin 1993: Ed. Hentrich (Original Berlin 1907: Riecke)
- M. Baer: Mädchenhandel. in: Arena, herausgegeben von Rudolf Presber, 3. Jg. Heft 5, August 1908. S. 549–555.
- K. M. Baer-Berlin. Über den Mädchenhandel. In: Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft Nr. 9, 1908. S. 513–528.
- Magnus HirschfeldMagnus HirschfeldMagnus Hirschfeld was a German physician and sexologist. An outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which Dustin Goltz called "the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights."-Early life:Hirschfeld was born in Kolberg in a...
: Drei Fälle von irrtümlicher Geschlechtsbestimmung. In: Medizinische Reform. Wochenschrift für soziale Medizin, Hygiene und Medizinalstatistik XV, 1906, 51. S. 614. - Magnus Hirschfeld: Sexualpathologie. Ein Lehrbuch für Ärzte und Studierende. 2. Teil: Sexuelle Zwischenstufen: Das männliche Weib und der weibliche Mann. Bonn 1918. S. 44ff.
- Louis Maretzki: Geschichte des Ordens Bne Briss in Deutschland 1882–1907. Berlin 1907.