In The Lilac People, my debut novel about trans people in Weimar Berlin and Nazi Germany, I have a side character so small, they’re downright tertiary. Dora Richter has no speaking role, nor does she have any impact on the plot. And yet she’s included because she’s important, and she was real.
As is often the case when researching marginalized or erased histories, things were incomplete. There were pieces missing in Dora’s life story, and eventually it cut off completely. After a certain point, she was never seen or heard from again.
At least, this was the narrative for decades. I take pride in being as accurate and thorough as possible with my research, so I followed the trail of the dedicated historians before me, equally determined to provide as complete a picture of Dora as I could. With trans history so dear to me, there’s no worse fate to me than appearing to be, in a word, wrong. Especially if it’s too late to correct that wrongness.
But the tricky nature of recovering marginalized history is it’s never done. It shifts, it surprises. There are inevitably parts that remain empty or obscured, and yet sometimes something new pops up despite the tireless efforts of previous historians. Sometimes that new discovery is also quite big.
Dora’s seemingly concluded history did recently shift, and me and many others were indeed surprised. It was also too late for me to do anything about it.
At the time of writing The Lilac People, this is what I knew about Dora Richter.
Dora Richter was a trans woman (“transvestite” at the time) known as the first documented person to have undergone a complete, gender-affirming vaginoplasty. She was born in 1892 in Seifen (now Ryžovna) in the Kingdom of Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), and is believed to have been the second of seven children. She exhibited so-called feminine behaviors by at least six years old and became a baker’s apprentice around the age of seventeen. She dressed as a woman in her free time and eventually headed to the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (the Institute for Sexual Science) in Berlin when encouraged by a friend. The Institute had many resources available for trans people.
She was arrested multiple times in Berlin for her so-called crossdressing, and otherwise worked as a male-presenting waiter and cook until she got her first of at least three surgeries in 1922 around the age of thirty. After completing the first surgical step of her vaginoplasty journey, she worked at the Institute for Sexual Science as a maid and domestic servant alongside other trans women who had elected to do the same. (One of the many resources the Institute offered to trans people was employment, when available. The Institute’s co-founder, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, recognized how difficult it was for trans people to find employment.)
Dora was well loved and respected at the Institute and was affectionately nicknamed “Dorchen” (“Little Dora”) by Dr. Hirschfeld. The other maids were also loved and respected, as exampled from this observation by Dr. Ludwig Levy-Lenz, a surgeon at the Institute and who performed one of Dora’s surgeries:
It was, moreover, very difficult for transvestites to find a job.(…) As we knew this and as only few places of work were willing to employ transvestites, we did everything we could to give such people a job at our Institute. For instance, we had five maids – all of them [MTF] transvestites, and I shall never forget the sight one day when I happened to go into the Institute’s kitchen after work: there they sat close together, the five “girls,” peacefully knitting and sewing and singing old folk-songs. These were, in any case, the best, most hardworking and conscientious domestic workers we ever had.
But then, on January 30th, 1933, Hitler became chancellor. Just three months and some change later, on May 6th, the German Student Union, who were by this point young Nazis, ransacked the Institute. This soon led to the first documented queer/trans book ban, a book burning.
For a while, this was where Dora Richter’s story ended.
For a while, this was where Dora Richter’s story ended. It was originally believed that she had been murdered that night, and so this is what my characters believe in the book. However, in March of 1955—22 years later—more information about her finally surfaced. In an article by Charlotte Charlaque—another pioneer of trans woman history in Berlin, who also fled—in the American magazine ONE, it turned out Dora had escaped from Germany after that day at the Institute and went to Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic). She became the owner of a small restaurant in her hometown of Seifen/Ryžovna.
In 1934, she was finally granted a legal name change to Dora Rudolfine Richter (Czech version: Dora Rudolfa Richterová) by the president of Czechoslovakia. (According to historian Clara Hartmann in 2023, her baptismal record was finally updated with both her correct name and gender marker in 1946. It was updated by a priest and stamped by the Catholic parish office of Seifen, which are details I just find interesting.) She owned her own home in Seifen/Ryžovna, remained unmarried, and eventually worked as a lace maker.
But in 1939, she again fell off historical radar. On the surface, this wouldn’t cause much alarm. People disappear into history all the time due to a lack of consistent records. But with the fact that the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939, suddenly her disappearance doesn’t seem so benign. After surviving the Nazis once in Germany, historians speculated she wasn’t as lucky the second time around in Czechoslovakia.
Since I take pride in the accuracy of my work and strive to honor the legacies of the transcestry, I wanted to make sure readers knew these extra pieces of Dora’s life. I included a shorter version of them in the book’s back matter. I also included a definitive final sentence: “The rest of her life is unknown.”
This was how it was for the years of research for my book, straight through to early December 2024, when it was time to send back the final pass pages to my publisher. After sending the final pass, I could never alter the book again. Ever. This is how it would be published in April 2025.
So I attempted to be meticulous for the umpteenth time, combing through everything for inaccuracies, updates, and typos on all levels of craft, content, historical accuracy, and grammar. Then, with both relief and anxiety, I sent the pages over. That was it. I never had to (or could) look at the manuscript ever again. This moment comes for every author. Surely it’d be okay.
Just days after sending off my final proof pages—now 69 years since the last known update about Dora in 1955—I heard the news: historian Clara Hartmann had uncovered new information about Dora Richter. It turned out this news had gained attention almost exactly two months before I sent in my final pass pages, with some of it originally published more quietly six months earlier in June 2024. I’d completely missed it.
By the time I heard, I knew it was too late to update my back matter. One simply does not mess with printer deadlines. Immediately, that sentence haunted me: “The rest of her life is unknown.”
Immediately, that sentence haunted me: ‘The rest of her life is unknown.’
Dora, it turned out, lived to the age of 74—an exceptionally good lifespan for her time. She continued to live in Seifen/Ryžovna until 1946, when the end of WWII led to the expulsion of Germans from places such as Czechoslovakia. She then went to Allersberg, Bavaria, where she remained until her death in 1966. According to Clara Hartmann, neighbors fondly remembered Dora as a cheerful old woman who kept a pigeon in her handbag. She was rarely seen without that handbag, which supposedly was used as a makeshift nest for the pigeon, and into which she was sometimes seen dropping food. She lived with a man who some neighbors assumed was her brother, but others believed was her lover. (Couples living together outside of wedlock was frowned upon.)
When I heard the update on her life, I had a mix of feelings. One of them was joy at the simple fact that Dora had survived. Another was awe, that somebody had managed to find out more about Dora Richter and the lengths to which that historian went. But I also felt frustration. I’d just spent how many years researching all this stuff, only to miss such a big update by at least two months, rendering my book technically outdated before it even had a chance to debut? It was admittedly from a place of stubborn pride for me, the pride I take in being as accurate as possible in histories that are often quickly dismissed as speculative or false. Had I gone to the same lengths that Hartmann had when trying to find new information about Dora? Not even close. Was I still worried people would see me as a hack who didn’t know what he was talking about? Well, yeah.
But after feeling my medley of feelings, I began to reflect. In my book’s back matter, I’d also included the following: “We’ve entered a time when people are finally discussing and researching trans people during the Nazi era, and I welcome the updates, changes, and discoveries that occur beyond my armchair-historian novel.”
Trans history is far from over.
Three things jumped out at me, rereading that statement: 1) I meant it, 2) I didn’t realize how quickly this sentiment would be put into motion, and 3) my phrasing of “the updates” as opposed to “any updates” indicates that it wasn’t just hopeful thinking on my part that more trans history would be on the horizon. It was a recognition of how trans history works.
I realized I’ve never been happier to be wrong. And this, it turns out, is the best part about researching trans history.
As more trans historians enter the profession and more ally historians check their assumptions and (over)simplifications about the history of gender, some of the holes of gender non-conforming history are filling. Lost pieces are being found, and whole or nearly-whole pictures are coming together after generations of obscurity.
When we think of historical erasure, we often think of the more physical side of things: the destruction of artifacts, books, and other primary sources that confirm the past existences of a marginalized identity. However, as I’ve written elsewhere, this is only the first in a four-step process of erasure. The others are the destruction of the people, the destruction of meaning, and the glossing over/sometimes-willful misinterpretation of modern recoveries of said histories.
I used to think that Dora Richter’s story ended with that second step: the destruction of the people. However, thanks to the tireless dedication of Clara Hartmann (and, earlier, Charlotte Charlaque), we now know that isn’t the case. We now know that she survived the Nazis not once, but twice. We now know that against the odds, she went on to live a long, happy life. We know that trans history is far from over, that it has always been and continues to be a collaborative effort within and beyond the community, people contributing new pieces of information as they find them. We’ll continue to recover, discover, and awaken histories that either were erased in any of the four above steps or have been slumbering this whole time, undisturbed, because none of us yet know they’re there.
But perhaps most importantly, we now know that such stories sometimes come with a happy ending. The reality is there. All we have to do is look.
