I Am My Own Woman: The Outlaw Life of Charlotte Von Mahlsdorf, Berlin's Most Distinguished Transvestite [Paperback]

Charlotte Von Mahlsdorf (Author), Charlotte Von Mahlsdorf (Author), Jean Hollander (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1995

Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (nee Lothar Berfelde) has lived openly as a transvestite since the 1940s. In high-heeled sandals and a good suit, Charlotte collected ornate, hand-crafted antiques of the Grunderzeit period through the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the GDR, and into the unified Federal Republic of Germany. The subject of an acclaimed film by Rosa von Praunheims. 33 photos.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, born Lothar Berfelde in 1928 in Mahlsdorf, was the son of a benevolent mother and a tyrannical father. At a very early age (seven or eight), he discovered that he liked to wear his mother's old clothes, jauntily noting that "I still have my mania for aprons." His story is not all lightness and lipstick, however. Mahlsdorf recalls being transferred from public to private school after a teacher beat him for making a crack about Hitler Youth. He found a job working after school in an antique furniture store. But then a Jewish co-worker was taken away ("They probably need farm workers in Poland," his employer insisted hopefully), and more and more often they began dealing in "Jewish bequests." Mahlsdorf escaped the war and his father by going with his mother, sister and brother to East Prussia, and from there to stay on his aunt's farm, where he was encouraged and nurtured by his lesbian aunt, herself a cross-dresser. Near the end of the war, when he returned to his home village, he killed his violent father during a confrontation and used a precursor of battered women's syndrome as his defense. Mahlsdorf did not slow down a bit in later years. He recalls creating a house-museum almost from scratch, East Germany's underground gay culture, the persecution he suffered from appearing in women's clothing in public and the divisiveness of the Berlin Wall. Although this is nonfiction, I Am My Own Woman reads like a traditional action-adventure story?with a cross-dressing furniture buff as the hero. Photos.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

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Product Details

• Paperback: 170 pages
• Publisher: Cleis Press; 1st edition (September 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573440108
• ISBN-13: 978-1573440103
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,543,651 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Things that will never be again revisited, December 18, 2004

By 

JK8 (Salem, NJ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: I Am My Own Wife: The True Story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (Paperback)

This is a lovely read by a gentle man who felt he was really a woman in a mannish body, and also it is the story of a German who lived in parts of Germany and Berlin that are gone and will never be again. I felt a nostalgia for times past for the neighorhood around the Alexanderplatz in Berlin which used to be the gay and lower class neighborhood and also the red light district. If one goes to Alexanderplatz today there is the hideous Russian Funkturm radio tower and almost everything has been bulldozed, and there is a huge statue of Michael Jackson (of all things) in the space where Alexanderplatz was, and the neighborhoods Charlotte knew will never be replaced. He has struggled bravely to take pieces here and there where he could and save them for the ages, fighting bravely in the face of the Soviets stealing everything from Berlin that wasn't nailed down and the east German mentality of bulldoze and build worker flats and raze what is the capitalist past. What a time to live in and how amazing to have the story of a transvestite who lived them and knew every thing and place from the bottom up, so to speak, it puts a new face on history. 5 Stars!

Update October 2006: I just returned from Berlin where I visited the Grunderzeit Museum in Mahlsdorf which is a suburb of Berlin. You can get there on the S-Bahn and then walk to the museum (about a 15 minute walk). I was heartbroken to learn that Charlotte had passed away on April 30, 2002. The museum was nice and looks like it is a booming business. I bought some postcards and apparently there is a stage play currently running about the life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (in Berlin). Berlin has changed since I was there last, and it is knitting itself together up the middle where it was divided. The museum has had structural repairs and the basement is available for parties. I liked the museum and it was worth the trip!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging story of a memorable transvestite life, August 20, 2004

By 

A reader from Boston, MA (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Am My Own Woman: The Outlaw Life of Charlotte Von Mahlsdorf, Berlin's Most Distinguished Transvestite (Paperback)

Young Lothar Berfelde loved stylish women's clothes, and as he got older he tried them on. Amazingly, he got enough support from loved ones to have the strength to follow his inclinations. He also had the clarity of mind to observe what was going around him with historical perspective and perspicacity, i.e., the Soviet occupation of Berlin, the rise of the Nazis (his brutish father was an enthusiastic Nazi), the persecution of the Jews, the murderous suppression of the working class by the post-WWI socialist government, etc. Driven to killing his father, he fell into the hands of the Nazi "justice" system and survived. From his teenage years he was captivated by Biedermeyer era furniture and collected what he could. In the near-anarchy following the war and through circumstance and chutzpah he was able to "acquire" a Berlin mansion in which he created a museum to the pre-WWI furniture, household objects and consumer culture that he loved. He struggled to maintain the mansion and the museum's priceless contents, but was only partially successful. East Berlin bureaucrats and their Stasi agents were formidable foes. But Berfelde, who had changed his name to Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, never succumbed to glorification of the capitalist west. He eventually traded his taste for stylish women's clothed for the peasant hausfrau look of his later years and was strangely content with playing the simple housefrau. However this was an affectation, for he was a very broad-minded and humanistic man. He lived a remarkable life and his story is very much worth the reading.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gramophones are flowers, June 3, 2007

By 

Van Halen (Twin Oaks) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Am My Own Wife: The True Story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (Paperback)

Don't let the sensationalist title scare you off - this is a bewildering rarity in TS lit: humanist, protean, sagacious.

Ostensibly the (obliquely Oedipal) saga of a gay crossdresser surviving the Third Reich, then "socialist" East Berlin, Mahlsdorf's narrative is, at core, a love story - with fin de siècle furniture. As stubbornly as she withstood two ridiculous, internecine regimes, Marhlsdorf regales her text with Gründerzeit minutiae. Tedious, obscure, for sure - deal. I believe that's the intuitive point. When Mahlsdorf, a maniac collector of antiquities, proclaims "To me, moldy air is like Chanel No. 5" she strikes a mighty blow against every TS cliche.

Roll over Christine Jorgensen and tell Jerry Springer the news: Gramophones are flowers.