The Danish Girl

Author/Guide: David Ebershoff

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1920s: A touching love story and the life of Danish painter Einar Wegener, the first recipient of sex-change surgery,

ISBN: 978-1474601573
Genre: Fiction

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What you need to know before your trail

Loosely inspired by a true story, that of the life of Danish painter Einar Wegener, who was the first recipient of sex-change surgery, this is a look at a modern marriage, a modern love affair and asks the question of what you do when the person you love changes in ways you never would have expected?

Wegener married but all the while he was harbouring a secret – one that would threaten to destroy him life but that of everyone he loved, particularly his wife. In this story, his wife is a young American painter who inadvertently plays a major role in encouraging her husband to become the woman he was meant to be: Lili Elbe. The booktrail below is part film, part novel.

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Travel Guide

Copenhagen

The story starts in Copenhagen with two Danish painters Einar Wegener and Gerda Waud. They met here at the local art college when they are both art students, fall in love and marry a few years later. Their styles were different – but they formed a strong bond and where he preferred painting landscapes, she became famous for painting a beautiful and mysterious woman. Later it’s discovered that this mysterious figure is in fact her husband. Scandal soon follows and they are forced to flee the city that brought them together. Shocking but then this was the 1920s – not that long ago when you think about it.

The delicate way Einar first tries on the dress is painted with words that more than do it justice:

“Einar could concentrate only on the silk dressing his skin, as if it were a bandage. Yes, that was how it felt the first time: the silk was so fine and airy that it felt like a gauze – a balm-soaked gauze lying delicately on healing skin.”

Their world in Copenhagen is a colourful one, with their apartment and their surroundings evoked like in one of their paintings. This Copenhagen is presented on a canvas to soak up and enjoy.

Paris

Paris with its ‘je ne sais quoi’ and relaxed social mores, was the perfect place for them to take refuge. The paintings, still a success are more so here and then the time comes for the subject of the painting herself to join the buzz and bright lights of the Parisian social scene.

This is an important time for the sexual transformation of Wegener who sees in Paris the chance to be who he wants, needs to be. His wife helps him as she sees his real calling. The atmosphere here of their courage in face of such diversity is humbling and is a real moth into a butterfly moment – of the woman in the painting coming to life and grasping her future in both hands.

Dresden

In 1930, it became known that Einar Wegener had undergone the world’s first recorded sex change operation in Germany. Lili Elbe was born. Shockingly the King of Denmark reacted badly to this news but Germany had been the country where her future was made and the world changed.

Streetview Maps

3) Copenhagen - Royal Danish Academy of the Arts

4) Copenhagen - Royal Theatre

6) Paris -Boulevard de Sebastol
The street of many names...and guises

9) Dresden - Augustusbrucke
They cross this bridge

Booktrailer Review

Clare: @thebooktrailer

This is one touching and intimately written book. I felt humbled reading it for I haven’t really thought about people who are born in the wrong sex and had not fully understood what that means. I really feel I have learned something with this novel. How strong a person was Einar to do what he did in the 1920s and after moving to Paris, to step out proudly into society when it was so closed off to a lot of people least of all a man who felt he should have been born a woman. The film is just as remarkable if not more so, but I was really saddened by the end. This really is a story which deserves to be told. Kudos to the author for this touching portrayal.