Memoirs of a Man’s Maiden Years

Born in Arolsen, Germany, Karl M. Baer grew up as Martha Baer. Baer studied in Hamburg and Berlin, becoming a feminist, suffragette, and social worker. In 1906, Baer underwent a gender-altering operation by Magnus Hirschfeld. This successful procedure allowed Karl, soon thereafter his legally recognized name, to write, with Hirschfeld, and under the pseudonym N. O. Body, Aus eines Mannes Mädchenjahren (Memoirs of a Man’s Maiden Years), a semiautobiographical account of the social-emotional life he had led and the oldest-known memoir about a successful sex-altering operation. Baer lived a very successful and public life after his surgery: he was married (to Beile Halpern in 1907, and then, after her death in 1909, to Elza Max), worked as an insurance broker, and was very active in Zionist and Jewish cultural life in Berlin, serving as the city’s B’nai B’rith lodge director (1920–1937). He immigrated in 1938 to Palestine, where he worked as an accountant.