Lili Elbe, birth name Einar Wegener, Einar also spelled Ejner, (born December 28, 1882, Vejle, Denmark died September 13, 1931, Dresden, Germany), Danish painter who was assigned male at birth, experienced what is now called gender dysphoria, and underwent the world’s first documented sex reassignment surgery. Born Einar Wegener, Elbe lived nearly her whole life as a man. Beginning early in the first decade of the 20th century, Elbe (then Wegener) studied art at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and met Gerda Gottlieb there. The two fell in love and got married about 1905. According to the