verdict. The case was closed. With this the remarkable "matrimony" was dissolved.

We too wanted to see the human side of the case. It unrolled itself for us a few days after the trial, when we visited Else - Wilhelmine A. in her home near Krefeld, where she lives alone since her escape to the West. Wilhelmine A. wore a dark colored men's suit, a striped sport shirt, without a tie, and dark brown men's shoes with thick rubber soles.

We

It wasn't easy to get her into a conversation. talked for awhile about nothing special. We had to get over her distrust. We smoked one cigarette and then another. We sensed what was going on inside the woman with the hard man's face, how she fought with the ques- tion: could her story be understood the wrong way she have to be ashamed.

·

did

Quietly and a little hesitating, but with a voice that belonged very much to her masculine appearance, she began to speak. In simple words, which sometimes almost sounded helpless.

"This is my life as a man. I was born in East Prussia, ne ar Insterburg. We were six children at home.

I was one of three girls. We had a farm, and I was put to work early in my childhood. Already I was then something like a boy. I actually never felt like a girl. I don't know how to say it... Anyhow, I was being treat- ed as a boy already when I left school at the age of fourteen. It was then when I went to see a physician for the first time. He told me not to worry and to do what I liked...

"

The physician couldn't detect any physical chang- es. Ever since then Wilhelmine A. remained biolog- ically a real woman.

-

11

Later on the district court in Sensburg permitted Else Wilhelmine A. to call herself Wilhelm and to wear men's clothing. It didn't take long, and 'Wilhelm" was completely absorbed in his roll as a man. Nobody not- iced that the man, who was able to work so hard, was in reality a woman.

42.