Story of German transvestite who survived WWII shows how far LGBTQ+ rights have come

The Pulitzer Prize-winning play “I Am My Own Wife” has a central character as intriguing as its title: German transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who survived both the Nazis and the Communists without hiding her gender identity.

“As the script says, she survived the two most repressive regimes the Western world has ever known — in a pair of heels,” said Corey McDaniel of Seattle, who plays von Mahlsdorf and 30-some other characters in the one-man play, which opens this weekend at Harlequin Productions’ State Theater.

The 2004 play grew out of playwright Doug Wright’s years of interviews and correspondence with von Mahlsdorf, born Lothar Berfelde, and reflects his affection and admiration for her while dealing with the many complexities of her history — and of history writ large. It’s a story New York Times critic Bruce Weber called “both moving and intellectually absorbing.”

“The playwright says something to the effect that if she were alive today … he hopes she would see it as a love letter, and that’s kind of how I feel as well,” McDaniel said in a phone interview. “It’s a love letter to her and to our culture.”

As he got to know his character, McDaniel said he also fell for her.

“She’s the most amazing human being,” he said, “and the more I understand who she is and where she came from … and how she responded to this oppressive world she was submerged in, I fall deeper in love with her.

“It’s an honor and a thrill as an artist and a human being and a gay man to try to tell her story.”

Von Mahlsdorf, who died in 2002, was a significant and sometimes controversial figure in the gay community. A collector of antiques, she founded a museum that served as an important gathering place for gay people in East Berlin. She also was an informant with the East German secret police.

Harlequin received a Sheri and Les Biller Family Foundation Social Impact Theatre Award, which recognized the importance of continuing to tell this piece of LGBTQ+ history.

The play won a 2004 Tony for Best Play, and is one of several plays in the Harlequin season that tell important stories, “serious stories that resonate with where we are in history right now,” said Harlequin’s artistic director Linda Whitney.

McDaniel also sees the production as recognition of how far LGBTQ rights have come.

“I’m a gay man myself, and I’m in a bi-national marriage,” he said. “My husband is from Brazil, which is a very repressive nation for LGBTQ people. We had lived there ourselves, and I had experienced the repression outside of the United States at a level that a lot of Americans might not understand.”

Younger Americans also might not understand how recent the changes have been here, he said.

“We have so many rights and freedoms,” he said. “People who are even 10, 15 years younger than I am don’t have any clue what I might have gone through in my lifetime to have the freedoms that we have now.”

This story was originally published January 18, 2018 at 5:45 AM with the headline "Story of German transvestite who survived WWII shows how far LGBTQ+ rights have come."