Charlotte von Mahlsdorf

Kuzniar also discusses at length Praunheim's film, "Ich bin meine eigene Frau" (1993), which tells the astonishing story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (1928-2002), who apparently lived fairly openly as a gay transvestite in the Nazi era, in the German Democratic Republic, and in newly unified Germany.

Here you get a sense of the cadences of the "real" Charlotte:

After Praunheim's film, the American playwright Doug Wright wrote an important play also called "I Am My Own Wife," which further complicated the story:

It turns out very little of Mahlsdorf's story can be corroborated, which made it seem like it was possible that she wasn't such a hero after all ... But Kuzniar's discussion of how Rosa von Praunheim's film prevents the spectator from feeling that he or she really "knows" Mahlsdorf suggests that Praunheim's film anticipates these kinds of concerns.