Dora Richter

Richter was born to a poor farming family[3] in 1891, named Rudolph, and raised as male. Early in childhood, Richter displayed a "tendency to act and carry on in a feminine way".[4] At the age of 6 years, she apparently tried to remove her penis with a tourniquet.[5] Using the name Dora, she began wearing women's clothing and presenting as female, working under her birth name as a waiter in Berlin hotels during the busy summer season, then living as female the remainder of the year. She was arrested from time to time for cross-dressing, serving time in prison before being released by a judge into the care of Hirschfeld.[5]

With special permission from the police to wear women's clothing, Richter worked with other transgender people as a domestic servant at the Institute for Sexual Research (one of the rare places where a trans person could be employed), where she was affectionately known as Dörchen.[4] In 1922, she underwent an orchiectomy. Dr. Felix Abraham, a psychiatrist working at the institute, published Richter's gender transformation as a case study: "Her castration had the effect – albeit not very extensive – of making her body become fuller, restricting her beard growth, making visible the first signs of breast development, and giving the pelvic fat pad... a more feminine shape."[6]

In early 1931, Richter had a penectomy performed by institute physician Dr. Ludwig Levy-Lenz, and in June that year an artificial vagina was surgically grafted by Berlin surgeon Prof. Dr. Erwing Gohrbandt,[7][6] making her the first transgender woman of whom records remain to undergo vaginoplasty.

In May 1933, with growing Nazi influence in Germany (Hirschfeld had fled the country), a mob of students attacked the institute, and the state authorities then burned its records. Richter is not known to have survived this attack.[5]