This paper explores the translation and reception of the life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a German transvestite, whose life spanned Germany’s turbulent twentieth century. The paper documents how the “packaging” of von Mahlsdorf’s queer life in English translation was shaped by the powerful Western reading of the post-communist period in Eastern Europe as a “transition.” Initially framed as a gay hero, von Mahlsdorf would be radically re-framed with the release of her secret police file and growing Western disenchantment with the course of the Eastern Europe’s “transition” in the late 1990s. This Anglophone framing is contrasted to the contemporary Russian framing of the memoir. The paper concludes with a close reading of von Mahlsdorf’s memoir itself, highlighting her attempts to foreclose the framing of her life as a progressivist narrative of “coming out.”

Note: the full text of Prof. Baer’s keynote is only available in the print version of the Review. A version of the address has been published in Transgender Studies Quarterly, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-3545191