I Am My Own Woman

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I Am My Own Woman is a 1992 German semi-documentary directed by Rosa von Praunheim. It tells the life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a transgender woman who began life as Lothar Berfelde in Nazi Germany. An aunt named Luise, who was a transgender man, encouraged Lothar to try on female clothes and gave him books about being transgender. After a brutal incident with his father, Lothar kills him and is imprisoned; after World War II he is freed. By 1946 she lives as a woman, now called Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, and works to restore the ruined Friedrichsfelde castle, though she is later expelled by East German authorities. She has long relationships with older men and with a lover named Joechen, and for more than 30 years she preserves East Berlin’s first gay bar by moving its contents to her Gründerzeit Museum inMahlsdorf. In 1989 she appears in East German cinema with Coming Out, the year the Berlin Wall fell. After reunification she faces challenges: the museum is confiscated and attacked by neo-Nazis at a joint East–West LGBTQ event. In 1992 she is awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit for promoting sexual freedom. The film uses two actors for the younger Charlotte, while Charlotte herself appears as an older woman. It runs 91 minutes and is in German, and it was shown at major festivals including Berlin and Toronto in 1993.