Lili Elbe, 1926
© Wikimedia Commons
14 Südkreuz
Lili Elbe Archive
The Lili Elbe Archive was founded in 2013 and named after the Danish painter Lili Elbe who received one of the first operations for gender reassignment surgery in 1930 at Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Berlin. The purpose of the archive was to establish an independent and autonomous site for the histories of inter*, trans*, queer and non-binary people and to make them publicly visible. The collection comprised books, photos, videos, interviews and other historical documents from the period before and after 1945 that had not previously been included in the collections of public archives due to their deviation from established norms or lack of identification numbers (ISBN).
The eleven founders acted in the awareness that it is the task of every resistance movement “to gather and preserve its own self-defined history”. In addition to the archive there was also a reference library in Berlin. Publications were produced and workshops and educational projects held. A partnership was also arranged – entitled the Digital Transgender Archive – with existing archives in the United States and Canada to bring together available sources on a global basis. However, in 2022 the archive’s online presence disappeared and with it access to the reference library. After ten years of self-organisation and lack of funding the archive quietly closed its doors without any official explanation from its operators. The archive’s resources and collections were transferred to Canada. To this day Germany lacks a space for the stories the Lili Elbe Archive was founded to preserve.
Lili Elbe, 1926
© Wikimedia Commons
For What If Berlin, Akira Takayama transposes unrealised projects from the archives of the Berliner Festspiele and other Berlin cultural institutions, as well as from architects and artists, into the present and asks us which vision we want to realise in the future.
The future vision for the project Lili Elbe Archive, that will be presented in the frame of What If Berlin from 28 August 2026 onwards, will respond to the following question: What if Berlin rebuilt a lost archive?
Which of the 27 visions for the future is the most exciting? Which project does Berlin need in future? Which idea should actually be realised?
Until 30 September 2026, you can vote for up to three of the 27 visions for the future. The results will be displayed live to give the latest impression of the public’s reactions.