Gerda von Zobeltitz (1891 – 1963) tailor

Georg von Zobeltitz from Weissensee, Berlin, a scion of one of Germany's old noble families with ties to the Hohenzollern court, was making a living in Berlin as Gerda, a women's tailor, by 1910. She was counselled by Magnus Hirschfeld.

In 1912 Gerda was arrested in Berlin for public cross-dressing, as reported in the Berliner Tageblatt: "the alleged culprit was soon released once it was determined that it was a case not of disorderly conduct but instead of transvestism". Within a year Gerda had acquired a transvestite police pass in Potsdam, and when called for military recruitment in 1913, she appeared as Gerda and was deemed ineligible.

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At the age of 72 Gerda was run over by a car on the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin. She is buried in the graveyard at the Friedhof Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche.

• Berliner Tageblatt, 106, 27 February 1912.
  
• Letzte Änderung. "Verzaubert in Nord-Ost". Übersicht von Invertito 12, 31.07.2012. www.invertito.de/det3/d_inv1257.html.
  
• Robert Beachy. Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity. Knopf, 2014: 172.
  
• Transvestiten in den 20er und 30er Jahren. Facebook. https://de-de.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.209317632417797.62397.203265973022963&type=3&_fb_noscript=1.
  

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We know of Gerda in 1912, and of her death in 1963.   But what in-between?   In particular, how did she survive two world wars and the Nazi regime?

Robert Beachy refers to her only as Georg, and does not give her real name.