Legal Identity
At the time of Elbe's surgery her case was already a sensation in newspapers of Denmark and Germany. The King of Denmark invalidated the Wegeners' marriage in October 1930, and Elbe managed to get her sex and name legally changed, including receiving a passport as Lili Elbe. She also stopped painting believing it to be something that only Einar did.
Gerda Wegener went on to marry an Italian military officer, aviator, and diplomat, Major Fernando "Nando" Porta, and move to Morocco, where she would learn of the death of Elbe, whom she described to a friend as "my poor little Lily " (by contrast, she described her second husband as "a magnificent, splendid and peerless hunk of man"). After living for several years in Marrakech and Casablanca, the Portas divorced, and Gerda returned to Denmark, where she died in 1940.
After the dissolution of the Wegeners' marriage, Elbe accepted a proposal from an unknown man, which she intended to follow up as soon as she would be able to become a mother.
Read more about this topic: Lili Elbe
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