Finding My Queer Heritage
My great-aunt Charlotte was trans and queer. Her story was lost to my family: until now.
A few years ago, a researcher from Germany contacted my father. He said, you have a relative named Charlotte Charlaque. I’d like to know more about her.
My father said, I do?
Charlotte Charlaque was born Kurt Scharlach. She immigrated to the US in the 1920s with her family at the age of 7. Twelve years later, she left to return to Germany, where she was from.
That’s where things start to get fascinating.
Charlotte was born sometime in the early ’30s at the clinic in Germany, the Instituted of Sexology (trans.) that was the first medical institution worldwide to perform gender affirmation surgeries. Charlotte and her partner both transitioned from male to female at this time, and never looked back.
When Nazi Germany arrived a few years later, they fled. Charlotte and her partner resettled in the Ukraine, then in Prague, always keeping one step ahead of the wave of Nazi imperialism. They joined a community of artists and actresses and for a while, they were happy together, young and in love.
It couldn’t stay that way forever.
