Karl M. Baer

Karl M. Baer was born in 1885 in Bad Arolsen

Baer was born on 20 May 1885 in Arolsen, Germany, to Bernhard and Lina Baer. He was born intersex, and his family raised him as a girl. He identified with the male gender.

He studied political economy, sociology and pedagogy in Berlin and Hamburg. In Hamburg he became active against the trafficking of women and lectured across Germany. In 1904 B'nai B'rith sent him to Galicia, where he worked for women's education and against trafficking.

In 1906 he had surgery in Berlin, on the advice of sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, and began living as a man. Courts in Arolsen confirmed his new identity in January 1907. That year he published a semi-autobiographical book under the pen name N.O. Body, and it was adapted twice for film.

He married Beile Halpern in 1907. After her death in 1909 he married Elza Max. He worked as an insurance agent, became Consul for Jewish Life in Berlin in 1911, and led the Berlin section of B'nai B'rith from 1920 until the Gestapo closed it in 1937.

In 1938 he emigrated with his wife to the Land of Israel and worked as an insurance agent, living in Bat Yam. He gave up work in 1950 as he was losing his sight. He died in 1956 and is buried in Kiryat Shaul cemetery in Tel Aviv.