Rick Riordan's Reviews > The Lilac People

A beautifully written, heartbreaking novel set in Germany just before and after World War II. While it is fiction, the author has clearly done his research, which is well-documented and impressively brought to life in the main characters, whom he even names after historical persons who shared similar struggles.

Short summary:
(These are not really spoilers. We learn all this in the first chapter.)

The story centers on Bertie, a trans man, and Sofie, his lover, who manage to survive the Nazi regime and the war by hiding on a farm near Ulm, pretending to be the owners of the property. When the war ends, they find a refugee from a concentration camp collapsed on their property -- another trans man named Karl. Karl tells them that although the war is over and the concentration camps are liberated, trans people are still very much in danger. The Allies have freed all the prisoners except the pink triangles (homosexuals) and some black triangles (those who are trans or intersex). These prisoners the Allies are sending straight to jail to begin serving prison sentences of up to five years, as outlined under the old Nazi laws, for their "deviancy" -- part of the Nazi system the Allies seem to agree with. Bertie, Sofie and Karl now have to decide what to do, and where they can flee, because it is only a matter of time before the Americans who control their sector of Germany find them and send them to prison.

The action jumps back and forth between 1932 and 1945. We see Bertie's life before the Nazis took power, and after the Nazis fell. We can appreciate just how much was lost when the Weimer Republic collapsed. As chaotic and difficult as that time was, it was also a time of great cultural expansion, scientific research, and personal and artistic freedom. Bertie worked at Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Research, which was a real place run by a real Dr. Hirschfeld. Hirschfeld collected over 20,000 books in the Institute's library documenting the history of the "third sex," including medical treatises, memoirs, photography, histories, and a wealth of other information that became the world's greatest repository of what we would now call the LGBTQIA+ community.

We learn just how many strides had been made in Germany for trans people prior to the rise of the Nazis. Bertie identifies as a transvestite -- a term the author makes clear is derogatory today, but that was historically accurate and at that time an acceptable descriptor and self-descriptor in particular for trans men. Bertie manages to get gender-affirming surgery at the Institute, which was documented in Germany as early as the 1922. He has a 'transvestite card' -- a system of identification Dr. Hirschfeld has arranged with the Berlin police to protect and affirm a transvestite's identity so they are not arrested on sight. Bertie hopes to get his transvestite passport soon, allowing him to travel under his affirmed gender.

Life is by no means perfect in Weimar Germany for the Third Sex -- a blanket term used at the time by and for trans/intersex people -- but they feel reasons for hope. There are hundreds of newspapers readily available in Berlin that cater to their community, carrying stories and news about trans lives. There are at least five nightclubs dedicated to them as clientele. Under Dr. Hirschfeld's direction, the world's first gay-positive film, Anders Als die Anders (Different from the Others) premiered in the city in 1919. A year later, admirers of the doctor wrote and published the first documented trans anthem, The Lilac People, after which the book is titled. The lyrics are published in the back of the novel, and are well worth reading. All of these, by the way, are facts documented by the author. He is meticulous in his notes about exactly which liberties he took to serve the narrative, but the story is based on historical truth.

As the Nazis come to power, Bertie and his friends waver between fear and disbelief, while clinging to the hope that such extremism can't last. Can it?

Wondering whether he should leave the city, Bertie notes: "There was so much disbelief, so much incomprehension of what was happening. Surely things could not happen this way. Surely things could not happen this quickly. Perhaps they would be safe." And: "It certainly could not get much worse than it was, they always concluded, for to do so would be to tip into complete madness. A country as old and steadfast as Deutschland would never allow it." Oh, Bertie, you had no idea.

He is stunned by the way his fellow Germans have embraced Hitler:

"This was not the people he felt they were. He could not understand how one could have their head twisted so terribly. Or perhaps they had always been this bad. He wondered how much of what Hitler said had changed minds, and how much of it was simply what people wanted to hear. Had not many countries fallen to such a fate in some way throughout time? The only difference was Hitler had gotten further than most. Bertie could reject them all he wanted. He could say they were not his people. But they were still his people."

Once Hitler is in power, one of his first targets is Hirschfeld's Institute of Sexual Research. As a mob of young Nazis break into the building, Bertie barely escapes with his life. Hirschfeld himself is traveling outside Germany, but his entire life's work is destroyed. The historical photos we often see of Nazi book burnings, Todd tells us, are of the 20,000 volumes of trans history from the Institute's library.

Bertie is bereft. "An erasure of history was an erasure of personhood. It seemed like every last one of the normally sexed was in on it. No matter their differences, this was the one place they all found agreement. It hurt his heart."

Bertie realizes how he and his friends, "how all of them really, would slip away from memory. His mind flashed to that last night at the Institut, the burning of the archives. He suddenly wanted to scream and never stop. In whose memory would any of them remain?"

After the war, we follow Bertie and Sofie's efforts to help the refugee Karl, while planning a dangerous escape from occupied Germany, by is there anywhere they can be both safe and happy? As Karl laments, drawing from his grim and horrible experiences in Dachau: “I’ve realized that the mind can do only two things: make us happy and keep us safe. But it can’t do both at the same time.”

Like most books set during World War II, this novel is not easy reading, but it is full of compassion, heart and beauty as well as bleakness and evil. We find that everyone is not always who we think they are -- a theme that underscores the whole question of identity. There are friends where you least expect them, and goodness where you might expect cruelty. Todd tells a taught narrative with sufficient mysteries and revelations to make this a page-turner, despite the heavy subject matter and tragedies involved.

One of the most moving sections is the last conversation Bertie has with Dr. Hirschfeld. The author puts these words into Dr. Hirschfeld's mouth, as he says in the end notes, but they are powerful and true to character, resonating today as much as they did in 1933. When Bertie asks the doctor why he cares about transgender people, not just gay men like Dr. Hirschfeld himself, Hirschfeld says it is actually self-interest. Knowing the metaphor is problematic, Hirschfeld apologetically explains to Bertie that transgender people are like society's canaries in a coal mine.

"A country is only as strong as its most vulnerable people. And you, son, if you may forgive me for saying, are on the lowest rung of the ladder. You’re a canary, Bertie.

"Transvestites are the canaries of the world. You know from our own library that bad people always go after transvestites first, no matter the country or culture. They are the first ones removed when an environment turns poisonous.

"You represent the right to body and personhood. You represent a country not owning you, not using you however benefits a select few at the top. You represent a country of a people, not a country of the
dominant. If transvestites are under attack, then the whole of the country is on the brink of destruction."

I'll be thinking about that quote for a long time.

In summary, read this novel if you want a good story, and if you have an interest in how history is written and remembered, or destroyed and erased. Todd reminds us that trans people have always been here, despite the best efforts of the Nazis and many other groups to delete their history, continuing sadly right to the present day.