Katherina Hetzeldorfer

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Katherina Hetzeldorfer (died 1477) was recorded as the first woman to be executed for female homosexuality. She was drowned in the Rhine in Speyer. It can be assumed that Katherina was a transgender man.

Life[]

Originally from Nuremberg, he had moved to Speyer in 1475 dressed as a man in the company of a woman he described as his sister. In 1477, he was tried for homosexuality and posing as a male. He was prosecuted after having been reported by someone to whom he had confided that he and his sister lived as man and wife. It was discovered that he also had bought sex from two women, both of whom claimed not to have known his biological sex even during intercourse, one of them stating that he had used a strap-on dildo made with red leather.[1] Hetzeldorfer was executed by drowning in the Rhine River.[2]

There is no earlier record of executions for female (despite Katherina likely being a transman) homosexuality (while executions for male homosexual acts, or sodomy, were common) and a very limited number of later cases, even though female homosexuality was also considered a "crime against nature".[citation needed] Later executions for female homosexuality in Europe include those of Catherine de la Maniere and Francoise de l'Estrage, in 1537 in France, and a famous case of persecution was that of Agatha Dietschi in 1547.

Footnotes[]

  1. ^ Helmut Puff (June 2003). Sodomy in Reformation Germany and Switzerland, 1400-1600. University of Chicago Press. pp. 32–33. ISBN 978-0-226-68505-2.
  2. ^ Katherine Crawford (18 January 2007). European Sexualities, 1400-1800. Cambridge University Press. p. 162. ISBN 978-0-521-83958-7.

References[]

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