Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a trans woman, recounts incidents from her eventful life, aging into a storyteller who now runs the Gründerzeit Museum, a dream realized by living as a woman from the turn of the 20th century. The film dramatizes episodes from her life, with two actors portraying the younger and middle-aged versions of Charlotte while she appears in the role of the elderly narrator.
Born as Lothar Berfelde in Nazi Germany during World War II, the story follows an effeminate boy who finds solace in cleaning and dusting at the home of a benevolent great uncle. An early desire to live as a woman finds an outlet on a vacation to Eastern Prussia in the household of aunt Luise, a transgender man, who allows Lothar to try on female outfits and read The Transvestite by Dr Magnus Hirschfeld. Luise also respects the youth’s privacy when he is found having sex in the barn with a farm boy.
Back in Berlin, after the death of a great uncle, the young Lothar falls under the mercy of his brutal father. In a desperate bid to protect his mother and himself from punishments and threats, Lothar bludgeons his father to death, an act that leads to psychiatric evaluation and imprisonment. The defeat of Germany in the war and the Allied invasion eventually set him free. Wandering through the streets of Berlin, he narrowly escapes being shot as a deserter by German soldiers.
By 1946, Lothar identifies as a feminine being in a masculine body. He adopts the name Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, with “Charlotte” or “Lottchen” serving as variants of his identity, and Mahlsdorf referring to the Berlin district where she lives. She moves into the ruined Friedrischfelde castle and dedicates years of hard work to restoring it, but ultimately she is expelled by East German authorities. Working as a domestic in the household of an elderly equestrian officer, Herbert von Zitzenau Zitzenau, she is drawn into a sexual relationship. The affair lasts several years until Zitzenau’s health declines and he dies.
Even under the communist regime of East Germany, Charlotte and her circle find ways to live openly. While cruising a public restroom, Charlotte meets Jochen Jochen, a lover with whom she can feel like a real woman. Their relationship features sadomasochistic role-playing and lasts for 27 years until Jochen’s death.
For more than three decades, Charlotte preserves the entire contents of East Berlin’s first gay bar after the DDR government closes the venue and contemplates demolition. The bar’s remnants are transferred to the Gründerzeit Museum in Mahlsdorf, which Charlotte runs with a lesbian couple. In 1989, the elderly Charlotte remains a central, active figure as she appears in the first East German gay film, Heiner Carow’s Coming Out, whose premiere coincides with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Even after German reunification, Charlotte faces ongoing struggles: the government takes the Gründerzeit Museum and its contents from her, and she and her gay friends endure attacks by neo-Nazis during the early joint East–West gay and lesbian gathering. In 1992, her work is formally recognized when she receives the Cross of the Order of Merit for her lifelong efforts to advance sexual freedom.
