Talk:Heinrich Ratjen

message: I thought Ewa Klobukowska was also caught during the Olmypic games for gender cheating?  Ewa failed a chromosone test, while Dora appears to be full blown male.  Is that fact still true or not?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.43.251.4 (talk) 10:51, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Having an obscure chromosomal condition is not necessarily "cheating", and is not comparable to being a full-fledged male deliberately impersonating a woman... AnonMoos (talk) 07:37, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  yes however Raetjen was raised as a girl as well and in that sense it wasn't quite a deliberate impersonation. You can however argue that as teenager and before competing in the games Raetjen personally knew that he wasn't a real female. However so did Stella Walsh or any other athlete who did not "just" fail a genetics test, but who had visible male genitals as well. The "only case"-description is to the very least poorly worded but probably simply badly researched by various media publications.--Kmhkmh (talk) 03:03, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  The only gender cheater in modern Olympcs? 

message: Ratjen apparently changed identified gender twice: first, from male to female, and then from female to male. Therefore, I reported Ratjen as a "she" for the period in which she dressed and identified as a woman, and as a "he" for when her/his biological maleness was revealed and he went back to identifying as a man. Yes, this looks weird, but I think it properly attributes gender to the proper time periods.  —  Rickyrab | Talk 14:16, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Pronouns

message: It seems the sources to this article are useless. If I see this right, there is only one source for the alleged "request of the Nazi Youth movement" & that is Ratjen himself in 1957. The way this is written here implies better sources than there are. I think, the approach in the German Wikipedia is better:
"In 1957 he claimed to have been forced/coerced by the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädels) ,,,"
Doesn't claim independent sources where there are none.
bossel (talk) 21:28, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Sources

message: For original documents and photos see the article in Der Spiegel: Skandal um Dora (in German). He was born with a sort of superficial genital malformation, and was registered at birth as Dora, and then spent his whole life until 1938 as a girl. He was renamed Heinrich by an official change in the Register of Persons in 1939. No evidence of a "plot" has been found. Anyway, if there had been a plot, the Reich's sport administration would have kept the lid on it. Don't forget, there was a dictature in Germany under Adolf Hitler, and no little policeman in Magdeburg could buck the system... The "plot" originated in the heads of writers who supply Yellow journalism. Kraxler (talk) 13:16, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: yes, the Spiegel article is far more in depth and better researched than various (faulty or incomplete) news agencies and magazine shorts. The article needs to be overhauled and corrected using this source, because in its current form it is highly inaccurate.--Kmhkmh (talk) 19:28, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  i worked it into the article StoneProphet (talk) 21:25, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks but there are still issues due rather unerliable media reports. I feel a bit bugged that in particular even the NYT article doesn't  even mention Stella Walsh, who's probably the most famous case and who btw was competing in 1936 as well. I think when somebody has time the whole article should be rewritten using better sources. --Kmhkmh (talk) 23:22, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

text: Very well observed, Kmhkmh. "The Nazis thought that entering males in female contests etc." but Stella Walsh was not a Nazi, she was American, and competed for Poland, not a Nazi country either, very funny don't you think? And the result of this "thought" was one entry and zero medals in Berlin, Ratjen finished fourth. The newsmedia coverage is in this case deliberately making up sensational stories... I will rewrite this next week, based on documented facts, and giving things their proper names. Kraxler (talk) 00:44, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks in advance, I#ll leave it to you then--Kmhkmh (talk) 10:01, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Tags added

message: I've rewritten parts of the article, and added refs, with the intention of presenting both sides of the argument over the Der Spiegel report and the contrary views presented by Time and the makers of the Berlin 36 movie.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 22:26, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I applaud your excellent contributions and would like to add that this seems to be more than a matter of contrary points of view.  The material from Der Spiegel is more thoroughly researched, while the Time and movie material appears to be using a philosophical maxim to distort history and 'tell a good story.'  Furthermore, the history of dynamic transgender individuals is filled with this kind of media distortion.  Thanks for bringing greater balance to the article. --98.207.107.112 (talk) 06:40, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you.  I happened upon this article almost by chance, and have no prior knowledge of the subject, so have no problem if other editors are able to improve it further.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 06:58, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: August 2010

message: Does anyone know the date of the photograph?  1936? In the photo, it is apparent that (s)he is a man: facially, adam's apple, and upper torso.  How could anyone have thought (s)he was female?! Arrivisto (talk) 12:33, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: People with female bodies can certainly have prominent larynges or stereotypically masculine face shapes or chests, so that's no clear indicator of anything. He was thought to be a woman for the simple reason that he was raised as a woman, wore feminine clothing and had a feminine name. I'd imagine it was probably also much easier for him to be seen as a woman at the time than it would be today, because the idea of transgenderism would have been completely unfamiliar to most people. The idea that he could possibly be a biological male presenting as a woman wouldn't have even been considered. --87.82.207.195 (talk) 00:53, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Photo 

message: How is this possible? Those trains should go via Munich or Nuremberg and Frankfurt am Main. Calle Widmann (talk) 20:48, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: It is an error in translation. The train was a "D-Zug", this is a train connecting towns, but not stopping at the small stations (basically what is now called "Intercity"). These trains - even today - sometimes use very strange routes, zig-zagging through the country. 87.188.17.183 (talk) 21:39, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Express train between Vienna and Cologne, via Magdeburg 

message: Jewish, Germany, WWII....what happened to this person during that time?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8805:5802:3900:C8BD:3F88:802A:7CB4 (talk) 22:51, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  World War II