Die weisse Feder

Does the soul have a gender? This question runs like a red thread through Nadia Brönimann's biography. For the young woman who lived as Christian Brönimann in the body of a man for 29 years, the answer is clear: Her female soul has wandered into the wrong shell. Christian did not know where he came from, nor did he have any idea where his life journey would lead him as he grew up in a foster family in the Appenzellerland. His roots lie in darkness; it was rumored that his biological parents had given him up for adoption. Even as a child, he realized that he was different from others – a stranger in his own body. Homeless and rejected, abused and misunderstood, he set off on a long odyssey, repeatedly running away from himself in a desperate search for his own identity. Christian was a rent boy on the Côte d'Azur, a revue dancer in Berlin's nightlife, and a drag queen in the Basel gay scene. He worked as a steward on luxury yachts in the Mediterranean, and in Austria, he served as a butler to one of the richest women in the world. He rose steeply and fell deeply, suffering humiliations and sexual violence, living lavishly at times and soon again relying on social welfare. And each time he came to his senses, he had to realize that he had sunk even lower. Until he confronted the lie of his life, marked by drugs and illness. On July 9, 1998 – after months of talk therapy and hormone treatments – the decisive step: the surgical gender reassignment at the University Hospital in Zurich. Christian Brönimann's life ended there, and with the external gender adjustment, Nadia Brönimann was born. But the path of suffering was not over yet. "I am now a woman," says Nadia Brönimann. "And I should be happy ... Yet sometimes my new body feels like a facade. Despite the nine surgeries in total, there is still a lack of sexual enjoyment.".