Baer was born on 20 May 1885. He was
intersex, having been born with
hypospadias. His "unusually shaped genitals" caused Baer's family to raise him as a girl, although he was "hormonally and, in accordance with present-day knowledge, genetically male" as well as identifying with the male gender.
Personal life and activism Baer studied
political economy,
sociology and
pedagogy in
Berlin and
Hamburg, and became a
social worker (
Volkspfleger) and confirmed
suffragette. In May 1904 he was sent to
Galicia under the auspices of the Hamburg chapter of the
B'nai B'rith, to campaign against the trafficking of women from poor countries and for the rights of all women to education. Here, in
Lemberg (now Lviv), Karl met the equally active Beile Halpern, who he was later to marry. Baer's work included activism among local women. He encouraged them to campaign for kindergarten and school provision, which would allow women to hold jobs outside the home and reduce the financial hardship that prompted some to traffic their daughters or send them into service. Baer worked to oblige the authorities along established human trafficking paths to check ID documents and combat illegal movement. He also promoted the women's education movement, and became well known as a reformist throughout eastern Europe and Germany. Baer had initially been sent to Galicia for two years; he returned to Germany after only one, having attracted censure for his male body language, argumentative style, and forceful advocacy of the cause. According to case notes by sexologist
Magnus Hirschfeld of the
Institute for Sexual Research, Baer then transitioned to his male identity and began living as a man. He was diagnosed as a "male pseudohermaphrodite" and underwent multi-stage rudimentary
gender affirmation surgery in October 1906. After convalescence he was released from hospital in December 1906, with a medical certificate of his new gender. His new identity was confirmed by the courts in Arolsen (his birthplace) on 8 January 1907, with Berlin doctor Georg Merzbach acting as medical expert. Karl Baer retained the middle initial "M", ostensibly stemming from his birth name, to connect him to his earlier publications under the name "M Baer". In later life he said the letter stood for "Max"; on his gravestone the middle name is given as "Meir". In October 1907 he married Beile Halpern; she died in March 1909, and he remarried, with Elza Max (1887–1947). From 1908 to 1911 Baer was an insurance sales agent; on 1 January 1911 he took up a post as Consul for Jewish Life in Berlin. In December 1920 he became director of the Berlin section of the loge B'nai B'rith, a post he held until the Section's forcible closure by the
Gestapo on 19 April 1937. Baer was by then an important figure in Jewish society, and his influence on cultural life brought him into conflict with the Nazi administration. He was allowed to emigrate with his wife in June 1938 to
Palestine, later to become
Israel, where he worked between 1942 and 1950 as an insurance agent. By 1950 he was going blind and had to give up his job. He lived in a
throuple with his wife and his secretary, Gitla Fish, who moved to live with him and his wife. He is buried in the Kiryat-Shaul cemetery in
Tel Aviv under the name Karl Meir Baer. ==Book and film==