Andreas Bruce

From time to time as you study history, you stumble upon pretty cool people and Andreas Bruce is definitely one of them.

I watched an episode of a Swedish TV show called Nationen (the Nation) recently. The series is all about telling Swedish history from new perspectives. It uses different hosts for every episode to tell stories about issues which concern them. I do not intend to discuss the show or the episode in itself, but Andreas's tale is just so amazing that it needs to be told. There is a book about him and I intend to read it, but have not been able to do so. Therefore this entry is based on facts from the TV show, Wikipedia and from interviews from Sveriges radio P4 Gotland.

28th December 1808 the noble valet de chambre Adam Bruce and his wife Fredrica Charlotta Wijnblad had a child who was named Christina Therese Isabelle Jeanette Louise Bruce. However, little Therese grew up envying her brothers feeling like one of them (among other things she wants to wear trousers) and she was called "Lilla fröken herrn" (Little Miss Mister) by the family.

At first the family does not seem to found of the idea of treating Therese as a boy (especially not her father) and at the age of 16, she runs away from home dressed as a man. The family was devastated and thought Therese had killed herself, but one of her brothers found her after a couple of days to everyone's great relief.

After this, Adam Bruce took his daughter to doctor Hagströmer who classified Therese as a hermaphrodite and from this day she came to live the rest of her life as a man. The family, even the father, also seems to have accepted the fact that they now had another son and Adam gives him the family name Andreas and Therese renames herself as Ferdinand Andreas Edvard. As the sex resassignment became known it however caused a scandal and a conflict with the family as a result of it. Because of this, Andreas moved to Gotland to live a more secret life in 1829.

On Gotland, he got a position at the ship builder and merchant Jacob Dubbe at Rosendal in Follingbo. There he seems to have lived quite a normal life with Jacob being the only person to know that he is what we today would call a transsexual. However he encountered an inspector named Lars Nyström who got to know about his secret. What happens next is hard to know and Andreas is quite vague on the subject in the autobiography he wrote during the 1870's. The result of his encounter with Lars Nyström was quite evident though. Andreas became pregnant and considered suicide.

In July 1838 the daughter Carolina was born and was first left to a foster family, but Andreas quit his job and moved, together with his lover Maria Lindblad and her daughter to Öja. The church refused to marry them and when it was revealed that he was Carolina's biological mother, he was also expelled fom church for ten years. He died in 1885.

I find Andreas's story very interesting and it is amazing that he could live his life as a man and at least at times was accepted for the one he was. His story can also work as a witness for showing that transsexuality is not a "modern trend". Transexuals (just like other types of LGBTQ+) have always been there and it is about thime that we acknowlegde this.

Andreas's autobiography was published with the title Therese Andreas Bruce - en sällsam historia från 1800-talet by Inger Littberger Caissou-Rousseau in 2013 and the play Jag vet vem jag är which was played on the regional theatre on Gotland last year, directed by Swedish comedian Babben Larsson is based on his life as is the play I am not a girl played in Umeå in 2014.






Photo of Andreas was borrowed hereand of the book here.