Germany celebrates its first transgender commander

STORKOW, GERMANY »

On July 26, when President Donald Trump unexpectedly tweeted his plans to ban transgender servicemen and women from the U.S. military, Anastasia Biefang was more than 4,000 miles away from Washington. Still, she could not hide her shock.

“It felt like a smack in the face,” said the 43-yearold German army officer, who is the first transgender person to command a military unit in the country’s history.

Biefang joined the German army as a man more than 23 years ago. Two years ago, despite fearing negative repercussions for her career, she came out to her superiors and eventually to her entire unit. Her decision to transition from male to female coincided with an unprecedented openness among top military officials in Germany, the United States and other countries to having transgender troops serve openly.

Since then, the United States and Germany have taken dramatically different turns. Biefang, now a lieutenant colonel, commands a logistics unit of more than 700 soldiers, and the Bundeswehr, Germany’s military, heralds her as a national role model. She is the first transgender commander in a force headed by a defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, who has made support for transsexual and homosexual personnel a top priority.

“People who hold fears aren’t able to give their very best. We can’t afford that,” von der Leyen said in January.

She largely echoed similar remarks by then-U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter, who explained the decision to drop the American ban on transgender military service in 2016 by saying that “our mission — which is defending the country — has to come first.”

Trump came to a different conclusion.

In his July tweets, the president argued that “tremendous medical costs and disruption” were behind his decision to reinstitute the ban on transgender servicemembers.