GERMANY: Balding Trans-Identified Male Denied Access to Women’s Locker Room Sues Women’s Rights Non-Profit for Calling Him a “Man”

A litigious trans-identified male in Germany who has relentlessly harassed the press and private individuals for calling him a man has launched a legal claim against a non-profit organization dedicated to women’s rights. Laura Holstein, formerly known as Nicolas, could demand as much as €250,000 in compensation from Eva Engelken, chairwoman of Frauenheldinnen eV (Women’s Heroines Association), which raises awareness of violence against women.

In May 2024, Frauenheldinnen eV published an open letter to the Federal Anti-Discrimination Commissioner, Ferda Ataman, objecting to a situation which occurred at a women-only gym in Erlangen, Bavaria. Doris Lange, the owner of the Lady’s First fitness studio for over three decades, received a notice from Ataman recommending “appropriate compensation” in the form of €1000 to a trans-identified male for the “personal injury suffered” at being rejected from using the women’s showers at the fitness center.

The incident, first reported by NIUS, occurred at the end of March, when a trans-identified male requested the use of the facilities, including the women-only showers. A young staff member who spoke with Holstein, as reported by NIUS, said that “no ID card identifying [Holstein] as a legal woman was presented.”

However, the fitness center scheduled a training session with the man, who continued to insist on using the women’s showers. As a “compromise,” he offered to wear swimming trunks in the area where women would be present in the nude.

When the fitness center’s owner became aware of the situation, Lange instructed staff to prepare a courteous rejection of the man’s request over the phone. The trans-identified male then sent Lady’s First fitness an email requesting continued access to the facility while promising to avoid using the showers altogether. His offer was denied.

Following Lange’s refusal, Holstein contacted the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency and the Commissioner for Anti-Discrimination, Ferda Ataman, who demanded Lange pay Holstein €1,000 in compensation. 

Just a few weeks later, Lange received a letter from Holstein’s lawyers demanding an additional €2,500 in damages because he was denied membership in her women’s fitness studio.

According to Emma Magazine, there are 14 gyms in the city of Erlangen where women and men can train together, but Lange’s fitness studio is the only one exclusively reserved for women. This has lead many to speculate that Holstein specifically targeted the female-only space rather than go to a gym where he was welcome.

Frauenheldinnen eV Chairwoman Engelken published the open letter to Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Ataman describing this situation and condemning the decision to order Lange to pay €1000 to Holstein.

“According to your letter quoted by NIUS, you justify this payment by stating that Doris Lange’s refusal to grant access to a man – which means that she would have to subject her female customers to a man (!) in the changing room, shower and training room – could constitute a violation of the General Equal Treatment Act (AGG),” reads the letter. “Objectively speaking, the gym owner is supposed to pay €1,000 for steadfastly protecting her female customers from a potential voyeur.”

On August 13, 2024, a few months after the Frauenheldinnen eV open letter was published, attorneys for Holstein filed a criminal complaint and a request for prosecution with the Mönchengladbach public prosecutor’s office against the women’s non-profit. The complaint accused the “unnamed editorial staff members and/or authors” of discrimination, taking particular issue with referring to Holstein as a “man” and as a “potential voyeur.” This later led to an investigation against the association Frauenheldinnen and its chairwoman, Eva Engelken.

Nicolas “Laura” Holstein

Two weeks later, on August 28, Holstein’s attorneys lodged an additional criminal complaint with the Erlangen-Stadt police inspectorate for so-called “incitement to hatred.” This time, the accused were 170 individuals who had signed and commented on the open letter. In a report, the interviewing police officer notes that Holstein felt insulted by approximately 170 selected comments regarding his “sexual orientation.” However, due to apparent difficulties in securing the identities of the commenters, the investigation into the comments was stalled, though Holstein intends to file criminal charges against all of them “if they come to light.”

In a blog post, Engelken marveled at the investigators’ decision last year to avoid pursuing the individuals over their comments. “This seems a bit odd, since many commenters used their real names – first and last name – and could therefore be clearly identified. Is the official perhaps not fully committed to the investigation? In any case, [the officer] goes on to write that ‘the legal assessment regarding the boundary between the formation of opinion and criminally relevant statements in these comments is extremely difficult.'”

But for her part, Engelken was contacted by the Erlangen Criminal Police Inspectorate in 2024 requesting that she hand over the real personal details, email addresses, telephone numbers, and IP addresses of the commenters. However, due to a botched server migration in the fall of 2024, she didn’t receive the emails from the police and therefore the non-profit could not reply.

The police then contacted the legal notice service, which, without informing Engelken, provided her personal information and private address. She was then interviewed by the Mönchengladbach police State Security Department for political crimes in December 2024.

On June 3, 2025, Engelken was again questioned by the State Security Department. Three weeks after the interrogation, police requested a written statement from her as a “suspect” regarding the sentence from her open letter which read “she steadfastly protected her female customers from a potential voyeur.”

While the criminal case against Engelken was dropped in March of this year, that has not deterred Holstein, who has now received the support of a publicly funded nonprofit organization HateAid, which claims to “stand up for victims of online hate.” With the assistance of HateAid, Holstein has taken legal action against several German media outlets seeking to prohibit the publication of his former name, any photographs of him, and what he describes as “misgendering” in press coverage.

Additionally, Holstein has lodged another legal complaint against Frauenheldinnen eV, but this time as a civil complaint. In a 73-page document filed on June 3, Holstein’s attorneys cite a long list of social media posts made by Engelken, as well as several articles published to Frauenheldinnen eV which refer to Holstein as a man.

Dieses Verfahren kostet Geld – für Anwalt, Gericht, und im schlimmsten Fall den Streitwert von 60.000 Euro. Wir sind kein Konzern. Wir haben keine hauptamtlichen Strukturen. Was uns trägt, sind eure Spenden – und eure Solidarität.https://t.co/Gy3htNDxpd

According to Engelken, terms that would have been acceptable include “woman with a penis,” or “biological man,” but referring to him simply as a “man” is to “insult his honor.”

In the recently filed civil suit, filed in the Frankfurt District court, Holstein’s attorneys are seeking a payout from Engelken of up to €250,000 with a potential 6-month prison sentence for failure to pay the agreed-upon compensatory fees.

In August 2024, Holstein was successful in having a podcast episode deleted after lodging a legal claim in the Frankfurt District court. Hoss und Hopf, a highly popular German-language society and culture podcast hosted by Kiarash Hossainpour and Philip Hopf, was accused of violating Holstein’s “personal rights” by referring to him as male, because he is “legally and socially recognized as a woman.”

In a post to social media, Hossainpour posted screenshots of the letter they received from the court. Among the orders made in the document are that the two hosts are prohibited from “distributing, publishing or having third parties distribute or publish” statements that correctly identify Holstein as a man.

Among those statements include that Holstein is a “man who feels [he is] in the wrong body,” and that “he still has his dick.” 

“Our podcast [Hoss and Hopf] was censored: Welcome to Germany. Our podcast episode about the legal drama of a person who was born biologically male but wanted to go to a women’s gym – with the support of the Independent Federal Commissioner for Anti-Discrimination – is now offline,” he wrote.

In addition to being forced to delete the episode, the hosts are similarly facing a €250,000 fine for violating the law and, if this cannot be paid, up to six months in prison. If the offense is repeated, they could be handed a two year prison sentence. As a result of the court ruling, the Hoss and Hopf episode referring to Holstein has been deleted.

In another case of media censorship decided by the Frankfurt court on April 30, the German outlet NIUS was ordered to pay €6,000 in compensation for publishing articles that refer to Holstein as a “man”.

As there have been several articles on the case within Germany, Holstein’s lawyers further threatened journalists reporting on the situation with possible litigation, demanding that the press neither “wrongly call the trans woman a man” nor “misgender” Holstein.

“Misgendering constitutes an inadmissible expression of opinion… as a result of which our client’s personal rights are violated,” reads the statement. “Our client is a woman.”

As reported by Reduxx in April 2024, a now-deleted Main Post article revealed that Holstein was the first trans-identified male to play in a women’s football league and that he has used the locker room with women and girls. Since some of the players were still minors, a shower schedule was reportedly created for him so that he would not shower with, and thus expose himself to, teenage girls.

However, according to pro-trans podcast Y-Kollektiv, after Holstein was accepted into the women’s soccer team by the coach, female football players complained and stated that they did not want to share the locker room with him. He has also been accused of not abiding by the shower schedule that was created to accommodate him which stipulated that he must shower before the females do.

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