Ernst Ostertag
A Swiss teacher and campaigner whose life with Röbi Rapp became part of the country’s queer history.
Ernst Ostertag was born in Winterthur in 1930. He became a teacher in Zurich, working for decades with children who had learning difficulties. Although consensual sex between adult men was decriminalised in Switzerland in 1942, discretion remained essential to protecting a career and private life.
In the 1950s Ostertag joined the circle around “Der Kreis”, a trilingual gay magazine and social organisation. In 1956 he met the performer Röbi Rapp, who became his partner. Their relationship endured through police surveillance, public hostility and the pressure to keep gay lives hidden.
Ostertag helped establish the Swiss Organisation of Homophiles and contributed to its publications. In retirement he also worked to record the history that he and his contemporaries had lived through.
In 2003 he and Rapp became the first male couple to register their partnership under Zurich’s cantonal scheme. They registered again under federal law in 2007. Stefan Haupt’s film “Der Kreis” (2014) told their story through documentary and dramatised scenes. Rapp died in 2018, after more than sixty years together.