Röbi Rapp
A star of the drag shows at the balls of “Der Kreis”, he lived for 61 years with Ernst Ostertag – the couple whose story became the film “Der Kreis”.
Röbi Rapp grew up in Zurich. As a young man he found his way to “Der Kreis”, the Zurich organisation for gay men, whose legendary balls offered one of the few safe spaces in Europe for gay men to meet. There he performed as a singer and female impersonator, in glamorous costumes, and became a star of the scene.
In 1956 he met Ernst Ostertag at the Barfüsser bar in Zurich, one of the oldest gay bars in Europe. The two fell in love. In the late 1950s and 1960s, after several murders in the gay scene, the Zurich police cracked down; gay men were registered, and many lost their jobs. Rapp and Ostertag had to be careful.
In 2003 they were the first gay couple to register their partnership in the canton of Zurich, and in 2007 they did so again under the new federal law. Their story was told in Stefan Haupt’s film “Der Kreis” (2014), in which Rapp and Ostertag also appear themselves.
Röbi Rapp died in Zurich in 2018, aged 88, after 61 years together with Ernst Ostertag.