Zurich says goodbye to Röbi Rapp

On 26 August 2018, Röbi Rapp died in his flat in Zurich, aged 88. After a serious illness, he had passed away peacefully with the support of an assisted dying organisation, the production company Contrast Film announced. His partner Ernst Ostertag said on television shortly afterwards: "He died in my arms, he simply fell asleep."

Rapp was a hairdresser by trade and one of the best-known gay figures in Zurich. On stage he transformed himself into a woman and sang, in years when that very thing was dangerous. He belonged to "Der Kreis", the Zurich underground organisation of homosexual men, and met Ernst Ostertag there. The two stayed together until Rapp died. On 3 November it would have been 62 years.

Their story is also the story of the post-war decades in Switzerland. In the fifties, murders shook the Zurich scene. The killers got off lightly in court, while the police registered homosexuals in raids and kept them on a special register. Rapp and Ostertag, too, briefly came under suspicion of murder at the time.

All the more meaningful to them was 1 July 2003. They became the first gay couple in the canton of Zurich to register their partnership. The carriage ride to the City Hall became a triumphal procession. The two felt the registration to be a late act of redress for that other register entry the police had once made about them.

Rapp and Ostertag worked with the Swiss Gay Archive, organised exhibitions and built up the website schwulengeschichte.ch. After Rapp's death, Zurich's mayor Corine Mauch paid tribute to him as a pioneer to whom the LGBTI community owed a great deal. Swiss television changed its schedule and showed two films featuring him that same evening: "Der Kreis" and "Das Menschlein Matthias".