Röbi Rapp (27 May 1930 – 26 August 2018) was a Swiss actor influential in the European LGBT social movement. He was a female impersonator and cabaret star as well as a member of ''

Der Kreis (, ''The Circle'') was a Swiss gay magazine. Founded as the lesbian magazine ''Freundschaftsbanner'' in 1932 it turned into a male-only magazine in 1942 under the name ''Der Kreis''. It was trilingual and distributed internationally and gained ...

'' (''The Circle'').

Biography

Rapp was born in

Zürich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

. At a young age he became a Swiss child actor, including starring in the lead role in the 1941 film ''

Das Menschlein Matthias Edmund Heuberger (28 April 1883 – 9 April 1962) was a Swiss art director, screenwriter and film director.Goble, Alan. ''The Complete Index to Literary Sources in Film''. Walter de Gruyter, 1999. p. 387 Selected filmography Screenwriter * '' The ...

''. As an adult, Rapp performed as a female impersonator and was a personal friend of Karl Meier. Rapp worked as a hairdresser and later was a teacher at the hairdressing school of Jonny Fahrny. In 2003, Rapp and his longtime partner Ernst Ostertag became the first gay men to register a domestic partnership in Switzerland. They first met at the Barfüsser-Bar in 1956. Rapp came out officially to friends and family, alongside his partner, at their joint 70th birthday party in 2000. In 2018, Rapp chose to end his life by

assisted suicide Assisted suicide, sometimes restricted to the context of physician-assisted suicide (PAS), is the process by which a person, with the help of others, takes actions to end their life. Once it is determined that the person's situation qualifie ...

after a battle with kidney disease.

In popular culture

Rapp was depicted as a central character in the 2014 film ''The Circle'', in which he is played by Sven Schelker and appears in documentary footage. The film won four Swiss film prizes and was a candidate for an Oscar nomination.

References

Swiss male actors Swiss LGBTQ rights activists Swiss gay actors {{authority control 2018 deaths 1930 births