"A Woman for the Military: Rafa’s Queer Life Between Drag, Activism, and HIV"
Dressed in an elegant skirt suit, fishnet stockings, and subtle makeup, Rafael Marx (Rafa) stepped out of the taxi. He was nervous, but he didn’t want to miss out on this joke. Rafa only dolled himself up for truly special occasions—and today was one of them: he had to report for military service. Caretaker Mr. Kuhn’s eyes widened, and the clerk, Mr. Füllemann, kept averting his gaze. “You do realize this is a place where men are expected to show up!” That’s more or less how Rafa described the scene, which must have taken place sometime in the 1970s. He wrote a ballad about it, which he performed in his political drag shows. He toured across German-speaking Switzerland, from Bern to the Appenzell region. He dissected outdated gender roles, spoke of sexual adventures, and sang about utopian fantasies. The overwhelmed clerk Füllemann eventually threw him out. And in his show, Rafa would end the anecdote like this: “So I looked at poor Mr. Füllemann—his face redder than my lipstick—and said: ‘Sweetheart, if you're looking for a man... you’ll need to widen your definition.’ And then I turned on my heel, strutted out, and let my perfume do the talking.”
"Now I'm a woman for the military and no longer make things hard for them, because I was officially dismissed – I cheated them out of a man."
When he met the circus group Sheer Madness at the Rote Fabrik in Zurich in 1981, he joined them. There, he met Minnie Marx, who would later become his roommate and best friend. They moved to Barcelona, rented an apartment together, and toured all over Europe—until a hydroplaning accident totaled their crew van and a streetlamp. It marked the end of the circus group. Minnie and Rafa stayed together; their coincidentally shared last name made it easier to navigate the bureaucracy around their housing. “We were like a married couple, we shared everything—except the bed, of course,” Minnie says.
Rafa changed careers and started working in a kitchen. He baked cakes for nearby cafés and cafeterias. Business went well, and he expanded his catering services to include more dishes. This was during a time when Barcelona was experiencing a boom—triggered by the announcement that it would host the Olympics. Rafa, for example, organized a reception for 200 people at the Canadian Embassy and soon became a gourmet insider tip in the city. His sister Ruth Marx says of him today: “He was a doer—if he got involved in something, it was always with at least two hundred percent.”
In 1988, Rafa was diagnosed with HIV. His health deteriorated month by month. “He hated the AZT pills and always said those huge things must be for horses,” Minnie recalls. He at times switched to alternative remedies. In 1991, because of his worsening health, he had to return to Switzerland. For years, he couldn’t bring himself to tell his parents about the diagnosis. Eventually, Ruth pressured him so much that he told them—just as she had done when he came out. His parents always supported Rafa and his activism. “He just didn’t want our mother constantly showing up at his place,” Ruth explains. On the day it opened, Rafa moved into the Zurich Lighthouse hospice. His mother, Erika Marx, would drive two or three times a week from Kreuzlingen to Zurich to visit him. “She brought sandwiches for his visitors—since you could be there around the clock. A real Jewish mother,” Minnie recalls.
On November 8, 1992, Rafa passed away at the Lighthouse, with Minnie at his side. A rainbow shone over Kreuzlingen as he was buried in the Jewish cemetery there.