Born in Alsace, of parents from Lorraine originating from Dabo where his grandfather was a clog maker, Gérard Oberlé spent there his summers.
[1] An adolescent in Switzerland by the Jesuits at Fribourg, then a student in classical literature in Strasbourg and The Sorbonne, he became an auxiliary master of Latin and ancient Greek in Metz, but must quickly leave teaching.
He has lived since 1976 in a manor house of Nivernais[2] where he has published various specialized catalogs on peddler literature, roman noir, literary cranks, or else neo-Latin poetry in Europe from the XVIth to the XIXe.
He has reprinted the Légendes et chants de gestes canaques by Louise Michel, as well as various other forgotten works.
In 1992, he wrote the catalog Kilian Fritsch, a book collector on wine and oenology, whose library was scattered during a sale organized by Guy Loudmer in 1993.