Hedwig Zaugg

Hedwig Zaugg, known in her home village as "Stampfi-Hedi" and to her family as "Mubli", was the oldest living person in Switzerland. She died in the night to Wednesday 28 October 2026 at the Seniorenpark Sonnegg care home in Huttwil, in the canton of Bern, at the age of 111. She had held the title of Switzerland's oldest resident for about a year.

She was born on 17 May 1915 in Walterswil, in the Emmental, in the middle of the First World War. When she was three years old her mother died in the Spanish flu pandemic, and she grew up with three siblings on a small farm. In 1941 she married her husband Res, and the couple had two daughters. Her husband died in 1992.

In Walterswil she was a familiar figure on her bicycle. Neighbours remembered how she rode through the village in a zigzag well into old age. She lived independently until about ten years before her death, when a broken pelvis made a move into a care home necessary.

Zaugg lived through two world wars and more than a century of change. She became Switzerland's oldest known resident in 2025, following the death of Francine Grandjean, who died on her 110th birthday on 4 January 2025. When Blick visited her for her 111th birthday in May 2026, she talked about her childhood and sang the folk song "Brienzer Buurli". Asked the secret of her long life, she answered simply that they had just lived and taken life as it came. She also had a practical tip: she always told her children to eat three walnuts a day, because they were good for the brain. Her father, she noted, had lived to almost 100.

According to the Berner Zeitung, she remained mentally very alert to the end. Over the preceding weekend there were signs that her life was drawing to a close, yet on the day before she died she sang "Ramseiers wei go grase" with visitors.

She was survived by her two daughters, four grandchildren and six great grandchildren. After her death the title of oldest person in Switzerland was expected to pass to Paulina Hufschmid of Allschwil, who had turned 111 on 2 October 2026.