Founder of Swiss accompanied suicide group Ludwig Minelli is dead at 92

GENEVA (AP) — Ludwig Minelli, the founder of Dignitas, one of Switzerland’s best-known accompanied suicide groups that has helped thousands of people from around the world to take their own lives, has died through voluntary assisted dying, the group said.

Minelli died Saturday at age 92, it said.

A onetime correspondent in Switzerland for the respected German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, Minelli earned a law degree in 1981, aged nearly 50. A few years later he was admitted to the bar and argued in defense of his group and beliefs in court.

He championed values such as freedom of choice, human rights and the idea that “the state serves the citizen, rather than the citizen the state,” Dignitas said.

Minelli founded the group after a disagreement within EXIT (Deutsche Schweiz), another leading Swiss group that helps people to voluntarily end their lives.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org. The Swiss government refers queries about suicide prevention to a group called “Dargebotene Hand,” or The Offered Hand.

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In its statement for 2024, Dignitas said it had participated in nearly 4,200 accompanied suicides since Minelli founded the group in 1998. More than a third of those people lived in Germany, with France and Britain each home to over 600 others.

The group says its approach includes palliative care, advance directives and assisted dying, and the prevention of suicide attempts is a “pillar” of its philosophy.

Trying to talk someone out of suicide “is not a suitable prevention method,” it says. The better approach, it says, should be “taking a person in a seemingly hopeless situation seriously, meeting them at eye level, and showing them all possible options to alleviate their suffering” — including the possibility of ending their life with professional help in a dignified manner.

Today, the group says it counts more than 10,000 members.

Swiss law allows assisted suicide so long as the person takes his or her life with no “external assistance” and those who help the person die do not do so for “any self-serving motive,” according to a government website.