10 of the Most Famous Swiss People

 Farmers celebration in the Swiss Alps Photo by Ben-Xi –Wikimedia

10 of the Most Famous Swiss People.

The Swiss are polite people however, they respect discretion and privacy. However, if you make friends with a Swiss it is for life.

There are technically 4 official languages in Switzerland, with 3 being widespread. With each language comes its own culture.

This means that most swiss inventors or musicians or people in any field are more likely to break out in Europe a little easier due to the shared language.

Switzerland is a model of a successful political union of a multiethnic and multilingual population.

The country is often cited as a model for new efforts at creating unification, as in the European Union’s frequent invocation of the Swiss Confederate model.

The Swiss appreciate honesty and tolerance. In fact, they are proud of the efforts of their neutral nation in the promotion of global peace.

The most important resource for Switzerland is its people. Here is a look at 10 of the most famous  Swiss People.

1. Roger Federer – Tennis Player

Photo by Tatiana – Wikimedia

Roger Federer is a Swiss professional tennis player who has been ranked world No. 1 by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for 310 weeks, including a record 237 consecutive weeks and has finished as the year-end No. 1 five times.

He has played in The Big Three era where he dominated men’s tennis along with Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.

 The champion holds several ATP records and is considered to be one of the greatest tennis players of all time.

The Swiss player has proved his dominance on the court with 20 Grand Slam titles and 103 career ATP titles.

He founded the Roger Federer Foundation, which is dedicated to providing education programs for children living in poverty in Africa and Switzerland.

In 2020 Federer became the first tennis player to reach the top of Forbes‘s list of highest-paid athletes in the world.

 He is endorsed by Swiss companies Nationale Suisse, Credit Suisse, Rolex, Lindt,  and Jura Elektroapparate.

2. Anna Goldi – Historical Figure

Photo by Patrick Lo Giudice – Wikimedia

Anna Goldi was born in Sennwald in the canton of St. Gallen in the 1730s.

She met her end in Glarus in the year 1782, sentenced to death for witchcraft. She is remembered today as the last ‘witch’ to die in Europe.

Goldi’s sentence for witchcraft wasn’t her first run-in with the law. Soon after she gave birth to her first child, the baby died.

She was brought to the town square and placed in a stockade as a form of public shame, after which she was sentenced to house arrest for 6 years.

 In later years she got a job as a maidservant for the family of  Glarus physician, judge and government employee  Johann Jakob Tschudi.

  It is the Tschudi family accusations that led to her execution. They alleged to find pins in milk and bread and that one of their daughters vomited nails.

She was tortured to confess that she had a pact of the devil and sentenced to execution.

On September 20, 2007, on the occasion of her 225 anniversary, the Swiss parliament acknowledged Anna Goldi’s case as a miscarriage of justice and called for her exoneration, which was granted on August 27, 2008, because she had been subjected to an “illegal trial”.

3. Jean-Jacques Rosseau- Philosopher

Rousseau  (28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Geneva philosopher, writer, and composer.

The Swiss (and later French) philosopher was born in the canton of Geneva.

Following a charge of blasphemy, he was forced to leave Switzerland, and he secured himself a passport from the French government.

His political philosophy influenced the Enlightenment across Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution.

Jacques-Rosseau writings, particularly “Discourse on Inequality” and “The Social Contract”, have left a strong legacy in today’s modern educational, political and social thought.

His first major philosophical work, A Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, was the winning response to an essay contest conducted by the Academy of Dijon in 1750.

4.  Hans Ruedi Giger – Artist

Photo by Mathias Belz – Wikimedia

Hans Ruedi Giger was a Swiss artist best known for his images that blended human physiques with machines, an art style known as “biomechanical”.

He was part of the special effects team that won an Academy Award for the visual design sci-fi horror film Alien.

His work is on permanent display at the H.R. Giger Museum in Switzerland. 

Giger was regarded as the foremost artist in Fantastic Realism, an art form that can disturb, inspire, alarm and arouse in equal measures.

His dreamlike renderings often depicted suffering and pain that is like a warning to the loss of the human soul to industrialization.

5.  Martina Hingis – Tennis Player

Photo by si.robi – Wikimedia

Martina Hingis born Martina Hingisova is a Swiss former professional tennis player.

She is the first Swiss player, male or female, to win a Grand Slam and attain a No. 1 ranking.

She began playing tennis at age 2, entered tournaments at 4 and her mother Melanie Molitor has coached her throughout her career.

She spent a total of 209 weeks as the singles world No. 1 and 90 weeks as doubles first in the world and holding both top rankings simultaneously for 29 weeks.

Hingis set a series of “youngest-ever” records during the 1990s, including youngest-ever Grand Slam champion and youngest-ever world No. 1.

 After several surgeries and long recoveries, Hingis returned to the WTA Tour in 2006, climbing to world No.6. Finally, for her determination, she received the Laureus World Sports Award for Comeback of the Year.

6. Rene Bauman – Musician 

Photo by Biser Todorov – Wikimedia

Peter Rene Baumann better known under his stage name DJ BoBo, is a Swiss singer-songwriter, rapper, dancer, and music producer.

He has released 12 studio albums and sold 14 million records. As a dance music producer, his first big success came with the single Somebody Dance with Me.

The tracks comprise fast-paced Eurodance sound with female vocals and rap verses performed by Rene.

He also charted with the singles Keep on Dancing, Take Control, Let the Dream Come True, Love Is All Around, Freedom, Pray and Chihuahua’

He has won 10 World Music Awards for being Switzerland’s best selling artist. Further,  Rene has received numerous Gold and Platinum certifications for his singles and albums.

7.  Carla Del Ponte- Prosecuter

Photo by Eric Bridiers – Wikimedia

Carla Del Ponte is a Swiss Prosecutor and diplomat born in the canton of Ticino.

She started her career as a state prosecutor in Lugano, taking on tough targets such as the Sicilian mafia, money laundering, terrorism, arms smuggling and espionage.

After serving as the Attorney-General of Switzerland she joined the United Nations System as a prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

The Swiss lawyer Carla Del Ponte has spent almost a lifetime fighting for human rights.

Most recently, she investigated the Syrian conflict as a Commissioner of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry for Syria.

Del Ponte is also a diplomat and served as Swiss ambassador to Argentina.

8.  William Tell – Fictive Character

William Tell’s escape Photo by Internet Archive Book Library- Wikimedia

He is a folk hero of Switzerland a hero of Swiss independence. According to the legend.

Tell was an expert marksman with the crossbow who assassinated Albrecht Gessler a tyrannical ruler of the Austrian dukes of the House of Habsburg. 

Seven hundred years ago, William Tell shot an arrow through an apple on his son’s head and launched the struggle for Swiss independence.

He is a central figure in Swiss history and an important symbol during the formative stage of Switzerland’s nation-building.

In the 18^th and 19^th centuries, Europe Tell was a symbol of resistance against the aristocratic rule, especially in the Revolutions of 1848 against the House of Habsburg.

9. Le Corbusier – Architect

Photo by Joop Van Bilsen/Anefo –Wikimedia

Charles-Edouard  Jeanneret  (full name) is a Swiss architect and urban planner, whose renderings are both functional and sculptural.

He belonged to the first generation of the so-called International school of architecture and was their most vocal supporter as evidenced in his numerous writings.

He studied at Ecole d’Art but was largely self-taught in painting and architecture through study trips.

In his architecture, Le Corbusier chiefly built with steel and reinforced concrete and liked designing with simple geometric forms.

Le Corbusier’s painting highlighted clear forms and structures just like his architecture.

In the 1920s he emerged as the most important architect of the “International Style” in France.

He established the Fondation Le Corbusier in Paris to give scholars free access to his library, architectural drawings, sketches and paintings.

10.  Johanna Louise Spyri – Author

Illustration from the Novel Heidi Photo by Jessie Wilcox Smith – Wikimedia

Johanna Spyri born Johanna Louise Heusser in the canton of Zurich was a Swiss author best known for her first and most successful book  Heidi published in 1881.

She wrote many other stories children’s stories but  Heidi which she wrote in four weeks won a worldwide appeal.

As a child, she spent several summers near Chur in Graubünden, which became the setting for her novels.

 In 1884, Heidi was first published in America it became was an immediate bestseller, and has been beloved by generations since.

Heidi has ranked with the Bible and Shakespeare as one of the world’s most widely read books. The novel has been translated into dozens of languages.

Switzerland is a nation by the willing because it has 3 main languages each with its accompanying culture.

The Swiss in this list have made an impact far away from their home and are recognized by the world.