"A stress-free life, music and always a glass of red wine and coffee". That seems to be the secret of 111-year-old Ilse Neumann from Taucha near Leipzig. The trained seamstress is probably the oldest woman in Saxony and also one of the oldest people in Germany. She has been living in a nursing home run by the German Red Cross in Taucha in the district of North Saxony for six and a half years.
She was born on July 23, 1914, just a few days before the start of the First World War. She lived through the most fundamental upheavals of the 20th century - from the imperial era through both world wars, the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall to the digital age. Her marriage remained childless and after the death of her husband in 1976, she lived alone in her apartment in Taucha until she moved into a nursing home.
"Ilse used to look after our children when we went dancing and we also met up regularly," says Petra Junge. She and her husband Reinhard have been looking after the old lady, who was their neighbor, for many decades. They also often spent Fridays together. "She would come over and we would start the weekend with a bottle of red wine and a cigarette."
Moving into a home after a fall and hospitalization
In general, Ilse Neumann had a fairly stress-free life, was frugal and loved music above all. A few years ago, Mr. and Mrs. Junge then also became health care proxies and took care of pension notices, bills and visits to the authorities. After a fall and a lengthy stay in hospital, the elderly woman was admitted to the nursing home.
There, Juana Leutbecher looks after Neumann, who suffers from progressive dementia, every day and knows about better and worse days. "Sometimes she is fit and recognizes us, but often she has her eyes closed or sings her way through the day," says the care specialist.
When caring for her, it is important to ensure that she eats and drinks regularly. The 111-year-old is also repeatedly taken to the large communal room. There, she looks at the steel reindeer that have now been set up in the garden in the run-up to Christmas or at the forest.
Good and bad days
When Neubacher arrived at the facility in May 2019, she was still walking through the front door on her own two feet with a rollator. However, her health deteriorated and she now sits in a wheelchair or lies in bed. Her mental abilities also declined and she speaks very little. "It's the form of the day that decides," says Leutbecher.
For Reinhard Junge in particular, this is not an easy sight to bear; he knew her as a young boy. "We've been neighbors for more than 60 years and she used to give me an apple every now and then." She was always very warm-hearted, but could also be very direct.
"Like a second mother to me"
Neumann's current condition weighs heavily on him; when talking about her, he repeatedly loses his voice and wipes tears from his eyes. "She's like a second mother to me and we miss her a lot," he says, as if the old lady had already died. She hasn't recognized him for months during his regular visits.
It is impossible to say with certainty exactly who the oldest person in Germany is. Neither the registry offices nor the Federal Statistical Office have exact figures. The oldest woman born in Germany is thought to be 113-year-old Ilse Meingast, who emigrated to the USA a few years after the Second World War. It is therefore quite conceivable that Neumann is the oldest person living in Germany.
More people are living past the age of 100
In addition, the group of people living past the age of 100 is growing. According to the Federal Statistical Office, there were around 17,900 people living in Germany who were at least 100 years old at the end of 2024. That is 24 percent more than in 2011.
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