Berken is a
municipality
A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate.
The term ''municipality' ...
in the
Oberaargau administrative district in the
canton of
Bern
Bern (), or Berne (), ; ; ; . is the ''de facto'' Capital city, capital of Switzerland, referred to as the "federal city".; ; ; . According to the Swiss constitution, the Swiss Confederation intentionally has no "capital", but Bern has gov ...
in
Switzerland
Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...
.
History
Berken is first mentioned in 1272 as ''Berinkon''.
[
A few scattered ]mesolithic
The Mesolithic (Ancient Greek language, Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic i ...
and neolithic
The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...
artifacts have been found in the municipality, from prehistoric settlements in the Aare valley. During the Middle Ages it was a small farming settlement in the ''Herrschaft
The German term ''Herrschaft'' (plural: ''Herrschaften'') covers a broad semantic field and only the context will tell whether it means, "rule", "power", "dominion", "authority", "territory" or "lordship". In its most abstract sense, it refers ...
'' and later bailiwick
A bailiwick () is usually the area of jurisdiction of a bailiff, and once also applied to territories in which a privately appointed bailiff exercised the sheriff's functions under a royal or imperial writ.
In English, the original French combi ...
of Aarwangen
Aarwangen is a village and a municipality in the Oberaargau administrative district in the canton of Bern in Switzerland.
History
Aarwangen is first mentioned in 1255 as ''villa Arwangen''.
Aarwangen grew from a fortified toll crossing over th ...
. Following the 1798 French invasion and the creation of the Helvetic Republic
The Helvetic Republic (; ; ) was a sister republic of France that existed between 1798 and 1803, during the French Revolutionary Wars. It was created following the French invasion and the consequent dissolution of the Old Swiss Confederacy, ma ...
Berken left the Aarwangen bailiwick. After the collapse of the Republic and 1803 Act of Mediation
The Act of Mediation () was issued by Napoleon Bonaparte, French Consulate, First Consul of the French Republic on 19 February 1803 to abolish the Helvetic Republic, which had existed since the invasion of Old Swiss Confederacy, Switzerland by F ...
it joined the newly created Wangen District.[
It is part of the ]Graben
In geology, a graben () is a depression (geology), depressed block of the Crust (geology), crust of a planet or moon, bordered by parallel normal faults.
Etymology
''Graben'' is a loan word from German language, German, meaning 'ditch' or 't ...
school district.[
Today agriculture provides over one third of jobs in the municipality, with the remaining jobs in gravel mining, concrete work and the local restaurant.][
]
Geography
Berken has an area of . As of the 2005/06 survey, a total of or 53.2% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 30.2% is forested. Of rest of the municipality or 11.5% is settled (buildings or roads), or 4.3% is either rivers or lakes and or 1.4% is unproductive land.[Swiss Federal Statistical Office-Land Use Statistics]
2009 data accessed 27 August 2014
From the same survey, housing and buildings made up 3.6% and transportation infrastructure made up 3.6%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 3.6% of the area A total of 28.8% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.4% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 41.7% is used for growing crops and 10.8% is pasturage. All the water in the municipality is flowing water.[
The small municipality is located on the left bank of the ]Aare river
The Aare () or Aar () is the main tributary of the High Rhine (its discharge even exceeds that of the latter at their confluence) and the longest river that both rises and ends entirely within Switzerland.
Its total length from its source to i ...
. It includes the hamlets
A hamlet is a human settlement that is smaller than a town or village. This is often simply an informal description of a smaller settlement or possibly a subdivision or satellite entity to a larger settlement. Sometimes a hamlet is defined f ...
of Ober- and Niederberken and Christenhof. It belongs to the parish
A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...
of Herzogenbuchsee
Herzogenbuchsee is a Municipalities of Switzerland, municipality in the Oberaargau (administrative district), Oberaargau administrative district in the Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Bern (canton), Bern in Switzerland.
The population is 7055 (2 ...
.
On 31 December 2009 Amtsbezirk Wangen, the municipality's former district, was dissolved. On the following day, 1 January 2010, it joined the newly created Verwaltungskreis Oberaargau.[Nomenklaturen – Amtliches Gemeindeverzeichnis der Schweiz]
accessed 4 April 2011
Coat of arms
The blazon
In heraldry and heraldic vexillology, a blazon is a formal description of a coat of arms, flag or similar emblem, from which the reader can reconstruct an accurate image. The verb ''to blazon'' means to create such a description. The visual d ...
of the municipal coat of arms
A coat of arms is a heraldry, heraldic communication design, visual design on an escutcheon (heraldry), escutcheon (i.e., shield), surcoat, or tabard (the last two being outer garments), originating in Europe. The coat of arms on an escutcheon f ...
is ''Vert two Ploughshares Argent in saltire.''
Demographics
Berken has a population () of , all Swiss citizens. Between the last 2 years (2010-2012) the population changed at a rate of -14.3%. Migration accounted for -4.1%, while births and deaths accounted for -8.2%.[Swiss Federal Statistical Office]
accessed 19 December 2014
All of the population (51) () speaks German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany, the country of the Germans and German things
**Germania (Roman era)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...
.[
, the population was 46.5% male and 53.5% female, all Swiss citizens. Of the population in the municipality, 30 or about 58.8% were born in Berken and lived there in 2000. There were 11 or 21.6% who were born in the same canton, while 10 or 19.6% were born somewhere else in Switzerland.][
, children and teenagers (0–19 years old) make up 11.9% of the population, while adults (20–64 years old) make up 59.5% and seniors (over 64 years old) make up 28.6%.][
, there were 21 people who were single and never married in the municipality. There were 22 married individuals, 7 widows or widowers and 1 individuals who are divorced.][STAT-TAB Datenwürfel für Thema 40.3 - 2000]
accessed 2 February 2011
, there were 9 households that consist of only one person and 3 households with five or more people. , a total of 21 apartments (100.0% of the total) were permanently occupied.[Swiss Federal Statistical Office STAT-TAB - Datenwürfel für Thema 09.2 - Gebäude und Wohnungen]
accessed 28 January 2011 The vacancy rate for the municipality, , was 4.8%. In 2012, single family homes made up 57.9% of the total housing in the municipality.
The historical population is given in the following chart:
Economy
, Berken had an unemployment rate of 0%. , there were a total of 44 people employed in the municipality. Of these, there were 22 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 7 businesses involved in this sector. The secondary sector
In macroeconomics, the secondary sector of the economy is an economic sector in the three-sector theory that describes the role of manufacturing. It encompasses industries that produce a finished, usable product or are involved in constructi ...
employs 4 people and there was 1 business in this sector. The tertiary sector
The tertiary sector of the economy, generally known as the service sector, is the third of the three economic sectors in the three-sector model (also known as the economic cycle). The others are the primary sector (raw materials) and the ...
employs 18 people, with 1 business in this sector.[ There were 26 residents of the municipality who were employed in some capacity, of which females made up 42.3% of the workforce.
there were a total of 38 ]full-time equivalent
Full-time equivalent (FTE), or whole time equivalent (WTE), is a unit of measurement that indicates the workload of an employed person (or student) in a way that makes workloads or class loads comparable across various contexts. FTE is often use ...
jobs. The number of jobs in the primary sector was 14, all of which were in agriculture. The number of jobs in the secondary sector was 9 of which 2 or (22.2%) were in manufacturing, 7 or (77.8%) were in mining. The number of jobs in the tertiary sector was 15 all in a hotel or restaurant.
, there were 17 workers who commuted into the municipality and 12 workers who commuted away. The municipality is a net importer of workers, with about 1.4 workers entering the municipality for every one leaving. A total of 14 workers (45.2% of the 31 total workers in the municipality) both lived and worked in Berken.[Swiss Federal Statistical Office - Statweb]
accessed 24 June 2010
Of the working population, 7.7% used public transportation to get to work, and 34.6% used a private car.[ In 2013 the average church, local and cantonal tax rate on a married resident, with two children, of Berken making 150,000 CHF was 10.6%, while an unmarried resident's rate was 16.2%. For comparison, the median rate for all municipalities in the entire canton was 11.7% and 18.1%, while the nationwide median was 10.6% and 17.4% respectively.
In 2011 there were a total of 24 tax payers in the municipality. Of that total, 5 made over 75,000 CHF per year. The greatest number of workers, 6, made between 40,000 and 50,000 CHF per year. The average income of the over 75,000 CHF group in Berken was 121,760 CHF, while the average across all of Switzerland was 136,785 CHF.
In 2011 a total of 1.1% of the population received direct financial assistance from the government.Statistischer Atlas der Schweiz - Bezüger/-innen von Sozialhilfeleistungen (Sozialhilfeempfänger/-innen), 2011]
accessed 18 June 2013
Politics
In the 2011 federal election the most popular party was the Swiss People's Party (SVP) which received 67.5% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the Conservative Democratic Party (BDP) (18.5%), a local party (6.3%) and the Christian Social Party (CSP) (4.4%). In the federal election, a total of 27 votes were cast, and the voter turnout
In political science, voter turnout is the participation rate (often defined as those who cast a ballot) of a given election. This is typically either the percentage of Voter registration, registered voters, Suffrage, eligible voters, or all Voti ...
was 64.3%.[Swiss Federal Statistical Office 2011 Election]
accessed 8 May 2012
Religion
From the , 48 or 94.1% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church
The Protestant Church in Switzerland (PCS), formerly named Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches until 31 December 2019, is a federation of 25 member churches – 24 cantonal churches and the Evangelical-Methodist Church of Switzerland. The P ...
, while 2 or 3.9% were Roman Catholic
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...
.[
]
Education
In Berken about 50% of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 15.4% have completed additional higher education (either university
A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...
or a ''Fachhochschule
A (; plural ), abbreviated FH, is a university of applied sciences (UAS), in other words a Hochschule, German tertiary education institution that provides professional education in many applied sciences and applied arts, such as engineering, te ...
'').[ Of the 4 who had completed some form of tertiary schooling listed in the census, 50.0% were Swiss men, 50.0% were Swiss women.][
]
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
Municipalities of the canton of Bern