Schwendibach is a former
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 administrative district of
Thun
Thun () is a List of towns in Switzerland, town and a Municipalities of Switzerland, municipality in the administrative district of Thun (administrative district), Thun in the Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Canton of Bern, Bern in Switzerland. ...
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 ...
. On 1 January 2020 the former municipality of Schwendibach merged into the municipality of
Steffisburg
Steffisburg is a municipality in the administrative district of Thun in the canton of Bern in Switzerland. On 1 January 2020 the former municipality of Schwendibach merged into the municipality of Steffisburg.
History
Steffisburg is first m ...
.
History
Schwendibach is first mentioned in 1388 as ''Swendibach''.
[
The area was gradually settled as small farms cleared the land during the ]Late Middle Ages
The late Middle Ages or late medieval period was the Periodization, period of History of Europe, European history lasting from 1300 to 1500 AD. The late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern period ( ...
. The land was originally owned by the Count of Kyburg. After the defeat of the Austrian backed Kyburgs in the Burgdorferkrieg, in 1384 the Kyburg lands were acquired by the city 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 ...
. Throughout its history it formed a chapelry
A chapelry was a subdivision of an ecclesiastical parish in England and parts of Lowland Scotland up to the mid 19th century.
Status
A chapelry had a similar status to a Township (England), township, but was so named as it had a chapel of ease ...
with Goldiwil (now a village in Thun) in 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 Thun
Thun () is a List of towns in Switzerland, town and a Municipalities of Switzerland, municipality in the administrative district of Thun (administrative district), Thun in the Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Canton of Bern, Bern in Switzerland. ...
. Traditionally the residents farmed, raised dairy cattle, produced cheese or cut timber. Today about two-thirds of the residents commute to jobs in nearby cities, while the remainder generally work on small farms. By 2004 the community no longer had a school. The kindergarten moved to Buchen and the primary school went to Homberg. After 2004 the municipal administration moved into the empty school house.[
]
Geography
Schwendibach has an area of . As of the 2004 survey, a total of or 69.3% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 20.7% is forested. Of rest of the municipality or 10.7% is settled (buildings or roads).[Swiss Federal Statistical Office-Land Use Statistics]
2009 data accessed 27 August 2014
From the same survey, housing and buildings made up 6.7% and transportation infrastructure made up 4.0%. All of the forested land area is covered with heavy forests. Of the agricultural land, 10.0% is used for growing crops and 56.7% is pasturage, while 2.7% is used for orchards or vine crops.[
The municipality is located on the northern slope of the Grüsisberg. It consists of the small village of Schwendibach and scattered ]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 ...
and farm houses.
On 31 December 2009 Amtsbezirk Thun, the municipality's former district, was dissolved. On the following day, 1 January 2010, it joined the newly created Verwaltungskreis Thun.[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 ''Argent a Bend sinister wavy Azure between a Mullet of seven Gules and a Stump eradicated Sable flambant of the third.''
Demographics
Schwendibach has a population () of . , 2.0% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Between the last 2 years (2010-2012) the population changed at a rate of -4.1%. Migration accounted for -0.4%, while births and deaths accounted for -1.5%.[Swiss Federal Statistical Office]
accessed 5 September 2014
Most of the population () 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 ...
(258 or 98.5%) as their first language, French is the second most common (2 or 0.8%) and Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance languag ...
is the third (1 or 0.4%).[
, the population was 53.8% male and 46.2% female. The population was made up of 142 Swiss men (53.4% of the population) and 1 (0.4%) non-Swiss men. There were 120 Swiss women (45.1%) and 3 (1.1%) non-Swiss women.][Statistical office of the Canton of Bern]
accessed 4 January 2012 Of the population in the municipality, 89 or about 34.0% were born in Schwendibach and lived there in 2000. There were 134 or 51.1% who were born in the same canton, while 27 or 10.3% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 7 or 2.7% were born outside of Switzerland.[
, children and teenagers (0–19 years old) make up 20.4% of the population, while adults (20–64 years old) make up 63.5% and seniors (over 64 years old) make up 16.1%.][
, there were 116 people who were single and never married in the municipality. There were 124 married individuals, 13 widows or widowers and 9 individuals who are divorced.][STAT-TAB Datenwürfel für Thema 40.3 - 2000]
accessed 2 February 2011
, there were 21 households that consist of only one person and 9 households with five or more people. , a total of 94 apartments (86.2% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 11 apartments (10.1%) were seasonally occupied and 4 apartments (3.7%) were empty.[Swiss Federal Statistical Office STAT-TAB - Datenwürfel für Thema 09.2 - Gebäude und Wohnungen]
accessed 28 January 2011 , the construction rate of new housing units was 7.8 new units per 1000 residents.[ In 2012, single family homes made up 26.9% of the total housing in the municipality.
The historical population is given in the following chart:]
Economy
, Schwendibach had an unemployment rate of 0.86%. , there were a total of 57 people employed in the municipality. Of these, there were 21 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 9 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 3 people and there were 2 businesses 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 33 people, with 9 businesses in this sector.[ There were 152 residents of the municipality who were employed in some capacity, of which females made up 40.8% of the workforce.
there were a total of 29 ]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 13, all of which were in agriculture. The number of jobs in the secondary sector was 5 of which 3 were in manufacturing and 2 were in construction. The number of jobs in the tertiary sector was 11. In the tertiary sector; 3 or 27.3% were in wholesale or retail sales or the repair of motor vehicles, 1 was in the movement and storage of goods, 3 or 27.3% were technical professionals or scientists, 1 was in education.
, there were 19 workers who commuted into the municipality and 114 workers who commuted away. The municipality is a net exporter of workers, with about 6.0 workers leaving the municipality for every one entering. A total of 38 workers (66.7% of the 57 total workers in the municipality) both lived and worked in Schwendibach.[Swiss Federal Statistical Office - Statweb]
accessed 24 June 2010 Of the working population, 7.9% used public transportation to get to work, and 60.5% used a private car.[
The local and cantonal tax rate in Schwendibach is one of the lowest in the canton. In 2012 the average local and cantonal tax rate on a married resident, with two children, of Schwendibach making 150,000 CHF was 12.1%, while an unmarried resident's rate was 18%. For comparison, the average rate for the entire canton in 2011, was 14.2% and 22.0%, while the nationwide average was 12.3% and 21.1% respectively.
In 2010 there were a total of 111 tax payers in the municipality. Of that total, 28 made over 75,000 CHF per year. The greatest number of workers, 34, made between 50,000 and 75,000 CHF per year. The average income of the over 75,000 CHF group in Schwendibach was 101,254 CHF, while the average across all of Switzerland was 131,244 CHF.
In 2011 a total of 1.5% 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 53.7% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the Conservative Democratic Party (BDP) (16.7%), the Federal Democratic Union of Switzerland (EDU) (10.4%) and the Green Party
A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as environmentalism and social justice.
Green party platforms typically embrace Social democracy, social democratic economic policies and fo ...
(4.2%). In the federal election, a total of 116 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 57.1%.[Swiss Federal Statistical Office 2011 Election]
accessed 8 May 2012
Religion
From the , 190 or 72.5% 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 9 or 3.4% 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 ...
. Of the rest of the population, there were 33 individuals (or about 12.60% of the population) who belonged to another Christian church. 16 (or about 6.11% of the population) belonged to no church, are agnostic
Agnosticism is the view or belief that the existence of God, the divine, or the supernatural is either unknowable in principle or unknown in fact. (page 56 in 1967 edition) It can also mean an apathy towards such religious belief and refer to ...
or atheist
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...
, and 14 individuals (or about 5.34% of the population) did not answer the question.[
]
Education
In Schwendibach about 61.6% of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 14.4% 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 23 who had completed some form of tertiary schooling listed in the census, 65.2% were Swiss men, 34.8% were Swiss women.][
, there were a total of 23 students attending any school in the municipality. Of those, 23 both lived and attended school in the municipality, while 12 students from Schwendibach attended schools outside the municipality.][
]
References
{{Authority control
Former municipalities of the canton of Bern