Frick 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 district of
Laufenburg in the
canton of
Aargau
Aargau ( ; ), more formally the Canton of Aargau (; ; ; ), is one of the Canton of Switzerland, 26 cantons forming the Switzerland, Swiss Confederation. It is composed of eleven districts and its capital is Aarau.
Aargau is one of the most nort ...
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
Prehistory
At the nearby ''Wittnauer Horn'', a
prehistorical fortification was discovered with objects dating back to the
Late Bronze Age
The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...
.
Roman Times
A Roman villa was located at the site of the fortification village in the 2nd century, and a small Roman fort was built in the early 4th century to protect the military road from
Vindonissa
Vindonissa (from a Gaulish toponym in *''windo-'' "white") was a Roman legion camp, vicus and later a bishop's seat at modern Windisch, Switzerland. The remains of the camp are listed as a heritage site of national significance. The city of B ...
to
Augusta Raurica
Augusta Raurica is a Roman archaeological site and an open-air museum in Switzerland located on the south bank of the Rhine river about 20 km east of Basel near the villages of Augst and Kaiseraugst. It is the site of the oldest known Ro ...
(extended in AD 370). A Roman settlement developed in the vicinity of the fort, replaced by an
Alemanni
The Alemanni or Alamanni were a confederation of Germanic peoples, Germanic tribes
*
*
*
on the Upper Rhine River during the first millennium. First mentioned by Cassius Dio in the context of the campaign of Roman emperor Caracalla of 213 CE ...
c settlement during the 6th to 9th centuries. The Alemannic settlement had a fortified church, the foundations are still visible near the current village church. The name of the village was taken from that of the encompassing region of
Frickgau (mentioned as ''Frichgowe'' in 926), from a Vulgar Latin , in reference to the iron mine located here in the
Roman era
In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of Rome, founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, collapse of the Western Roman Em ...
(a formation based on Latin ''ferrāria'' "iron mine" with the ''-icius'' suffix), whence early Romance ''*Ferrícia'', Old High German ''*Ferríkkea'', recorded as ''Fricho'' in the 11th century.
Middles Ages
Starting in the
High Middle Ages
The High Middle Ages, or High Medieval Period, was the periodization, period of European history between and ; it was preceded by the Early Middle Ages and followed by the Late Middle Ages, which ended according to historiographical convention ...
, Frickgau was owned by the
Counts of Homberg-Thierstein.
Later, around 1230, it passed to the
House of Habsburg
The House of Habsburg (; ), also known as the House of Austria, was one of the most powerful Dynasty, dynasties in the history of Europe and Western civilization. They were best known for their inbreeding and for ruling vast realms throughout ...
, and was overseen by Habsburg
ministeriales, known as the lords of Frick, with Gipf, Upper Frick part of Oeschgen, forming the Frick
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 ...
(''Vogtei'') (also called the ''Homburgeramt''). The ''Homburger''
Vogt (reeve) was also chief administrator the Fricktal region.
The bailiwick was granted special privileges, including the right to elect their reeve, as well as the rights of
lower jurisdiction.
The population of the bailiwick were divided into the upper layer of ''Vollbauern'' ("full farmers"), as well as in the ''Halbbauern'' ("half-farmers", i.e.
smallholding
A smallholding or smallholder is a small farm operating under a small-scale agriculture model. Definitions vary widely for what constitutes a smallholder or small-scale farm, including factors such as size, food production technique or technolo ...
farmers) and the ''Taun'' (tenants). The ''Vollbauern'' included the reeve's family, and were the most privileged. The tenants formed the lowest stratum, with no citizen rights, and represented the largest group numerically in the
early modern period
The early modern period is a Periodization, historical period that is defined either as part of or as immediately preceding the modern period, with divisions based primarily on the history of Europe and the broader concept of modernity. There i ...
.
After the
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 ...
in 1803, Frick and the rest of the modern Fricktal became part of the newly formed Canton of Aargau. In 1804 the municipalities of Frick and Gipf-Frick were formed.

The Church of St. Peter and Paul were probably built as a private church for the Counts of Homberg during the High Middle Ages. In the
Thirty Years War
The Thirty Years' War, fought primarily in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648, was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history. An estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians died from battle, famine, or disease, whil ...
, the village was destroyed together with the church. In the mid-14th century the church came under the authority of Steinen Convent in Basel. Then, in 1492 it was granted to
Teutonic Knights
The Teutonic Order is a Catholic religious institution founded as a military society in Acre, Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem was formed to aid Christians on their pilgrimages to t ...
at
Beuggen. The present baroque building is from 1716, and the
reformed
Reform is beneficial change.
Reform, reformed or reforming may also refer to:
Media
* ''Reform'' (album), a 2011 album by Jane Zhang
* Reform (band), a Swedish jazz fusion group
* ''Reform'' (magazine), a Christian magazine
Places
* Reform, Al ...
church is from 1910.
Modern Era
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 ...
, ''Argent a Wolf salient Gules'', was introduced in 1931 based on the historical coat of arms of the Habsburg ministeriales.
Before 1931, Frick had used the coat of arms of
Fricktal, a green linden leaf in a white field.
The Frick
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 ...
comprises ten municipalities and the parish offices are in Frick and
Gipf-Oberfrick. The catholic parish, consisting of Frick and Gipf-Oberfrick, has been a separate parish since 1953.
[
In 2007 a major dinosaur graveyard was discovered in Frick. Some of the bones, including a complete ''Plateosaurus'', are now on display in the ''Sauriermuseum''.][
In 2013 and 2014 Frick became the Swiss municipality with the highest crime rate, due to the several thousand offences registered in the context of the improper trading case involving ASE Investment, a company with official seat in Frick.]
Geography
Frick has an area, , of . Of this area, or 46.1% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 29.3% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 24.2% is settled (buildings or roads), or 0.6% is either rivers or lakes.[Swiss Federal Statistical Office-Land Use Statistics]
2009 data accessed 25 March 2010 Over the past two decades (1979/85-2004/09) the amount of land that is settled has increased by and the agricultural land has decreased by .
accessed 27 October 2016
Of the built up area, industrial buildings made up 4.3% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 9.5% and transportation infrastructure made up 5.6%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 2.8% of the area while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 1.9%. 27.9% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.4% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 26.3% is used for growing crops and 17.1% is pastures, while 2.7% is used for orchards or vine crops. All the water in the municipality is in rivers and streams.[
The municipality is located in the Laufenburg district, located at the meeting of the Bözberg, Staffelegg and Benken Jura passes. It is the central municipality in the Fricktal. It consists of the ''haufendorf'' village (an irregular, unplanned and quite closely packed village, built around a central square) of Frick.
]
Paleontology
During the upper Triassic
The Triassic ( ; sometimes symbolized 🝈) is a geologic period and system which spans 50.5 million years from the end of the Permian Period 251.902 million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Jurassic Period 201.4 Mya. The Triassic is t ...
period, about 210 million years ago, the region around Frick was a dry lowland with flat hills and small depressions. During the rainy season, the depressions filled with water and dinosaurs congregated around the ponds. When they died, their bodies were covered by the mud in the ponds and fossilized, creating rich fossil beds in Frick. The first ''Plateosaurus
''Plateosaurus'' (probably meaning "broad lizard", often mistranslated as "flat lizard") is a genus of plateosaurid dinosaur that lived during the Late Triassic period, around 214 to 204 million years ago, in what is now Central and Northern Eu ...
'' fossils were discovered in 1961 and further excavations during the following decades have discovered numerous fossils.[Sauriermuseum Frick website]
accessed 23 July 2013 In 2006, the only coelophysoidean (a small-sized flesh-eating dinosaur group) fossil in Switzerland, was found by an amateur paleontologist in Frick, in 2019 named '' Notatesseraeraptor''.
Demographics
Frick has a population () of . , 24.5% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 4 years (2010-2014) the population has changed at a rate of 7.03%. The birth rate
Birth rate, also known as natality, is the total number of live childbirth, human births per 1,000 population for a given period divided by the length of the period in years. The number of live births is normally taken from a universal registr ...
in the municipality, in 2014, was 12.8, while the death rate
Mortality rate, or death rate, is a measure of the number of deaths (in general, or due to a specific cause) in a particular population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit of time. Mortality rate is typically expressed in units of d ...
was 7.4 per thousand residents.[ Most of the population () speaks German (85.1%), with Italian being second most common (3.6%) and Albanian being third (3.2%).][Swiss Federal Statistical Office]
accessed 30-April-2010
, children and teenagers (0–19 years old) make up 20.7% of the population, while adults (20–64 years old) are 63.1% and seniors (over 64 years old) make up 16.1%.[ In 2015 there were 2,227 single residents, 2,434 people who were married or in a civil partnership, 250 widows or widowers and 373 divorced residents.
In 2014 there were 2,157 private households in Frick with an average household size of 2.38 persons. Of the 780 inhabited buildings in the municipality, in 2000, about 64.0% were single family homes and 17.9% were multiple family buildings. Additionally, about 12.4% of the buildings were built before 1919, while 19.7% were built between 1991 and 2000.][Swiss Federal Statistical Office STAT-TAB - Thema 09 - Bau- und Wohnungswesen ]
accessed 5 May 2016 In 2013 the rate of construction of new housing units per 1000 residents was 4.9. The vacancy rate for the municipality, , was 1.19%.[ about 41.9% of the total households were owner occupied, or in other words did not pay rent (though they may have a ]mortgage
A mortgage loan or simply mortgage (), in civil law (legal system), civil law jurisdictions known also as a hypothec loan, is a loan used either by purchasers of real property to raise funds to buy real estate, or by existing property owners t ...
or a rent-to-own
Rent-to-own, also known as rental purchase or rent-to-buy, is a type of legally documented transaction under which tangible property, such as furniture, consumer electronics, motor vehicles, home appliances, engagement rings, and real property, ...
agreement).
, there were 148 homes with 1 or 2 persons in the household, 836 homes with 3 or 4 persons in the household, and 554 homes with 5 or more persons in the household.[ , there were 1,585 private households (homes and apartments) in the municipality, and an average of 2.5 persons per household.][ there were 610 single family homes (or 29.9% of the total) out of a total of 2,041 homes and apartments.][Statistical Department of Canton Aargau]
accessed 20 January 2010 There were a total of 24 empty apartments for a 1.2% vacancy rate. , the construction rate of new housing units was 12.9 new units per 1000 residents.[
The historical population is given in the following chart:]
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bar:1768 from:start till:495 text:"495"
bar:1850 from:start till:1112 text:"1,112"
bar:1860 from:start till:950 text:"950"
bar:1870 from:start till:935 text:"935"
bar:1880 from:start till:932 text:"932"
bar:1888 from:start till:874 text:"874"
bar:1900 from:start till:937 text:"937"
bar:1910 from:start till:1092 text:"1,092"
bar:1920 from:start till:1086 text:"1,086"
bar:1930 from:start till:1280 text:"1,280"
bar:1941 from:start till:1330 text:"1,330"
bar:1950 from:start till:1589 text:"1,589"
bar:1960 from:start till:2123 text:"2,123"
bar:1970 from:start till:3112 text:"3,112"
bar:1980 from:start till:3116 text:"3,116"
bar:1990 from:start till:3622 text:"3,622"
bar:2000 from:start till:4028 text:"4,028"
bar:2010 from:start till:4811 text:"4,811"
bar:2015 from:start till:5284 text:"5,284"
Heritage sites of national significance
The Catholic
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
church of St. Peter and Paul as well as the charnel house
A charnel house is a vault or building where human skeletal remains are stored. They are often built near churches for depositing bones that are unearthed while digging graves. The term can also be used more generally as a description of a plac ...
are listed as a Swiss heritage site of national significance. The village of Frick is designated as part of the Inventory of Swiss Heritage Sites
The Federal Inventory of Heritage Sites (ISOS) is part of a 1981 Ordinance of the Swiss Federal Council implementing the Federal Law on the Protection of Nature and Cultural Heritage.
Sites of national importance
Types
The types are based on t ...
.
Transportation
The municipality is located on the A3 motorway.
There is also a railway station served by the Swiss Federal Railways
Swiss Federal Railways (, SBB; , CFF; , FFS) is the national railway company of Switzerland.
The company was founded in 1902 and is headquartered in Bern. It used to be a State-owned enterprise, government institution, but since 1999 it has be ...
.
Economy
, Frick had an unemployment rate of 2.77%.[ , there were a total of 3,540 people employed in the municipality. Of these, a total of 72 people worked in 14 businesses in the primary economic sector. A majority (61.1%) of the primary sector employees worked in very small businesses (less than ten employees). The remainder worked in 1 small business with 28 employees. The secondary sector employed 1,106 workers in 51 separate businesses. In 2014 a total of 313 employees worked in 45 small companies (less than 50 employees). There were 5 mid sized businesses with 450 employees and 1 large business which employed 343 people. Finally, 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 ...
provided 2,362 jobs in 362 businesses. There were 25 small businesses with a total of 735 employees and 3 mid sized businesses with a total of 399 employees.
In 2014 a total of 4.9% of the population received social assistance.[
In 2015 there was one movie theater in the municipality with 177 seats.
there were 2,111 workers who lived in the municipality. Of these, 1,351 or about 64.0% of the residents worked outside Frick while 1,764 people commuted into the municipality for work. There were a total of 2,524 jobs (of at least 6 hours per week) in the municipality.][Statistical Department of Canton Aargau-Bereich 11 Verkehr und Nachrichtenwesen](_blank)
accessed 21 January 2010 Of the working population, 18% used public transportation to get to work, and 40.4% used a private car.[
]
Religion
From the , 2,061 or 51.2% 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 ...
, while 931 or 23.1% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church. Of the rest of the population, there were 21 individuals (or about 0.52% of the population) who belonged to the Christian Catholic faith.[Statistical Department of Canton Aargau - Aargauer Zahlen 2009]
accessed 20 January 2010
Politics
In the 2015 federal election the most popular party was the SVP with 37.6% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the FDP (14.3%), the SP (12.9%) and the CVP (12.3%). In the federal election, a total of 1,506 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 45.7%.
In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the SVP which received 33.1% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the CVP (19.9%), the SP (16%) and the FDP (12.9%).[
]
Education
In Frick about 66.6% of the population (between age 25–64) have completed either non-mandatory upper secondary education or additional higher education (either university 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 school age population (), there are 318 students attending ]primary school
A primary school (in Ireland, India, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, South Africa, and Singapore), elementary school, or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ...
, there are 246 students attending secondary school
A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., b ...
, there are 402 students attending tertiary or university level schooling in the municipality.[
]
Crime
In 2014 the crime rate, of the over 200 crimes listed in the Swiss Criminal Code
The Swiss Criminal Code (SR/RS 311, , , , ) is a portion of the third part (SR/RS 3) of the Swiss law, internal Swiss law ("Private law - Administration of civil justice - Enforcement") that regulates the criminal code in Switzerland. The orig ...
(running from murder, robbery and assault to accepting bribes and election fraud), in Frick was 560 per thousand residents. This rate is over ten times greater than the cantonal rate and is seven and a half times greater than the average rate in the entire country. The rate has risen sharply in the last few years. In 2009 the rate was only 52.8, in 2010 it was 68, 2011 it was 72, it doubled in 2012 to 175, tripled in 2013 to 598 before dropping slightly in 2014. However, the majority of the crimes are probably financial crimes related to the 2013 scandal in which ASE Investment and Basel Cantonal Bank lost over 100 million CHF due to improper trading. Over 1,500 people were affected, leading to thousands of charges filed in Frick.[
During the same period, the rate of drug crimes was 12.9 per thousand residents, which is a little higher than the national average but is more than double the cantonal rate (5.0 per thousand). The rate of violations of immigration, visa and work permit laws was 2.9 per thousand residents, which is about half the rate for the entire country.Statistical Atlas of Switzerland]
accessed 5 April 2016
References
External links
*
(Dinosaur museum) of Frick
{{Authority control
Municipalities of Aargau
Cultural property of national significance in Aargau