Härkingen 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
Gäu in the
canton of
Solothurn 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
Härkingen is first mentioned in 1080 as ''quendam comitatum nomine Härichingen in pago Buchsgeowe situm (Kopie)''. In 1101 it was mentioned as ''03 apud Harichingen''.
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Geography
Härkingen has an area, , of . Of this area, or 51.6% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 22.0% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 27.6% is settled (buildings or roads).[Swiss Federal Statistical Office-Land Use Statistics]
2009 data accessed 25 March 2010
Of the built up area, industrial buildings made up 5.3% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 6.2% and transportation infrastructure made up 8.5%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 7.1% of the area Out of the forested land, 20.4% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.6% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 44.9% is used for growing crops and 5.5% is pastures, while 1.3% is used for orchards or vine crops.[
The municipality is located in the Gäu district, in the Dünnern valley south of the division of the A1 and A2 motorways.
]
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 ''Azure an Oak Stump with two branches leaved and acorned Or rising from a Mount of 3 Coupeaux Vert.''
Demographics
Härkingen has a population () of . , 11.7% of the population are resident foreign nationals.[Swiss Federal Statistical Office - Superweb database - Gemeinde Statistics 1981-2008]
accessed 19 June 2010 Over the last 10 years (1999–2009 ) the population has changed at a rate of 9.9%.
accessed 25-March-2011German
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 ...
(1,105 or 92.4%), with 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 ...
being second most common (22 or 1.8%) and Albanian being third (20 or 1.7%). There are 7 people who speak French.[
, the gender distribution of the population was 51.8% male and 48.2% female. The population was made up of 581 Swiss men (44.4% of the population) and 98 (7.5%) non-Swiss men. There were 551 Swiss women (42.1%) and 80 (6.1%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality 414 or about 34.6% were born in Härkingen and lived there in 2000. There were 357 or 29.8% who were born in the same canton, while 265 or 22.2% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 131 or 11.0% were born outside of Switzerland.][
In there were 14 live births to Swiss citizens and 1 birth to non-Swiss citizens, and in same time span there were 6 deaths of Swiss citizens. Ignoring immigration and emigration, the population of Swiss citizens increased by 8 while the foreign population increased by 1. There were 12 Swiss men and 4 Swiss women who immigrated back to Switzerland. At the same time, there were 3 non-Swiss men who emigrated from Switzerland to another country and 5 non-Swiss women who immigrated from another country to Switzerland. The total Swiss population change in 2008 (from all sources, including moves across municipal borders) was an increase of 44 and the non-Swiss population decreased by 5 people. This represents a ]population growth rate
Population growth is the increase in the number of people in a population or dispersed group. The global population has grown from 1 billion in 1800 to 8.2 billion in 2025. Actual global human population growth amounts to around 70 million annu ...
of 3.2%.[
The age distribution, , in Härkingen is; 103 children or 8.6% of the population are between 0 and 6 years old and 237 teenagers or 19.8% are between 7 and 19. Of the adult population, 43 people or 3.6% of the population are between 20 and 24 years old. 395 people or 33.0% are between 25 and 44, and 278 people or 23.2% are between 45 and 64. The senior population distribution is 101 people or 8.4% of the population are between 65 and 79 years old and there are 39 people or 3.3% who are over 80.
, there were 499 people who were single and never married in the municipality. There were 593 married individuals, 48 widows or widowers and 56 individuals who are divorced.][STAT-TAB Datenwürfel für Thema 40.3 - 2000]
accessed 2 February 2011
, there were 454 private households in the municipality, and an average of 2.6 persons per household.[ There were 111 households that consist of only one person and 41 households with five or more people. Out of a total of 467 households that answered this question, 23.8% were households made up of just one person and there were 4 adults who lived with their parents. Of the rest of the households, there are 130 married couples without children, 185 married couples with children There were 17 single parents with a child or children. There were 7 households that were made up of unrelated people and 13 households that were made up of some sort of institution or another collective housing.][
there were 233 single family homes (or 73.0% of the total) out of a total of 319 inhabited buildings. There were 42 multi-family buildings (13.2%), along with 31 multi-purpose buildings that were mostly used for housing (9.7%) and 13 other use buildings (commercial or industrial) that also had some housing (4.1%). Of the single family homes 14 were built before 1919, while 50 were built between 1990 and 2000. The greatest number of single family homes (60) were built between 1981 and 1990.][Federal Statistical Office STAT-TAB - Datenwürfel für Thema 09.2 - Gebäude und Wohnungen]
accessed 28 January 2011
there were 491 apartments in the municipality. The most common apartment size was 4 rooms of which there were 143. There were 25 single room apartments and 210 apartments with five or more rooms. Of these apartments, a total of 445 apartments (90.6% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 33 apartments (6.7%) were seasonally occupied and 13 apartments (2.6%) were empty.[ , the construction rate of new housing units was 10 new units per 1000 residents.][ The vacancy rate for the municipality, , was 1.05%.][
The historical population is given in the following chart:]
Politics
In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the SVP which received 33.59% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the CVP (26.19%), the FDP (19.72%) and the SP (13.53%). In the federal election, a total of 495 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 56.6%.
Economy
, Härkingen had an unemployment rate of 2.7%. , there were 31 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 10 businesses involved in this sector. 255 people were employed in the secondary sector and there were 30 businesses in this sector. 1,487 people were employed in 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 ...
, with 90 businesses in this sector.[ There were 646 residents of the municipality who were employed in some capacity, of which females made up 39.9% of the workforce.
the total number of ]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 was 1,598. The number of jobs in the primary sector was 22, all of which were in agriculture. The number of jobs in the secondary sector was 240 of which 110 or (45.8%) were in manufacturing, 9 or (3.8%) were in mining and 115 (47.9%) were in construction. The number of jobs in the tertiary sector was 1,336. In the tertiary sector; 307 or 23.0% were in wholesale or retail sales or the repair of motor vehicles, 879 or 65.8% were in the movement and storage of goods, 37 or 2.8% were in a hotel or restaurant, 67 or 5.0% were in the information industry, 2 or 0.1% were the insurance or financial industry, 13 or 1.0% were technical professionals or scientists, 6 or 0.4% were in education and 12 or 0.9% were in health care.
, there were 1,308 workers who commuted into the municipality and 469 workers who commuted away. The municipality is a net importer of workers, with about 2.8 workers entering the municipality for every one leaving.[Swiss Federal Statistical Office - Statweb]
accessed 24 June 2010 Of the working population, 9.8% used public transportation to get to work, and 64.4% used a private car.[
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Religion
From the , 720 or 60.2% 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 252 or 21.1% 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 ...
. Of the rest of the population, there were 15 members of an Orthodox church (or about 1.25% of the population), there were 2 individuals (or about 0.17% of the population) who belonged to the Christian Catholic Church, and there were 9 individuals (or about 0.75% of the population) who belonged to another Christian church. There were 20 (or about 1.67% of the population) who were Islam
Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...
ic. There were 5 individuals who were Buddhist
Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...
. 146 (or about 12.21% of the population) belonged to no church, are agnostic 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 27 individuals (or about 2.26% of the population) did not answer the question.[
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Education
In Härkingen about 442 or (37.0%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 126 or (10.5%) 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 126 who completed tertiary schooling, 71.4% were Swiss men, 15.9% were Swiss women, 9.5% were non-Swiss men.[
During the 2010-2011 school year there were a total of 95 students in the Härkingen school system. The education system in the Canton of Solothurn allows young children to attend two years of non-obligatory ]Kindergarten
Kindergarten is a preschool educational approach based on playing, singing, practical activities such as drawing, and social interaction as part of the transition from home to school. Such institutions were originally made in the late 18th cen ...
. During that school year, there were 19 children in kindergarten. The canton's school system requires students to attend six years of 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 ...
, with some of the children attending smaller, specialized classes. In the municipality there were 76 students in primary school. The 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 ...
program consists of three lower, obligatory years of schooling, followed by three to five years of optional, advanced schools. All the lower secondary students from Härkingen attend their school in a neighboring municipality.Canton of Solothurn - School statistics
accessed 13 March 2011
, there were 4 students in Härkingen who came from another municipality, while 89 residents attended schools outside the municipality.[
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Transport
Härkingen respectively Niederbipp are scheduled as one of the eight hubs of the proposed Cargo Sous Terrain, an underground cargo transport system those first phase is planned by the early 2030s.
References
External links
Official website
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harkingen
Municipalities of the canton of Solothurn