Safnern is a municipality in the Biel/Bienne administrative district in the canton of Bern in Switzerland.
History
Safnern is first mentioned in 1251 as Savenieres.
The oldest trace of a settlement in the area is the ruins of a Roman settlement in the Moosmühle section. During the Middle Ages there were several scattered villages and settlements within the modern municipal borders. The villages of Büttenberg and Stadholz (also known as Stadowe) and the castle on the Schlösslihubel hill all flourished and then were abandoned. The major landholders in Safnern were the Counts of Neuchâtel-Nidau and Gottstatt Abbey. With the extinction of the Neuchâtel-Nidau line in 1375, Safnern came under Bernese control. It formed the Safnern Court within the bailiwick of Nidau until the 1798 French invasion. After which Safnern became part of the Büren district under the Helvetic Republic. With the Act of Mediation in 1803, it became part of the Nidau district.
By 1783 the large village had 50 houses. Located along the Zihl/Thielle and Aare rivers the residents grew crops in the rich farmland and fished the rivers. The Jura water correction project of 1847-48 changed the course of the Aare river but helped protect the village from flooding. The Nidau-Büren Canal of 1868-75 further reshaped the landscape around Safnern. Today the municipal boundary still follows the old Zihl/Thielle and Aare riverbeds. As Biel grew into an industrial city in the 1950s, Safnern became a suburb. Despite having several industrial factories in the municipality, about three-quarters of the working population commute to jobs in Biel or other towns. In 2005 about 60% of the jobs in Safnern were in industry, while 28% were in the services sector. However, Safnern is also surrounded with green spaces, it shares the Häftli nature reserve with the neighboring municipalities of Büren an der Aare and Meinisberg.
Geography
Safnern has an area of . As of 2012, a total of or 43.6% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 33.8% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 17.8% is settled (buildings or roads), or 3.0% is either rivers or lakes and or 2.0% is unproductive land.
During the same year, industrial buildings made up 2.0% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 8.4% and transportation infrastructure made up 3.4%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 3.4% of the area Out of the forested land, all of the forested land area is covered with heavy forests. Of the agricultural land, 35.8% is used for growing crops and 6.4% is pastures, while 1.4% is used for orchards or vine crops. Of the water in the municipality, 2.1% is in lakes and 0.9% is in rivers and streams.
Safnern lies in the Bernese Seeland at the foot of the Bütten Mountains. It is also along the Nidau-Büren channel as well as the old river bed of the Zihl and Aare Rivers.
On 31 December 2009 Amtsbezirk Nidau, the municipality's former district, was dissolved. On the following day, 1 January 2010, it joined the newly created Verwaltungskreis Biel/Bienne.
Coat of arms
The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Per fess Gules a Pale chevrony Or and Sable and Or a Barrulet wavy Azure and a Mount of 3 Coupeaux Vert.
Demographics
Safnern has a population () of . , 5.2% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (2001-2011) the population has changed at a rate of 0%. Migration accounted for 0.6%, while births and deaths accounted for -0.1%.
Most of the population () speaks German (1,652 or 92.9%) as their first language, French is the second most common (81 or 4.6%) and Italian is the third (14 or 0.8%).
, the population was 48.5% male and 51.5% female. The population was made up of 854 Swiss men (45.6% of the population) and 54 (2.9%) non-Swiss men. There were 921 Swiss women (49.2%) and 4 (0.2%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality, 457 or about 25.7% were born in Safnern and lived there in 2000. There were 827 or 46.5% who were born in the same canton, while 322 or 18.1% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 133 or 7.5% were born outside of Switzerland.
, children and teenagers (0–19 years old) make up 22.2% of the population, while adults (20–64 years old) make up 58.6% and seniors (over 64 years old) make up 19.2%.
, there were 658 people who were single and never married in the municipality. There were 946 married individuals, 92 widows or widowers and 83 individuals who are divorced.