Heimberg is a municipality in the administrative district of Thun in the canton of Bern in Switzerland.
History
Heimberg is first mentioned in 1146 as Heimberc.
The oldest trace of a settlement in the area are the Roman settlement ruins near Bühlacker. By the Middle Ages the village existed and was ruled by the Freiherr von Heimberg. Very little is known about the family. They appear in historical records from 1146 until 1175 and then vanish. By 1191 the Zähringens owned the village. It was later divided and inherited by the Counts of Kyburg and the Counts of Buchegg. In 1259 Buchegg donated their portion to Interlaken Abbey but the Kyburgs retained their half ownership and, apparently, full control over the village. After a failed raid on Solothurn on 11 November 1382 and the resulting Burgdorferkrieg, the Kyburgs lost most of their lands to Bern in 1384. The city of Bern then passed the half portion of the village to the Bernese Schultheiss Ludwig von Seftigen to rule as a private dominion within the Steffisburg court under the Thun District. Presumably after the 1528 conversion of Bern to the new faith of the Protestant Reformation and suppression of Interlaken Abbey, the two halves of the village were combined. The village passed through a number of Bernese patrician families over the following centuries.
The village was part of the parish of Thun until 1536, when it became part of the Steffisburg parish.
For most of its history Heimberg consisted of scattered farm houses in the floodplains of the Aare, Zulg and Rotache rivers. The swampy valley floors provided rich soil but very limited space. The Aare River Correction projects of 1871-76 constrained the river and drained the marshy lands on the valley floor, which opened up new housing and farm land. At around the same time the construction of the Bern-Thun road and the Burgdorf-Thun railroad connected the village with several nearby cities. The road and navigable Aare river brought about 80 import/export and transport companies to Heimberg in the mid-19th century. When it began to decline in the 1870s, the growing municipality began supporting industry in Thun. After World War II the population of Heimberg expanded rapidly and new developments sprang up around the old village, including Hubel-Bäumberg and Kaliforni as well as the Winterhalde industrial park. A school was built in Au in 1953-56 and replaced in 1975–86, and followed by a secondary school in 1981. The village church was built in 1939, followed by a second church in Kaliforni in 1979. Heimberg split away from the Steffisburg parish to form its own parish in 1988.
Geography
Heimberg has an area of . As of 2013, a total of or 25.7% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 34.6% is forested. The rest of the municipality is or 37.1% is settled (buildings or roads), or 1.8% is either rivers or lakes.
During the same year, industrial buildings made up 5.9% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 16.7% and transportation infrastructure made up 10.1%, while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 1.8%. All of the forested land area is covered with heavy forests. Of the agricultural land, 14.3% is used for growing crops and 10.8% is pasturage. Of the water in the municipality, 0.1% is in lakes and 1.7% is in rivers and streams.
The municipality is located on the right bank of the Aare river, between the Rotache river in the north and the Zulg river in the south. It includes the village of Thungschneit which became part of the municipality in 1869.
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.
Coat of arms
The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Azure a Lamb passant Argent holding a flag of the same cross Gules with Tassels Or on a Mount of 3 Coupeaux Vert.
Demographics
Heimberg has a population () of . , 8.8% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Between the last 2 years (2010-2012) the population changed at a rate of 2.7%. Migration accounted for 2.4%, while births and deaths accounted for 0.2%.
Most of the population () speaks German (5,153 or 93.2%) as their first language, Albanian is the second most common (64 or 1.2%) and Italian is the third (55 or 1.0%). There are 29 people who speak French and 7 people who speak Romansh.