Emmen, Switzerland


Emmen is a village and municipality in the district of Hochdorf in the canton of Lucerne in Switzerland. The municipality Emmen consists of the village Emmen, the town Emmenbrücke, and several hamlets.
The official language of Emmen is German, but the main spoken language is the local variant of the Alemannic Swiss German dialect.

History

Emmen is first mentioned in 840 as Emau.

Geography

Emmen has an area of. Of this area, 46.6% is used for agricultural purposes, while 18.2% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 33.3% is settled and the remainder is non-productive., 18.19% of the total land area was forested. Of the agricultural land, 44.69% is used for farming or pastures, while 1.92% is used for orchards or vine crops. Of the settled areas, 14.55% is covered with buildings, 5.7% is industrial, 1.62% is classed as special developments, 1.97% is parks or greenbelts and 9.49% is transportation infrastructure. Of the unproductive areas, 0.25% is unproductive standing water, and the other 1.62% is unproductive flowing water.
The municipality is part of the metropolitan area of Lucerne. It is located at the confluence of the Kleine Emme into the Reuss.

The naturalization law

The municipality of Emmen hit international headlines in 2001 when it announced new naturalization law. While there are some fixed requirements for obtaining Swiss citizenship by naturalization set at the federal level, such as the requirement to live and work for 12 years and speak the local language, Swiss cantons and communities are free to introduce more stringent requirements. Until 2001, naturalization was run by a popularly elected committee. But Emmen decided to have the citizens themselves run the nationalization process, requiring that potential citizens pass a series of tests and public interviews and subjecting citizenship applications to the public vote.
This process prevented many Yugoslavs-Swiss people, the largest ethnic group among citizenship candidates, from obtaining citizenship. Human rights campaigners said that the public interviews and voting were degrading. In July 2003, the practice was ruled discriminatory and unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Emmen has since returned to the previous system of naturalization committees.

Population by nationality

Emmen has a population of 27,205, of which 30.7% are foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years the population has grown at a rate of 2.7%. Most of the population speaks German, with Serbo-Croatian being second most common and Italian being third.

Industry

The main industries are steel production, milk processing and arms manufacture. The biggest employers in these areas are Schmolz + Bickenbach, Emmi AG and Ruag respectively. There is the so-called ´golden triangle´ of the sewage plant, the air force base and the waste incinerating plant. Because of the Emmen Air Force Base and the Emmen Anti Aircraft Unit, many of the inhabitants are directly or indirectly employed by the Air Force.
Emmen has an unemployment rate of 3.62%., there were 257 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 58 businesses involved in this sector. 5260 people are employed in the secondary sector and there are 213 businesses in this sector. 8139 people are employed in the tertiary sector, with 693 businesses in this sector. 51.6% of the population of the municipality were employed in some capacity. At the same time, females made up 42.8% of the workforce.

Demographics

In the 2007 election the most popular party was the SVP which received 33.5% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the CVP, the FDP and the SPS.
The age distribution in Emmen is; 5,990 people or 21.7% of the population is 0–19 years old. 7,735 people or 28.1% are 20–39 years old, and 9,489 people or 34.4% are 40–64 years old. The senior population distribution is 3,194 people or 11.6% are 65–79 years old, 1,014 or 3.7% are 80–89 years old and 146 people or 0.5% of the population are 90+ years old.
The entire Swiss population is generally well educated. In Emmen about 61.4% of the population have completed either non-mandatory upper secondary education or additional higher education.
there are 11,165 households, of which 3,720 households contain only a single individual. 801 or about 7.2% are large households, with at least five members. there were 2,737 inhabited buildings in the municipality, of which 2,339 were built only as housing, and 398 were mixed use buildings. There were 1,131 single family homes, 217 double family homes, and 991 multi-family homes in the municipality. Most homes were either two or three story structures. There were only 133 single story buildings and 547 four or more story buildings.
the religious membership of Emmen was; 17,253 were Roman Catholic, and 3,416 were Protestant, with an additional 1,327 that were of some other Christian faith. There are 9 individuals who are Jewish. There are 1,848 individuals who are Muslim. Of the rest; there were 228 individuals who belong to another religion, 1,753 who do not belong to any organized religion, 1,051 who did not answer the question.
The historical population is given in the following table:
yearpopulation
1456c. 150
around 1695c. 550
17981,330
18501,764
19003,162
195011,065
197022,040
200026,885

Transportation

The municipality is thoroughly served by Lucerne's urban transit system VBL, which is part of the fare network passepartout. Two railway lines lead through the municipality and serves four railway stations:,,, and Waldibrücke. All stops in the municipality are situated within passepartout's innermost zone No. 10, the same as Lucerne.
The military airbase Emmen Air Base is part of the municipality.

Sport

is the village's football club.

Notable people