Hölstein

Geschichte

Hölstein is a municipality in the district of Waldenburg in the canton of Basel-Country in Switzerland.HistoryHölstein is first mentioned around 1101-03 as Hulestein.GeographyHölstein has an area, of 6.03km2. Of this area, 2.61km2 or 43.3% is used for agricultural purposes, while 2.4km2 or 39.8% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 0.89km2 or 14.8% is settled (buildings or roads), 0.05km2 or 0.8% is either rivers or lakes and 0.01km2 or 0.2% is unproductive land.Of the built up area, industrial buildings made up 1.7% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 7.5% and transportation infrastructure made up 4.6%. Out of the forested land, 38.1% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.7% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 17.7% is used for growing crops and 22.7% is pastures, while 2.8% is used for orchards or vine crops. All the water in the municipality is flowing water.The municipality is located in the Waldenburg district. It consists of the village of Hölstein, the settlements of Gründen and Holdenweid and 15 individual farm houses.Coat of armsThe blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Gules, an Eagle displayed Argent fesswise, langued, beaked and membered Or.DemographicsHölstein has a population of., 14.1% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1997–2007) the population has changed at a rate of 13.5%.Most of the population speaks German (1,889 or 91.2%), with Italian language being second most common (45 or 2.2%) and Albanian being third (42 or 2.0%). There are 14 people who speak French.