Widen

Geschichte

Widen is a municipality in the district of Bremgarten in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.HistoryAt the end of the 12th century a manor called "Wyda" is mentioned the first time, there's no exact year. "Widen", in the way like it's written today, appears the first time during the 14th century.In medieval times, the manor belonged to Habsburg. 1415 the Eidgenossen conquered the Aargau and Widen then belonged to the Grafschaft Baden. In March 1798 the French conquered Switzerland and proclamated the Helvetic Republic, in which Widen and Eggenwil formed one single municipality in the short-dated canton of Baden. After the foundation of the canton of Aargau 1803, Widen and Eggenwil were separated. Up to that time, there's not much known about Widen, because there are almost no documents left.During the 19th century Widen stayed a small village. Lots of poor inhabitants had to leave their home and emigrated. The given up farms were freshly occupied by people from the canton of Bern, which were Protestant. That's why today, compared to its merely catholic neighbour villages, Widen has a relatively high percentage of Protestant inhabitants.On 1 May 1902 the Bremgarten-Dietikon-Bahn was founded and Widen was connected to the railway network, by a station on the Mutschellen pass. During the first half of the 20th century Widen stayed small. However, from 1950 to 1990 the population began to grow rapidly, in 1990 3918 people lived in Widen. The population then sank slightly and now it stays constantly at about 3600 people.