Lauerz

Lauerz is a village and municipality in the Schwyz District of the canton of Schwyz in Switzerland. It adjoins Lake Lauerz (Lauerzersee). Lauerz is first mentioned in 1306 as Lowertz. In September 1806, the village was very badly affected by the tsunami that followed the landslide at Goldau, resulting in the deaths of 115 people in Lauerz alone. The village of Lauerz is situated on the south shore of Lake Lauerz (Lauerzersee). The municipality consists of the village of Lauerz and a number of scattered farm houses between the northern slope of the Rigi mountain and the lake. A section of the lake, together with both of its islands, Schwanau and Roggenburg, are also within the municipality. The municipality of Lauerz has an area, , of . Of this area, 44.7% is used for agricultural purposes, while 35.7% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 4.1% is settled (buildings or roads) and the remainder (15.5%) is non-productive (rivers, glaciers or mountains). Lauerz has a population (as of ) of . , 6.7% of the population was made up of foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years the population has grown at a rate of 15.2%. Most of the population () speaks German (97.1%), with English being second most common ( 0.9%) and Albanian being third ( 0.8%). the gender distribution of the population was 51.5% male and 48.5% female. The age distribution, , in Lauerz is; 266 people or 30.4% of the population is between 0 and 19. 255 people or 29.2% are 20 to 39, and 261 people or 29.9% are 40 to 64. The senior population distribution is 60 people or 6.9% are 65 to 74. There are 20 people or 2.3% who are 70 to 79 and 12 people or 1.37% of the population who are over 80. there are 306 households, of which 70 households (or about 22.9%) contain only a single individual. 35 or about 11.4% are large households, with at least five members. In the 2007 election the most popular party was the SVP which received 52% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the CVP (22.7%), the FDP (13.5%) and the SPS (10.4%).