Kriegstetten

Kriegstetten is a municipality in the district of Wasseramt in the canton of Solothurn in Switzerland. Kriegstetten is first mentioned in 1256 as Krechsteiten and as Kriechsteiten. Kriegstetten has an area, , of . Of this area, or 43.9% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 8.8% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 46.5% is settled (buildings or roads). Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 26.3% and transportation infrastructure made up 14.9%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 2.6% of the area while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 1.8%. Out of the forested land, 7.0% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.8% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 34.2% is used for growing crops and 7.9% is pastures, while 1.8% is used for orchards or vine crops. The municipality is the capital of the Wasseramt district. It is located on the eastern edge of the Gerlafinger plain. The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Or three Linden Leaves slipped Vert. Kriegstetten has a population () of . , 7.6% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1999–2009 ) the population has changed at a rate of 10.8%. It has changed at a rate of 9% due to migration and at a rate of 1.4% due to births and deaths. Most of the population () speaks German (1,077 or 95.6%), with Italian being second most common (11 or 1.0%) and French being third (9 or 0.8%). the gender distribution of the population was 50.2% male and 49.8% female. The population was made up of 553 Swiss men (44.6% of the population) and 69 (5.6%) non-Swiss men. There were 571 Swiss women (46.0%) and 47 (3.8%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality 223 or about 19.8% were born in Kriegstetten and lived there in 2000. There were 444 or 39.4% who were born in the same canton, while 324 or 28.8% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 99 or 8.8% were born outside of Switzerland.