page_title: Huttwil
section_title: After the war to modern times
hierarchical_section_title: Huttwil / History / After the war to modern times
caption_attribution_description: English: Protestant Church of Huttwil, canton of Bern, Switzerland Esperanto: Reformita preĝejo de Huttwil, Kantono Berno, Svislando Deutsch: Reformierte Kirche von Huttwil, Kanton Bern, Schweiz
context_page_description: Huttwil is a municipality in the Oberaargau administrative district in the Swiss canton of Bern.
context_section_description: While the Swiss peasant war was unsuccessful, it forced Bernese authorities to reform the tax structure and respect the rights of the peasants.  While Huttwil was the center of the revolt, it was not punished further by the authorities.  Huttwil's location on the Bern-Lucerne road allowed it to continue to grow.  While agriculture remained important, it became a regional market town and other industries began to develop.  During the ancien regime period tensions rose between the well-off town citizens who owned much of the farming land and the poor sharecropper Tauner who worked the land and had few rights.  Even the reforms of the 1798 French invasion and the Helvetic Republic failed to address the old power structure in the town.  Finally in 1828, the citizens lost their special rights and the commons were divided between the former Tauner.
  Throughout the 19th century a number of factories and small shops opened in the town, including canvas weaving, spinning wool, horsehair spinning, knitting mills, tanneries, sawmills and furniture manufacturing.  Today the manufacturing sector in Huttwil provides about one-third of all jobs in the municipality.
  On the night of 8/9 June 1834 much of the town was destroyed in a fire.  The entire town was rebuilt according to plans from Bern's city architect, Johann Daniel Osterrieth.  He planned a town center with three main roads around a central plaza with fountains.  The streets were lined with half-timbered Country-Biedermeier houses which reflected the growing prosperity of the town.  The village church was rebuilt on the old foundations, but with a higher tower and a new onion dome.
  An attempt to build a railway from Bern through Huttwil and the lower Emmental to Lucerne in 1871 failed.  It took almost two decades before Huttwil was eventually connected to a railway.  The Langenthal–Huttwil railway opened in 1889, followed by the Huttwil–Wolhusen railway in 1895, the Ramsei-Sumiswald line in 1908 and the Eriswil line in 1915.  The railway connected Huttwil to the rest of the country and allowed industry to grow in the town.  The first three railways eventually merged into the United Huttwil Railway (Vereinigten Huttwil-Bahnen) which in 1997 became the Regionalverkehr Mittelland AG.
  Due to Huttwil being a regional center a secondary school opened in the town in 1873.  A district hospital opened a few years later, in 1903.  The original hospital was replaced with a new building in 1929 and the old hospital became a retirement home.  In 1939 a Roman Catholic church was built in Huttwil for the Catholic residents of the village.  The Brother Klaus Church was rebuilt to its current appearance in 1983.
caption: Main street and Reformed church with its onion dome tower from 1834.
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