The Commons in a Glocal World

9From natural supply to financial yields

The common fields of the Bernese Civic Corporation since the seventeenth century¹

Martin Stuber and Sarah Baumgartner

Introduction

Today the Bernese Civic Corporation (Burgergemeinde) consists of about 18,000 burghers. The municipality (Einwohnergemeinde) of the city of Bern, on the other hand, has 140,000 inhabitants. If one considers the great share of burghers living outside the city boundaries, the actual share of the burghers must be estimated to be less than 5 per cent. Whereas, in terms of numbers of the Bernese Civic Corporation, the burghers’ share of the total population has continuously gone down since the early nineteenth century, their economic potential has grown massively. At the end ...