"One does not want to become an industrial location, but rather remain a farming community." This is how the Rafz chronicler Salomon Hänseler described the mood in Rafz in 1917, expressing the population's discomfort with the rapid changes in a village that had been committed to agriculture for centuries. The developments of the 20th century are just as much a part of this history of Rafz as the events of the preceding centuries. From the first mention in a forged document from the year 870 and the emergence of an independent community in the Middle Ages, the local history spans a wide arc through the Reformation period and the upheaval of the Helvetic Revolution to the fundamental changes of the last two hundred years. The book addresses political, economic, and social developments and shows that Rafz has long been in a state of tension.