industry covered only the simplest needs of the city and its limited market area. The limited industry and area provided too little money to support the formation of trade-oriented guilds. Diessenhofen was never dominated by a single industry or a special craft. It never was involved in the international Lake Constance trade industry. The town's location on the Rhine favored the development of fisheries, and it benefited from the salt trade. Bridge and transit tariffs provided the majority of the town's income until the abolition of internal tariffs in 1848. Geography Diessenhofen has an area, , of . Of this area, or 41.9% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 36.3% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 16.0% is settled (buildings or roads), or 5.0% is either rivers or lakes. Of the built up area, industrial buildings made up 5.3% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 1.8% and transportation infrastructure made up 1.8%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 1.3% of the area while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 5.8%. Out of the forested land, 33.9% of the total land area is heavily forested and 2.4% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 40.9% is used for growing crops. All the water in the municipality is flowing water. The municipality borders on north with Germany and the canton of Schaffhausen. On the east is the district of Steckborn, on the west the municipality of Schlatt, and on the south the municipality of Basadingen-Schlattingen. Demographics Diessenhofen has a population () of . , 30.7% of the population are foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1997–2007) the population has changed at a rate of 1.5%. Most of the population () speaks German(81.8%), with Italian being second most common ( 5.2%) and Albanian being third ( 3.9%). , the gender distribution of the population was 50.7% male and 49.3% female. The population was made up of 1,088 Swiss men (33.4% of the population), and 564 (17.3%) non-Swiss men. There were 1,171 Swiss women (35.9%), and 437 (13.4%) non-Swiss women. In there were 23 live births to Swiss citizens and 14 births to non-Swiss citizens, and in same time span there were 17 deaths of Swiss citizens and 3 non-Swiss citizen deaths. Ignoring immigration and emigration, the population of Swiss