Bad Schlema is a community in the district of
Erzgebirgskreis
Erzgebirgskreis is a district ('' Kreis'') in the Free State of Saxony, Germany. It is named after the Erzgebirge ("Ore Mountains"), a mountain range in the southern part of the district which forms part of the Germany–Czech Republic border. I ...
in
Saxony
Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a landlocked state of ...
in
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
. It was merged into the new town
Aue-Bad Schlema
Aue-Bad Schlema is a town and a municipality in the Erzgebirgskreis, in Saxony, Germany. It was created with effect from 1 January 2019 by the merger of the former municipalities of Aue and Bad Schlema.
Twin towns – sister cities
Aue-Bad Schle ...
in January 2019. It belongs to the Silberberg Town League (''Städtebund Silberberg''). The
Silver Road
The 140-kilometre-long road, the Silver Road (german: Silberstraße) is the first and longest holiday route in the German Free State of Saxony. Against the background of the importance of mining in the history of Saxony, the road links those sigh ...
(''Silberstraße'') runs through the town. The community is developing its
tourist industry
Tourism is travel for pleasure or business; also the theory and practice of touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tours. The World Tourism Organization defines tourism mo ...
, above all its
spa
A spa is a location where mineral-rich spring water (and sometimes seawater) is used to give medicinal baths. Spa towns or spa resorts (including hot springs resorts) typically offer various health treatments, which are also known as balneoth ...
facilities.
Geography
Bad Schlema's constituent communities are Oberschlema, Niederschlema and Wildbach.
History
Today's community of Bad Schlema is an amalgamation of the two formerly separate communities of Niederschlema and Oberschlema, which took place in 1958. Since 1994, the community of Wildbach has also been united with this newer community.
Both these roughly 800-year-old communities in the Schlema Valley became well known through the centuries for
iron
Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in f ...
,
copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...
,
silver
Silver is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag (from the Latin ', derived from the Proto-Indo-European wikt:Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₂erǵ-, ''h₂erǵ'': "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, whi ...
and
uranium
Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...
mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...
. At the time of industrialization, the Toelle, Ehrler, Leonhardt, Rostosky and Philipp factories in Niederschlema and the Wilisch, Leonhardt, Kenzler and Müller companies in Oberschlema were household names throughout Germany. After a means of manufacturing blue
dye from
cobalt
Cobalt is a chemical element with the symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. The free element, pr ...
was discovered by
Christoph Schürer, there developed in Oberschlema the world's biggest
cobalt-blue dyeworks, with 42 buildings. After rich
radon
Radon is a chemical element with the symbol Rn and atomic number 86. It is a radioactive, colourless, odourless, tasteless noble gas. It occurs naturally in minute quantities as an intermediate step in the normal radioactive decay chains through ...
springs were opened up in the Marx-Semmler-Stolln (a hillside mine) in Oberschlema between 1908 and 1912, the world's richest
radium
Radium is a chemical element with the symbol Ra and atomic number 88. It is the sixth element in group 2 of the periodic table, also known as the alkaline earth metals. Pure radium is silvery-white, but it readily reacts with nitrogen (rathe ...
spa developed after 1918. Only 10 years later, it was counted among Germany's most important spas (in 1943, there were more than 17,000 spa visitors).
Once the uranium mining was taken over by the
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...
occupation forces, the spa, the Radiumbad Oberschlema Hotel, and the downtown of Oberschlema were utterly obliterated.
By 1990, the Soviet-German Wismut Corporation (''Sowjetisch-Deutsche Aktiengesellschaft Wismut'', or
SDAG Wismut
SAG/SDAG Wismut was a uranium mining company in East Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populo ...
) had mined more than 80 000 t of uranium from the Schlema Valley and the neighbouring Mulde Valley.
From 1952 until 1990, Schlema was part of the
Bezirk Karl-Marx-Stadt
The Bezirk Karl-Marx-Stadt, also known as Bezirk Chemnitz, was a district (''Bezirk'') of East Germany. The administrative seat and the main town was Karl-Marx-Stadt, renamed back to Chemnitz during the reunification of Germany.
History
The Chemni ...
of
East Germany
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...
.
After mining came to an end, the mayor, Konrad Barth, organized Schlema's revival as a spa town, which was realized in 1998 when the new ''Kurhaus'' (“spa house”) was opened. The newly opened radon springs afford ample bathing, now daily used by 1,200 guests at the "Actinon" bathhouse.
On 18 January 2005, Saxony's state government bestowed upon the community the official designation ''Bad'' (literally “Bath”), after it had already been recognized as a radon spa since 29 October 2004. Bad Schlema thus became the first community to receive the ''Bad'' designation since 1990.
In 2016, the Mayor of Bad Schlema advised the citizens to have their daughters "don’t walk in these areas," referring to streets where underage girls may be harassed in Bad Schlema by illegal migrants.
Population development
All following figures are for 31 December in the given year.
:
Source: ''Statistisches Landesamt des Freistaates Sachsen''
Politics
Municipal partnership
Bad Schlema maintains a partnership with
Rechberghausen
Rechberghausen is a town in the district of Göppingen in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany.
Geography Geographical location
The community lies in on the foothills of the central Swabian Jura and on the edge of the eastern Schurwald. The h ...
in
Baden-Württemberg
Baden-Württemberg (; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million inhabitants across a ...
.
Culture and sightseeing
Museums
* ''Traditionsstätte des Sächsisch-Thüringischen Uranerzbergbaus'' (Saxon-
Thuringian
Thuringian is an East Central German dialect group spoken in much of the modern German Free State of Thuringia north of the Rennsteig ridge, southwestern Saxony-Anhalt and adjacent territories of Hesse and Bavaria. It is close to Upper Saxon sp ...
Historic Site for Uranium Mining)
Music
*Silberbach-Chor (
choir
A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which ...
)
Notable local people
*
Kerstin Thieme
Kerstin Thieme (23 June 1909, as Karl Thieme – 26 November 2001) was a German composer, composition teacher, music educator and music writer.
Life and career
Thieme was born in Bad Schlema, Ore Mountains. After her Abitur at the in Aue, s ...
(1909–2001), composer
*
Ricco Groß
Ricco Groß (also spelled Gross, born 22 August 1970) is a former German biathlete whose exploits made him one of the most successful biathletes of all time at the Winter Olympics and the World Championships.
Career
He has been married to his w ...
(born 1970),
biathlete
The biathlon is a winter sport that combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting. It is treated as a race, with contestants skiing through a cross-country trail whose distance is divided into shooting rounds. The shooting rounds are not time ...
*
Michael Leutert
Michael Leutert (born 8 August 1974) is a senior United Nations official, German politician (Die Linke) and graduate sociologist. Since 2021, he has been Director of the German Representative Office of UNDP. He was a member of the German Bundest ...
(born 1974), politician (The Linke)
Further reading
* Oliver Titzmann: ''Uranbergbau contra Radiumbad'', Selbstverlag, 2002
* Oliver Titzmann: ''Radiumbad Oberschlema. Die Geschichte eines Kurortes'', Selbstverlag 1995
References
External links
*
*
*
{{Authority control
Erzgebirgskreis
Spa towns in Germany
Former municipalities in Saxony