Bad Schlema

Bad Schlema
Coat of arms
Bad Schlema
Location of Bad Schlema within Erzgebirgskreis district
Coordinates: 50°37′N 12°40′E / 50.617°N 12.667°E / 50.617; 12.667Coordinates: 50°37′N 12°40′E / 50.617°N 12.667°E / 50.617; 12.667
Country	Germany
State	Saxony
District	Erzgebirgskreis
Government
• Mayor	Jens Müller (Ind.)
Area
• Total	15.53 km2 (6.00 sq mi)
Population (2015-12-31)
• Total	4,848
• Density	310/km2 (810/sq mi)
Time zone	CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Postal codes	08301
Dialling codes	03772
Vehicle registration	ERZ
Website	www.kurort-schlema.de

Bad Schlema is a community in the district of Erzgebirgskreis in the Free State of Saxony in Germany and belongs to the Silberberg Town League (Städtebund Silberberg). The Silver Road (Silberstraße) runs through the town. The community is developing its tourist industry, above all its spa facilities.

Bad Schlema’s constituent communities are Oberschlema, Niederschlema and Wildbach.

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, copper, silver and uranium mining. 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 was discovered by Christoph Schürer, there developed in Oberschlema the world’s biggest cobalt-blue dyeworks, with 42 buildings. After rich radon springs were opened up in the Marx-Semmler-Stolln (a hillside mine) in Oberschlema between 1908 and 1912, the world’s richest radium 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 occupational forces after 1946, the spa and the community of Oberschlema were utterly obliterated by 1952. By 1990, the Soviet-German Wismut Corporation (Sowjetisch-Deutsche Aktiengesellschaft Wismut, or SDAG Wismut) had mined more than 80 000 t of uranium from the Schlema Valley and the neighbouring Mulde Valley.