Both these roughly 800-year-old communities in the Schlema Valley became well known through the centuries for iron, copper, silver and uranium mining.

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.

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.