In the late 15th century, farmers began gathering medicinal herbs from meadows and woods and to ply a trade with them.

Since that time, many in Bockau have been growing the herbs in their gardens and never tire of telling of the valuable angelica roots’ medicinal properties or of using them for their health.

From gravelly ores mined in the area, such as pyrite, which yield sulphur salts (vitriol) came, after weeks of heating and “cooking” in stone vats, concentrated sulphuric acid, also called vitriolic acid.

Important sidelines for the farmers were tree felling, charcoal making, resin harvesting (this was limited by decree to a patch of the woods known as the Harzweide, or “resin meadow”, to prevent widespread damage to the forest [1][2]) and log driving.

Erasmus Schindler secured approval in 1649 to build one of the five great dyeworks in the Ore Mountains.

The blue dye made from the ore was used for colouring both glass and enamel, for ceramic glazing and later for painting porcelain.

When King Albert of Saxony visited the community on 7 July 1880, the factory's reputation was enhanced.

He was a chronicler and a linguist as well as the founder of the Bockauer jährliche Nachrichten (Bockau Yearly News”).

The nineteenth century brought Bockau new kinds of livelihood, while the traditional herbal industry fell ever more by the wayside owing to modern medicine and pharmacy.

Glovemaking and the introduction of metalworking at the die and enamel works brought further employment and earnings.

In 1950 came the merger of three small liqueur distilleries into today's Erzgebirgische Destillerie und Liqueurmanufaktur GmbH Bockau.

Through the Bockau master joiner Werner Teubner's family ties with Werner Herzog, the mayor of Herrieden, a small town in Middle Franconia, then part of West Germany, the first contacts were established.

Nowadays, the clubs, with their events, participate fully in the community's varied, active life, whereby several activities have already become traditional, among them the yearly Buchberglauf (“Buchberg Walk”) in February, the Angelika-Cross-Lauf held yearly on 3 October, the yearly Wurzelfest (“Root Festival”) with its election of the Wurzelkönigin (“Root Queen”) on the third weekend in August and the Bockauer Kirmes on the first Sunday in November.

Over the last few years, great pains have been undertaken to offer industrial operations and crafts new locations for expansion, to maintain and improve the community's economic structure.

In connection with the European initiative for rural reform, it is the community's wish to have a commercial-industrial area built by attracting investment in the near future to develop the 8.5 ha site where once stood the old paper factory.

To avoid demand for meadowland, it is important to clean up old industrial sites so that they can be used by new operations and services.

On 13 April 1930, a university student from Leipzig named Elisabeth Charlotte Müller fell victim to a violent sexual crime in the woods next to the road between Bockau and Jägerhaus.