In 1911 there were Roman Catholic and two Protestant churches and a pilgrimage chapel dating from 1100, there was a ducal chateau built by a son of the elector John George around the end of the 16th century (now used as government offices), and there were classical, technical and commercial schools as well as a hospital.

On 26 May 2006, construction work started on the world's first CO2-free coal power plant in the Schwarze Pumpe industrial district.

It will then be forced 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) below the soil into porous rock where it is believed that it will remain for thousands of years without exacerbating global warming.

The project, which has cost some 70 million Euros, was funded entirely by the Swedish company Vattenfall AB and went into service on 9 September 2008.

[4] Vattenfall stopped carbon capture R&D at the plant in 2014 because they found that "its costs and the energy it requires make the technology unviable".