DEUTSCHLAND	GERMANY
Bundesland: Freistaat Sachsen	Saxony
Landkreis: Erzgebirgskreis

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Bad Schlema is situated at an elevation of 257 m in the valley of the Schlema stream which here flows here into the Zwickauer Mulde. The municipality has a population of about 5,000 (2012) and consists of the former independent communities of Oberschlema, Niederschlema and Wildbach.

Both Oberschlema and Unterschlema were founded about 800 years ago and in the modern era became well-known for iron, copper, silver and uranium mining. After a means of manufacturing blue dye from cobalt was discovered (after 1534), there developed in Oberschlema the world's biggest cobalt-blue dyeworks, with 42 buildings. After rich radon springs were opened up in the Marx-Semler-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. From 1952 until 1958 Oberschlema and Niederschlema were part of the Stadtkreis (city district) Schneeberg. Upon the dissolution of the city district Schneeberg, the two communities were merged into the new municipality Schlema (Wildbach joined the municipality in 1994). 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. After mining came to an end, Schlema's revival as a spa town was organised, 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. In 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 2004.

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Schlema, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Schlema]