The Soviet-German joint-stock company Wismut made the GDR one of the largest uranium producers of the Cold War by exploiting the deposits (among others) of the Erzgebirge. Although the company employed hundreds of thousands of people and left a clear mark - economically, in terms of the landscape, biographically and radioactively - it is hardly known today.

Based on methodological considerations by historian Gabrielle Hecht, this master's thesis (February 2024) outlines various ways of approaching the history of Wismut. In addition to discursive peculiarities of the company in the field of tension between propagandistic glorification and censorship, it also focuses on possible historical contextualizations and the category of nuclear work. The transfer of Hecht's research on uranium mining in Françafrique proved to be a very enriching perspective. It can, for example, provide explanations for the socio-cultural invisibility of uranium mining and contextualize the peculiarities of uranium mining in East Germany. Abstract - Link to download.