The Wismut companies (SAG, SDAG) mined uranium ore in Saxony and Thuringia after the Second World War and thus had a strong impact on an entire region. After more than 25 years of redevelopment, conversion and dismantling, the federal government, the states of Thuringia and Saxony and Wismut GmbH agreed in September 2017 in a joint declaration to "develop and implement a heritage concept appropriate to the history and significance of the Wismut company". The states of Saxony and Thuringia have jointly assigned the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig the task of exploring and developing multidisciplinary research into the Wismut heritage and documenting contemporary witnesses. This is being done in two sub-projects:

The Wismut-Heritage Pre-Project at the IfL develops concepts in terms of content and methodology and begins with the development of a digital research portal "Wismut-Heritage". The portal serves as a reliable knowledge base on research-relevant topics, on the type, scope and accessibility of materials and on the current state of research on the Wismut Heritage.

The Wismut Heritage Eyewitness Project aims to adequately record the reality of the lives of the people who worked for and lived in Wismut and make it publicly accessible. The contemporary witness project is carried out by the Saxon Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the Chair of Modern and Contemporary History at Humboldt University Berlin.