The German-speaking population had "called the range Erzgebirge, which literally means "ore mountain range'. The word "dollar" dates from this region of the globe as the wealthy speculator and mine Baron Joachim pressed out the silver coins he called "talers" from his great exploitation of the Erzgebirge. Later, in the 19th century uranium, polonium, and radium were also found there. The Soviet Union exploited this find further and with even greater environmental destruction after WWII. That is why the mining company SDAG Wismut (later called Bismet), functioned in East Germany, and was allowed to continue to poison the earth for decades up through 1989 there in the Erzgebirge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDAG_Wismut
In short, in order to make nuclear weapons, the Soviets had continued the long tradition of poisoning the earth and exploiting the locals in the Erzgebirge--i.e. even after the Nazis had been run-out-of-Dodge. Likewise, some of the rich ore of the Erzgebirge was used to run deadly or life-threatening nuclear power plants elsewhere around Europe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEllLECo4OM
Within Niavis' own lifetime many Renaissance capitalists and investors would approach the natural resources of South America and western Africa in the same fashion, i.e. as first Portugal and Spain divided up the world--and then as the other Western Powers arrived to fight over the same New World and stake their own claims. In short, the "talers" of Germany would join the coins of other investors and joint-stock companies across Europe to change the history of the globe forever in a short decades, i.e. by allowing the West to finance the Great Imperial takeover and the subjugation of 4 other continents, while leaving the locals in the Erzgebirge and elsewhere in Europe backwards, neglected, often un-empowered, and totally exploited.
The book, the Conquest of New Spain, written a few decades after the Iudicium Iovis by Bernal Diaz de Castillo, was about the exploitation of the indigenous peoples of Mexico made-into-slaves by the Spanish conquistadors (and the later Europeans investors to the region). This book would turn the King of Spain against slavery. However, Niavis' description of the miners' plight in the Erzgebirge went mostly ignored by literary specialists outside the region where he lived and die. In short, Niavis work was seen as simply the first sign of an Erzgebirge Cultural Renaissance that would lead to stories of mountain elves, dwarfs, and Christmas traditions of the mountain folk becoming embedded eventually within the German national traditions and identities. It is quite possible that had Niavis' work been written in German or a local dialect, it might have become a classic, but Niavis was more interested in unifying and empowering peoples through a universal language and means of communication--but at the very stage in history that his beloved language of Latin was dying out. [Within a century or so French had replaced Latin as the European language of queens, kings, and statesmen.](Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
