Künstliche Diamanten (Synthetic Diamonds) depicts the process—from beginning to end—of synthetic diamonds being produced at the Vollstädt Diamant GmbH, a company set up by Heiner Vollstädt, a mineralogist, who began his research on synthetic diamonds 40 years ago at the GDR's Central Institute for Physics of the Earth. Since the late 1970s the production of synthetic diamonds had become a prestigious project for the GDR government which aimed at ending the country's dependency on diamond imports from the USSR or the West. After the reunification of Germany the institute was discontinued, and Vollstädt moved some of the machinery to a disused military camp outside Potsdam where he continues working on synthetic diamonds as a private enterprise.