The increasing energy prices during the last decade boosted the lightweight design in automotive industry. One result of these developments is to use high strength steels e.g. USIBOR® 1500. Such steel sheets are formed in press hardening processes where especially an enhanced adhesive wear is present. In this thesis, hard coatings within the system Cr-Si-N are investigated with the focus to reduce the adhesive wear during press hardening processes. Therefore, Cr-Si-N coatings with Silicon contents up to 17.5 at% (on the metal sublattice) were deposited by physical vapour deposition using arc evaporation. Detailed investigations of the coatings prepared concentrate on structure, morphology, hardness, residual stress and thermal stability as a function of their Si content. The thermal stability tests include structure, mechanical properties and oxidation characterization after annealing in vacuum and ambient atmosphere at 400 °C and 800 °C. Furthermore the friction and wear behaviour was investigated by ball on disk tests at room temperature and 800 °C. Additional to these investigations special application near measurements on an OPTIMOL® SRV tester and Hardware tests were conducted.