This thesis was written as part of a project of the Research Studios Austria "Recycling von Sondermetallen". The focus of the scientific work is the processing of tungsten containing residues, especially hard metals soft scrap. Main parts are the development of a new indirect recycling process for the recovery of tungsten and the binder metals, in particular cobalt. The first part of this paper is a detailed survey of the tungsten material flows. Based on the primary deposits over the tungsten containing intermediate to the final products, the primary and secondary production and accordingly the consumption of tungsten were analyzed. In addition to this, the manufacturing processes of the raw materials and the finished product – the hard metals – were represented. Furthermore, established and new developed recovery technologies for the treatment of hard metal scraps were discussed, among themselves compared, examined according to their technical feasibility and characterized in terms of economic and procedural aspects. In the practical part of this doctor thesis, on the basis of the experiments and procedural optimization, the successively development of the new concept is described. The processing of experimental results were partially provided with the help of the statistical analysis program Modde 7®. An extensive description of the laboratory facilities and the presentation of the material flows in the process sequence complete the execution of the development process. The final discussion of the results and the overall presentation of the flow sheet as well as the differentiation to other technologies form the basis for the comprehensive characterization of this new recycling process.