The geological setting of the Görlitz Slate Unit is interpreted as an accretion–melange complex. A thinned crust of a back-arc, or inter-arc basin in front of the Lausitz Block was subducted under an accretionary wedge whose own ablation debris was re-introduced into the sedimentation as it was piled up, terminating with the Variscan Wildflysch in the Late Visean Substage. Detached slices of basic vulcanites incorporated into the accretionary wedge are observed from the Lower Devonian onwards. Glaucophane found in them suggests subsidence metamorphosis and subduction. Shallow-sea deposits, especially quartzites, are seen as deposits in piggyback basins between the accretionary wedge stacks. The lithotypes and lithosequences recorded in the accretionary wedge are analogous to the Bavarian facies of the Saxothuringian Zone from the upper Ordovician to the lower Carboniferous and can be found, allochthonously, as debris flows and olistolithes in the Wildflysch unit. The Wildflysch overlies the Turbiditeflysch units in the lower Carboniferous, in the Middle to Upper Visean transition. The Kieselschiefer-Hornstein-Konglomerat (Lydite-Chert Conglomerate) was deposited in the remnant basin between the Lausitz Block and the accretionary wedge. It overlies graywacke turbidites above platform carbonates of the middle part of the Late Visean Substage. The Lydite-Chert Conglomerate can be distinguished from the conglomerates of debris flows in Wildflysch, which are characterized by a larger spectrum of pebbles with carbonates and quartzites. In the final stage of the Variscan collision of Gondwana and Laurussia including Avalonia, the autochthonous shelf deposits at the northern edge of the Lausitz Block are overthrust by Wildflysch. The “West Gondwanan Banian” shelf deposits in the lower Cambrian (Series 2, Stage 4), the Ordovician, and the turbiditic lower Carboniferous units are analog to the Thuringian Facies of the Saxothuringian Zone. Devonian cherts and the Lydite-Chert Conglomerate represent typical facial equivalents to units of the Bavarian Facies into the Saxothuringian Zone.