Wesseler (Altenberge)
Logo of the Wesseler branch office in Saerbeck
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| Wesseler, Feldmeister, Vewema | |
| Industry | Agricultural |
| Founded | 1879 |
| Founder | Bernhard Wesseler |
| Defunct | February 4, 1988 |
| Headquarters | Altenberge, Westfalia |
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Area served
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Westfalia, Netherlands, Belgium |
| Products | Farm Machinery, Household Appliances |
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Number of employees
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120 (1960) |
Wesseler, (German pronunciation: [ˈvɛsl̩ɐ]) was a German company from Altenberge that manufactured, repaired and sold agricultural machines. It was founded in the 19th century as a smithy that specialised in agricultural products in the 1930s. During the agricultural industrialisation in Germany after the Second World War, the H. Wesseler oHG became a major tractor company in NRW. Between 1936 and 1966 Wesseler produced approximately 3600 tractors. In Germany, the brand name Wesseler was used, while Wesseler tractors sold in the Netherlands and Belgium were named Feldmeister and Vewema. In the second half of the 1960s, when the demand for tractors diminished, Wesseler, later known as the H. Wesseler KG, stopped the tractor production and specialised in selling and repairing Fiatagri tractors until they registered as insolvent in 1988.
In 1879, Bernhard Wesseler from Darup purchased a building with surrounding land in the heath of Kümper near Altenberge. He became a farmer and opened a smithy. It was expanded for the first time in 1909. Wesselers son Heinrich joined the company in 1911 or 1912 and started reparing and selling agricultural machines. Until 1936, the company Schmitz was the most important competitor. In the same year, Wesseler bought all the agricultural machine parts from Schmitz; Schmitz focused on manufacturing trailers since then. 12 employees worked for Wesseler in 1936, the first tractor prototype was built in the same year. It had a ladder frame and a hopper-cooled engine. This prototype was improved and Wesseler showed it to the public in 1938. Not more than 20 tractors of this type were produced until 1940. Today, no pre-war Wesseler tractors exist anymore. Before the Second World War, Wesseler was still a company specialised in smithy tasks rather than a tractor manufacturer, so that a new forge was built in 1939.
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