Wesseler () 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.
History
Beginning – Monetary reform
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 repairing 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 has been focussing 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. No 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.
During the Second World War, some Wesseler employees were conscripted, the tractor production was halted. Wesseler also used forced labour, two polish workers had to work in the plant. In the early war years, the company mainly repaired bicycles. Caused by the war, neither fuel nor production material was available, so that old military trucks and wood gas motors had to be used to produce new tractors in the first post war years. The regular tractor production using the frameless block construction method began after the monetary reform in West Germany in 1948. At this time, Wesseler had 10 employees.
Economical upswing during the tractor demand period
The economical upswing of Wesseler began with the monetary reform. Wesseler gained profit from the huge tractor demand in Germany in the 1950s. The sons of Heinrich Wesseler, Ludger and Paul already worked for the company back then. At first it was planned to turn Wesseler into a Fahr dealer, due to Fahr supply problems, Wesseler also sold tractors of other brands such as Normag and Schlüter. Wesseler also sold their own tractors. Later, Wesseler became an important Claas dealer and focused on producing their own tractors. In 1952, a tractor workshop was built, it was increased in size in 1959. However, Wesseler still manufactured other goods such as tableware. A BP petrol station was a part of the Wesseler plant.
An important occurrence was the DLG-show 1949 in Frankfurt, where the first MWM diesel engine was bought. Before the tractors were fitted with MWM engines, Wesseler used Deutz engines, which had a bad durability due to bad lubrication oil quality. MWM engines could also use the bad lubrication oil, they became the standard diesel engines of Wesseler tractors; starting in 1953, Wesseler offered every tractor type with a water-cooled and an air-cooled MWM engine of the same power output. Prometheus gearboxes were used first, later, Wesseler switched to ZF gearboxes. Those used to be progressive in the 1950s as well as the direct injection MWM diesel engines.
Soon, Wesseler became an exhibitor at several fairs in Germany. A Wesseler dealer network was established, the main distribution areas were the regions around Münster in Westfalen and Oldenburg, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. For the Dutch market, Wesseler tractors got an orange painting and the brand name Feldmeister. Primarily, 20 PS tractors were sold in the Netherlands. 800 Feldmeister were sold until 1967. The Belgian market demanded more powerful tractors. In the viniculture regions Eifel and Mosel some one-cylinder narrow gauge models with up to 15 PS were sold, some tractors even made it to Hesse and France.