With three chemical plants and a petroleum refinery within its city limits, it has an important place in the international petrochemical industry.

In this year, the uprising of the Treidler (Rheinhalfen) spread to the Wesselinger Treidelstation, who saw their trade endangered by the upcoming steamship.

In 1880, Heinrich and Franz Zimmermann founded the 'Chemische Fabrik Wesseling' for the processing of gas cleaning mass as the origin of today's Evonik chemical works in the north of the city.

The forced laborers, most of whom were employed in the UK and Deutsche Norton, were in wooden barrack camps[4] accommodated.

Wesseling was conquered and occupied -similar to Cologne- early March 1945 as part of Operation Lumberjack by the First United States Army.