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The former railway wagon factory Wegmann & Co. was founded in 1882 in Kassel by businessmen Peter Wegmann and Richard Harkort as “Casseler Waggonfabriken von Wegmann, Harkort & Co”. In 1886 it was renamed Wegmann & Co. In 1912 the company was taken over by the engineer August Bode and the businessman Conrad Köhler. Towards the end of World War I, in 1917, the firm won a contract to build five of the first German tanks, the K-Wagen. Another five were to be built by Riebe-Kugellager in Berlin-Weissensee but none were completed by the end of the war. In the 1920s the focus of the company became railway wagons again, in particular coaches for the well-known Henschel-Wegmann train.
During the Second World War the company was heavily involved in tank production, particularly the manufacture of tank turrets. After the was it returned to manufacturing coaches and trams. From the early 1960s it became involved again in the manufacture of tanks, namely the Leopard 1 and later the Leopard 2.
In 1960s Engelhard and Fritz Bode took over the management of the company. Eight years later it split into two independent companies, Wegmann & Co. and Brothers Bode & Co. In 1999 Wegmann & Co. became Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW), with 51% of its shares owned by the Wegmann & Co. KG Holding Company in Kassel, which is controlled by the Bode family.
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