WERDEN  , a

town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, on the river Ruhr, 6 m. by rail S. of Essen . Pop . (1905) 11,029 . It has an interesting Roman Catholic church which belonged to the Benedictine abbey founded about 800 by St Ludger, whose stone coffin is preserved in the crypt . The abbey buildings are used as a prison . The manufacture of cloth, woollens, shoes and paper, dyeing, tanning, brewing and distilling are the principal industries . In the neighbourhood are stone quarries and coal mines . Werden grew up around the Benedictine abbey, which was dissolved in 1802 . The Codex Argenteus of Ulfilas, now in the university library at Upsala, was discovered here in the 16th century . See Flugge, Chronik der Stadt Werden (Dusseldorf, 1887); and Ffihrer durch Werden (Werden, 1887) .