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).