Experiments on plasma confinement in stellarators started at the Max-Planck-Institute of Physics and Astrophysics immediately after the 1958 Geneva Conference and were continued at IPP Garching. The first devices of the Wendelstein line were W I–A and W I–B, both racetrack-type stellarators. In the circular ℓ= 2 stellarator W II–A, steady-state barium plasmas were investigated and were found to be governed by collisional diffusion. In W II–B, mainly Ohmic heating was applied. The main stellarator experiment at IPP Garching is W VII–A; after a period of Ohmic heating, the first net-current-free plasma was achieved in 1980. Plasma parameters of up to Ti = 1 keV and n(0) = 1014 cm−3 could be reached by this method. A further heating method is ECRH, which yields maximum electron temperatures of Te ≥ 2 keV. The paper describes the major results of the devices mentioned and gives a short survey of further planning.