Background
She was born in Batavia (present-day Jakarta) to a Dutch father, merchant and plantation owner, and a German mother.
She was born in Batavia (present-day Jakarta) to a Dutch father, merchant and plantation owner, and a German mother.
Arriving in Frankfurt, Germany at the age of 10, Werner"s family in 1934 moved to Vienna, where she attended the Max Reinhardt Seminar drama school and gave her debut at the Theater in der Josefstadt in 1937.
Werner was a Dutch citizen by birth. Although she had her greatest successes in Germany, mainly during the time of the Third Reich, she did not assume German citizenship until 1955. She later made her name at the legendary UFA Studios near Berlin.
She starred in the popular wartime films "Die schwedische Nachtigall" (The Swedish Nightingale) and "Wir machen Musik" (We"re Making Music).
She was the hostess of a popular television show of Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow since 1941, titled "Wir senden Frohsinn - Wir spenden Freude"
Having briefly been barred from performing by the Allies at the end of World World War II, due to her alleged role in Nazi propaganda, she returned to the big screen in the 1950s where she excelled in dramatic character roles. Werner had her last appearance on German television in 2000 before dying peacefully in her sleep on 7 August 2005 at a retirement home in Lübeck.
She had been suffering from pneumonia. Her last wish was to have her ashes scattered in Potsdam-Babelsberg.
After the war, she became an active voice dubber, dubbing foreign films in German.
1948 - Gene Tierney in Laura (1944)
1949 - Margaret Lindsay in The Spoilers (1942) - (Die Freibeuterin)
1949 - Gale Sondergaard in The Mark of Zorro (1940) - (Im Zeichen des Zorro)
1950 - Olivia de Havilland in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) - (Robin Hood, König der Vagabunden)
1950 - Maureen O"Hara in The Black Swan (1942) - (Der Seeräuber)
1950 - Paulette Goddard in Reap the Wild Wind (1942) - (Piraten im Karibischen Meer)
1950 - Rita Hayworth in My Gal Sal (1942) - (Die Königin vom Broadway)
1950 - Maureen O"Hara in Buffalo Bill (1944) - (Buffalo Bill, der weiße Indianer)
1950 - Linden Travers in Christopher Columbus (1949)
1952 - Gale Storm in The Texas Rangers (1951) - (Grenzpolizei in Texas).