Background
Edward Werner was born in Warsaw in 1878 to Bronisław-Fryderyk Werner and Maria-Paulina (Strasburger), sister of the famous botanist Eduard Strasburger.
Edward Werner was born in Warsaw in 1878 to Bronisław-Fryderyk Werner and Maria-Paulina (Strasburger), sister of the famous botanist Eduard Strasburger.
He studied first at the Lyceum in Poland and then at the Academy of Commerce in Vienna. He later studied economics in London and in Berlin.
He was best known as Vice-Minister of Finance in the Second Polish Republic. Werner married Zofia Helena Kalinowska (1889-1946), niece of Raphael Kalinowski who later became Saint. As an economist, Werner was judge of the Court of Commerce, Instructor of Public Servants, and Lecturer in Taxation and Finance.
As a businessman, he engaged in trade in grain and fertilizers.
As an industrialist, his interests were in the manufacture of tobacco and the production of sugar, and he was opposed to the introduction of the state tobacco monopoly in Poland in 1924. He became a Councilman of Warsaw, and in 1934 he was vice-Minister of Finance, with all the State monopolies under his authority.
Werner was an active Lutheran and supported charities such as the Young Men's Christian Association During World War I he set up a private hospital for the wounded under the auspices of the Polish Red Cross and superintended the work in the hospital. At the beginning of World World War II, Doctor Werner witnessed the bombardment of Warsaw by the Germans.
In 1940 he traveled to the United States, where he applied for citizenship in 1941.
He lectured widely in the United States and Canada on religious matters and on Poland, as part of the Polish government-in-exile. He died of a heart attack in 1945, in New York, and is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.