Edward Werner
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Dr. Edward Henryk Werner (1878 - 1945) was an economist, judge, industrialist, and politician. He was best known as Vice-Minister of Finance in Poland.
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[edit] Early years
He was born in Warsaw in 1878 to Bronisław-Fryderyk Werner and Maria-Paulina Strasburger, sister of the famous botanist Eduard Strasburger. He passed the examinations of the Lyceum in Poland and of the Academy of Commerce in Vienna, and studied Economics in London and Berlin.
[edit] Family
He married Zofia Helena Kalinowska (1889-1946), niece of the man who later became Saint Raphael Kalinowski. Edward and Zofia had three children:
- Zofia Helena (1910-1939), who married Hrabia (Count) Antoni Dunin and had three children, but was killed along with her husband during the German offensive of September 1939
- Karol Gabrel (1912-1978), a lieutenant who escaped Poland to England, and fought with the regrouped Polish 1st Armoured Division in the World War II battle of Falaise Gap and later married Louise Garbison-Lambert.
- Marie Gabriela (1916-1999), first married to Joseph Ciechomski of Warsaw, then arrested and sent to Auschwitz, but she survived and emigrated to the United States with her nephew and nieces, and later married Józef Nabel and had three children of her own
[edit] Career
As an economist, Dr. 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 Y.M.C.A.. 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. During World War II, Dr. 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.
He died of a heart attack in 1945, in New York.
[edit] Trivia
- His first cousin Henryk Leon Strasburger was Polish Finance Minister for the Polish government in exile in 1939.
- Werner's granddaughter Marie Nabel is married to Jared Diamond, Pulitzer-prize winner for his book Guns, Germs, and Steel
- Werner's grandson Stanley Dunin worked as an aerospace engineer on a NASA project, launching the world's first geosynchronous communications satellite in 1963.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Text of April 2, 1943 speech
- Family Tree maintained by great-granddaughter Elonka Dunin
- The New York Times, November 17, 1945, p. 17, "Edward Werner; Ex-Vice Minister of Finance of Poland had Lectured Here" (pdf)
