Helmuth Werner was born in Garitz (now a suburb of Bad Kissingen) in December 1931 as the only child of the Garitz baker and innkeeper Edmund Werner and his Jewish wife Hedy, née Klau. His father and his uncle Kasper Diller – both of them weren’t Jews – ran two restaurants there at the beginning of the 1930s: His father was the landlord of “Gasthaus zur Erholung” and his uncle ran “Gasthaus zum Hirschen” (later Jahnstrasse).

Presumably in 1935, the family moved to Poppenlauer, the home village of Helmuth’s mother. In April 1937, the Werners already emigrated to the United States and lived in New York. Helmuth Werner’s further life is mostly unknown.

He seems to have been an enthusiastic soccer player who played for the ‘Brooklyn Tech’ sooccer team. A photo in the local newspaper ‘Brooklyn Eagle’ from December 1947 shows the then 16-year-old in his soccer dress. He was playing in a New York schools soccer team against a school team from Philadelphia.

In the 1950s, he served in the US Navy and participated in the Korean War. He was married. His wife Helen C. died in 1999; Helmuth Werner died in March 2016 at the age of 84.