[1][2][3] Born in Warsaw in 1856 to an aristocratic Polish father of Baltic German descent (Baron Wladislaw Friedrich Johann Kasimir von Rosen, b.

(The last Polish-Lithuanian King, Augustus III of Poland, had died in 1763 and the resulting Commonwealth government had launched Europe's first secular school system a decade later, as the big-power partitions which led to the Polish state's dismemberment began).

Divorce not being recognized by the Catholic church, von Rosen lived for years with Ignacy Jan Paderewski, her future second husband and a widower since his first wife Antonina Korsak had died of complications following the birth of their severely disabled son Alfred (1880-1901).

Shortly after their marriage, Paderewski bought a villa, Riond-Bosson, near Morges, Switzerland, where he recovered from his worldwide concert tours, and they both experimented with new farming and husbandry techniques.

[11] Paderewski also owned a large estate in Galicia and a property near Nyon on the shores of Lake Geneva, and circa 1913 bought two ranches near Paso Robles, California, where they spent summers in a nearby hotel, as well as cultivated walnuts, almonds and plums (processed into prunes).

Among her projects was a club for Warsaw's newspaper boys, and a home for elderly female veterans (including of the failed January Uprising of 1863 against Russia and the Revolution in the Kingdom of Poland (1905-1907)).

Noting that Russia forbade erection of a statue to the national poet Adam Mickiewicz on the 100th anniversary of his birth, Paderewski refused invitations to perform in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

[15] As World War I's hostilities began in late July 1914, the Paderewskis were celebrating his name day and her birthday with their customary gathering of friends, musicians and politicians at their Swiss home.

In January 1915, Paderewski planned a three-month trip to Paris, London and the United States, initially thinking he and his wife could lobby for Polish relief, as well as continue his concert career.

For the next several years, she hauled trunks of dolls and sold them in conjunction with her husband's concerts to develop profits to buy milk for Polish babies and do other good works.

In April 1915, the Paderewskis boarded the transatlantic steamship Adriatic for the United States, but the sinking of the Lusitania the following month transformed their short trip into one of more than three years.

[18] During their three years of travels in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean, Helena Paderewska organized help for the war's victims in Poland, as well as for Polish soldiers, who first fought in France and later on the Eastern Front.

As transatlantic crossings again became safe, the couple steamed to London, where (after overcoming lodging problems) the British Foreign Office asked Paderewski go to Warsaw and help establish a stable government, necessary if Poland were to have representatives at the upcoming peace conference.

Moreover, Paderewski had caught a cold during the stormy sea voyage, so Paderewska took his place on the reviewing stand for the children's parade, only to learn that some Prussian soldiers were firing upon Poles elsewhere in the city.

Travel proved slow as Polish soldiers cleared the rail line to Warsaw, plus in every village en route people greeted them with flowers, bread and salt.

On January 5–6, a bloodless failed coup led the unpopular leftist Jędrzej Moraczewski government to resign, though Józef Piłsudski remained Poland's temporary chief of state.

Furthermore, personal threats against Paderewski by radical elements greatly worried Paderewska, though her husband responded "there is no place in politics for a man who is afraid of death."

[24] The following year (1920), Paderewski briefly represented Poland at the League of Nations in New York, while war continued with Russia and Ukraine, and the Red Army nearly captured Warsaw.

In 2014, the Hoover Institution announced that curator Maciej Siekierski had discovered two copies of an unpublished typescript by Paderewska which contained a political biography of her husband during the years 1910–1920.