In 1948 the family moved to Thayngen (canton of Schaffhausen) where Werner finished school and passed the general qualification for university entrance in 1965.
From their perspectives Werner laconically describes everyday life, at turns astonished, with distress, and with humour.
The results are strictly calculated scenes and episodes in which the course of the world appears in too sharp and sometimes laughable details, situations that Werner's protagonists simply cannot deal with.
Seemingly harmless everyday perfidies break down Werner's characters: the deaf ears of their fellow men, their cold, headstrong souls.
His protagonists want the right to make mistakes and have deficiencies (“self-assuredness is the sign of the yokel”, in: Die kalte Schulter, a Chinese saying).