Beware, though, not to confuse with the past tenses of zeyn/sein, to be, which go towards waren/weren, but never as far as woren. There are two different senses in the English, one from each root. "Were you there, Moise?" - yes, to be. "Were we to wish otherwise" - that's this passive sense coming in. You can loop that recursively adding in bits of "to be" in an attempt to elucidate the meaning, but all you're actually doing is polluting the case with a circular argument, the core of it is this use of werden in the passive. Even the Germans may never have been entirely clear about the demarcation, as it is most stramge not to use a form of "to be" or "to have", but there we are, they don't - it's rather that we shouldn't be too dogmatic about that meaning of "to become" or "to get", I think, we're talking about an analog parity rather that a digital eidentity.