Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog is a renowned German filmmaker, celebrated for his extensive and diverse body of work spanning feature films, documentaries, and television. Born on September 5, 1942, in Munich, Germany, Herzog grew up in a modest environment that lacked modern conveniences, shaping his unique perspective on storytelling. His cinematic journey began in the 1960s, marked by his first short film, *Herakles*, and later gaining recognition with films like *Signs of Life* and *Aguirre, the Wrath of God*. Herzog is particularly noted for his collaboration with actor Klaus Kinski, with whom he had a tumultuous relationship, contributing to some iconic films of the New German Cinema movement.
Over the decades, Herzog's work has included influential documentaries such as *Grizzly Man* and *Encounters at the End of the World*, showcasing his fascination with human endurance and the natural world. His artistic choices often evoke strong reactions, including his unconventional methods of directing and casting. Herzog's impact on cinema is profound, characterized by his exploration of challenging themes, exotic locales, and the human condition. He has also engaged in acting, appearing in various films and television series. Throughout his life, Herzog has experienced personal challenges, including multiple marriages and familial relationships, reflecting the complexities of his character both on and off the screen.
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Werner Herzog
Filmmaker, director, producer, screenwriter, actor
- Born: September 5, 1942
- Place of Birth: Place of birth: Munich, Germany
Significance: Werner Herzog is a German filmmaker. He is best known for his prolific directing career, although he also acted in several projects. Starting in the 1960s, Herzog worked on numerous feature films, documentaries, television series, operas, stage productions, and more.
Background
Werner Herzog Stipetic was born on September 5, 1942, in Munich, Germany, son of Dietrich Herzog and Elizabeth Stipetic. His parents divorced when he was a child, and his mother raised him and his brother. Although he was not close to his father, he later took his father’s last name of Herzog, which means "duke," because he thought it sounded more like a filmmaker’s name.
Herzog grew up in a remote area in the Bavarian village of Sachrang with little money and without the comforts of modern technology. He was not exposed to film until he was about eleven years old. The family eventually moved back to Germany, where they lived in a boarding house with several people, including German actor Klaus Kinski.
Around this time, Herzog became obsessed with cinema and decided that he wanted to be a director. He wrote his first film script when he was fifteen years old. In 1962, he made his first short film, Herakles. He attended film school in Munich and received a grant to attend Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but he lost funding and quit. Herzog also had his visa revoked and was in danger of being deported, so he fled to Mexico for a few years.
Life’s Work
Herzog returned to Germany in 1965 in possession of a camera that was rumored to be stolen from the film school in Munich. By the following year, he was finally able to raise enough capital to make a feature film. The result was Signs of Life (1968) about a wounded soldier stationed on the Greek island of Kos. The film garnered Herzog much attention and won the Silver Bear Award (Jury Grand Prix) at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1968.
Next came the strange drama Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) and the documentary Fata Morgana (1971). His 1972 film Aguirre, the Wrath of God starred fellow flatmate Kinski in a sixteenth-century adventure to find the mythical city of gold, El Dorado. Herzog later worked with Kinski on several more films, but their relationship was very tense.
Herzog's 1974 film The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser won a Grand Jury prize at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival and gained the director an American following. At the end of the century, Herzog again teamed with Kinski for the 1979 Nosferatu the Vampyre based on the classic Dracula. Kinski was the star of the director’s 1987 feature Cobra Verde about the life of a slave trader. It was Herzog’s last time working with Kinski, who died in 1991. Through the 1990s, Herzog concentrated mainly on documentaries, including Bells from the Deep (1993), about religion in Russia; Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997), about German American naval pilot Dieter Dengler’s experiences during the Vietnam War; and My Best Fiend (1999), about the strained relationship between Herzog and Kinski. He also had a few acting roles in works by other directors, including the films What Dreams May Come (1998) and Julien Donkey-Boy (1999).
Into the 2000s, Herzog continued to make both feature films and documentaries. Grizzly Man (2005) focused on the true story of American Timothy Treadwell, a man who spent his life studying grizzly bears in Alaska only to be killed by one of them. Rescue Dawn (2006) revisited the story of Dieter Dengler as a drama starring Christian Bale. Herzog next focused on Antarctica as the subject of the 2007 documentary Encounters at the End of the World. He then released two crime dramas in 2009: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, starring Nicolas Cage, and My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, based on real-life murderer Mark Yavorsky.
Herzog maintained his diverse mix of projects into the 2010s. He focused on the culture of the Siberian village of Bakhta in the 2010 documentary Happy People: A Year in the Taiga. His feature film Queen of the Desert (2015) was about explorer Gertrude Bell, who helped establish the modern state of Iraq in the early twentieth century. Herzog also worked on operas and stage productions and acted at various times in his career. He appeared in a wide variety of roles, such the films Mister Lonely (2007) and Jack Reacher (2012) and the television series Parks and Recreation (2015) and The Mandalorian (2019).
In 2016, Herzog released the documentary Into the Inferno, about the world’s active volcanoes and the people who study them. He then interviewed the former leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, for the documentary Meeting Gorbachev (2018). In 2020, Herzog examined the impact—literally and figuratively—that space objects such as meteors and comets have had upon Earth and its many cultures in Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds. He then returned to the subject of volcanoes in 2022 with the film The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft, about two volcanologists who died while studying an eruption in Japan in 1991.
Impact
Herzog is considered one of the most important figures of New German Cinema. He is especially known for films featuring subjects with seemingly impossible challenges, as well as exotic locations. Although highly respected as one of the most innovative filmmakers of his era, Herzog has also sometimes been criticized for his choices in actors, scripts, and odd requests. For example, for his film Heart of Glass (1976), he required all cast members to undergo hypnosis. This type of eccentricity led to strained relationships on more than one occasion.
Personal Life
Herzog was married for nearly twenty years to Martje Grohmann, with whom he had a son, Rudolph before they divorced in 1985. His second child, Hanna, was the result of an affair with actress Eva Mattes. Herzog married Christine Maria Ebenberger in 1987. They had a son, Simon, before divorcing. Herzog married Russian photographer Elena (Lena) Pisetski in 1999.
Bibliography
Heath, Chris. "Mad German Auteur, Now in 3-D!" GQ, 29 Apr. 2011, www.gq.com/story/werner-herzog. Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.
Laster, Paul. "Werner Herzog Comes Out of the Cave." Observer, 3 May 2011, observer.com/2011/05/werner-herzog-comes-out-of-the-cave/. Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.
O’Mahony, John. "The Enigma of Werner H." Guardian, 29 Mar. 2002, www.theguardian.com/film/2002/mar/30/books.guardianreview. Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.
Panzarino, Matthew. "Werner Herzog on His Documentary Lo and Behold, Cockroach Movies and Moving to Mars." TechCrunch, 22 Jan. 2016, techcrunch.com/2016/01/22/werner-herzog-on-his-documentary-lo-and-behold-cockroach-movies-and-moving-to-mars/. Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.
"Werner Herzog." IMDb, 2024, www.imdb.com/name/nm0001348/. Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.
"Werner Herzog." Werner Herzog Official Website, 2024, www.wernerherzog.com/long-biography.html Accessed 2 Oct. 2024.