Werner Herzog - Personal Life

Personal Life

Herzog was born Werner Herzog Stipetić to a German father, Dietrich Herzog, and a Croatian mother, Elizabeth Stipetić, in Munich. His family moved to the remote Bavarian village of Sachrang (nestled in the Chiemgau Alps), after the house next to theirs was destroyed during a bombing raid at the close of World War II. When he was 12, he and his family moved back to Munich. His father had abandoned the family early in his youth. Werner would later adopt his father's surname Herzog (German for "duke"), which he thought sounded more impressive for a filmmaker.

The same year, Herzog was told to sing in front of his class at school and he adamantly refused. He was almost expelled for this and until the age of 18 listened to no music, sang no songs, and studied no instruments. He later said that he would easily give 10 years from his life to be able to play an instrument. At 14, Herzog was inspired by an encyclopedia entry about filmmaking which he says provided him with "everything I needed to get myself started" as a filmmaker—that, and the 35 mm camera he stole from the Munich Film School. In the commentary for Aguirre, the Wrath of God, he states, "I don't consider it theft—it was just a necessity—I had some sort of natural right for a camera, a tool to work with." He studied at the University of Munich despite earning a scholarship to Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. While in his teens he travelled to various exotic places.

In the early 1960s, Herzog worked nightshifts as a welder in a steel factory to help fund his first films. He has spoken of how, even before leaving school, he bought a house in the UK, in what was likely the Moss Side area of Manchester, relating how it was there that he learned to speak English. In 1966 he worked briefly in television under the auspices of NASA; in the same year he was briefly an acquaintance of Larry David, with whom he shared a common grief in the Aboriginal Tasmanian genocide.

Herzog has been married three times and has three children. In 1967, he married Martje Grohmann, with whom he had a son in 1973, Rudolph Amos Achmed, who is a film producer and director as well as the author of several non-fiction books.

In 1971 while he was location scouting for Aguirre, the Wrath of God in Peru he narrowly avoided taking LANSA Flight 508 which later disintegrated after being struck by lightning with one miraculous free-fall survivor. His reservation was canceled due to a last minute change in itinerary. This led to the making in 2000 of a documentary film Wings of Hope which explored the story of the sole survivor, Juliane Koepcke.

In 1980, his daughter, Hanna Mattes (now a photographer and an artist), was born to Eva Mattes. In 1987, Herzog was divorced from Grohmann; later the same year he married Christine Maria Ebenberger. Their son, Simon Herzog, who attends Columbia University, was born in 1989. Herzog and Ebenberger divorced in 1994. In 1995, Herzog moved to the United States, and in 1999 he married photographer Lena Pisetski, now Lena Herzog. They live in Los Angeles.

In January 2006, actor Joaquin Phoenix overturned his car on a road above Sunset Boulevard. Herzog, who lived nearby, helped him get out of the car. A few days later, while Herzog was giving an interview to Mark Kermode for the BBC, an unknown individual shot Herzog with an air rifle during filming. Herzog continued the interview and showed his wound on camera but acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, remarking, "It is not a significant bullet."