WERNER HERZOG Biography - Theater, Opera and Movie personalities

 
 

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WERNER HERZOG

Name: Werner Herzog.                                                                 
Birth name: Werner Stipetić                                                         
Born: 5 September 1942 Munich, Germany                                               
                                                                                     
Werner Herzog (born Werner Stipetić on September 5, 1942) is a German film         
director, screenwriter, actor, and opera director of Croatian descent.               
                                                                                     
He is often associated with the German New Wave movement (also called New German     
Cinema), along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker         
Schlöndorff, Wim Wenders and others. His films often feature heroes with           
impossible dreams or people with unique talents in obscure fields.                   
                                                                                     
Herzog was born Werner Stipetić in Munich. He adopted                               
his father's name Herzog, which means "duke" in German, when his father returned     
from a prisoner of war camp after World War II. His family moved to a               
remote village in Austria after the house next to theirs was destroyed during       
the bombing at the close of World War II. When he was 12, he and his family         
moved back to Munich and shared an apartment with Klaus Kinski in                   
Elisabethstraße in Munich-Schwabing. About this, Herzog recalled, "I knew at       
that moment that I would be a film director and that I would direct Kinski".         
                                                                                     
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 he was inspired by an encyclopedia entry about film-making         
which he says provided him with "everything I needed to get myself started" as a     
film-maker - that, and the 35 mm camera that the young Herzog stole from the         
Munich Film School. He studied at the University of Munich and despite               
earning a scholarship to Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania he         
supposedly dropped out in a matter of days and made his way to Mexico where he       
worked in a rodeo.                                                                   
                                                                                     
In the early 1960s Herzog worked night shifts as a welder in a steel factory to     
help fund his first films.