Every Man for Himself and God Against All: Filmmaker Werner Herzog on his new memoir

Legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog discusses his long-anticipated memoir, “Every Man for Himself and God Against All” with Here & Now co-host Robin Young. Born in Munich during the Second World War, he grew up impoverished and isolated in the Bavarian countryside. Entirely self-taught, he made his first film at the age of 19 and went on to make the art-house classics “Fitzcarraldo,” “Aguire, the Wrath of God,” and the existential documentaries “Grizzly Man” and “Cave of Forgotten Dreams.”

Copies of “Every Man for Himself and God Against All” will be available for purchase from our bookstore partner Brookline Booksmith. Herzog will sign copies following the conversation.

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About Every Man for Himself and God Against All

Werner Herzog was born in September 1942 in Munich, Germany, at a turning point in the Second World War. Soon Germany would be defeated and a new world would have to be made out of the rubble and horrors of the war. Fleeing the Allied bombing raids, Herzog’s mother took him and his older brother to a remote, rustic part of Bavaria where he would spend much of his childhood hungry, without running water, in deep poverty. It was there, as the new postwar order was emerging, that one of the most visionary filmmakers of the next seven decades was formed.

Until age 11, Herzog did not even know of the existence of cinema. His interest in films began at age 15, but since no one was willing to finance them, he worked the night shift as a welder in a steel factory. He started to travel on foot. He made his first phone call at age 17, and his first film in 1961 at age 19. The wildly productive working life that followed—spanning the seven continents and encompassing both documentary and fiction—was an adventure as grand and otherworldly as any depicted in his many classic films.

“Every Man for Himself and God Against All” is at once a personal record of one of the great and self-invented lives of our time, and a singular literary masterpiece that will enthrall fans old and new alike. In a hypnotic swirl of memory, Herzog untangles and relives his most important experiences and inspirations, telling his story for the first and only time.