Once hailed by François Truffaut as “the most important film director alive,” Werner Herzog is a legend of New German Cinema. With a career spanning more than six decades, his visionary approach and expansive, idiosyncratic body of work have left an indelible mark on postwar European moviemaking.

Born in Nazi Germany in 1942, Herzog grew up in a remote Bavarian village in the Eastern Alps, only learning of cinema’s existence after a traveling projectionist came by his one-room schoolhouse. Self-taught, he made his first film at 19, and caught his international breakthrough with 1973’s Aguirre, The Wrath of God – a tale of crazed Conquistadores shot on a 35 mm camera he’d stolen from the Munich Film School.

Herzog has produced, written, and directed more than sixty feature films since, including Nosferatu the Vampyre, Fitzcarraldo, Encounters at the End of the World and Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Known for his audacious directorial style and unparalleled pursuit of authenticity, his oeuvre explores themes of obsession, ambition, and the primal conflict between man and nature.

Critical of the way film schools are conventionally run, Herzog founded his own Rogue Film School, a series of workshops organized in exotic locations from 2009-2016. Among his many conversations with Paul Cronin, he proffered his best advice for aspiring directors:

“I tell the Rogues to read, read, read, read, read. Those who read own the world; those who immerse themselves in the Internet or watch too much television lose it. If you don’t read, you will never be a filmmaker. Our civilization is suffering profound wounds because of the wholesale abandonment of reading by contemporary society.”

Emphasizing a breadth of knowledge, Herzog included Virgil’s Georgics, a Hemingway short story, and The Warren Commission Report on the Rogue Film School’s reading list. Explore his recommendations below, and for more insight into his creative process, check out his Masterclass on the art of moviemaking.

Werner Herzog’s Reading List


The Georgics by Virgil

“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomb” by Ernest Hemingway

The Peregrine by J.A. Baker

“It’s a book that everyone who makes films should read. The kind of immersion into your subject and the passion and the caliber of prose—I mean we haven’t seen anything like this since the short stories of Conrad.” –WH

The Warren Commission Report

“Just a wonderful piece of reading; the best crime story you can ever read and the phenomenal conclusiveness in its logic.” –WH

The Poetic Edda translated by Lee M. Hollander 

True History of the Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz del Castillo

(via Rogue Film School; photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto)


Support local, independent booksellers by shopping Werner Herzog’s reading list – and hundreds of other celebrity book recommendations – through Radical Reads’ Bookshop page.

Categories: Directors

Leave a comment