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50 free Werner Herzog trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Werner Herzog is the filmmaker who walked from Munich to Paris to save a friend's life, hauled a 320-ton steamship over a hill without special effects, and calmly finished a BBC interview after being shot with an air rifle. This quiz covers the whole story: his childhood in a Bavarian village with no running water, the five volcanic collaborations with Klaus Kinski, the documentaries from Grizzly Man to Cave of Forgotten Dreams, and the late-career detour into voicing cartoon villains and playing The Client in The Mandalorian. It is written for film fans who have seen a few Herzog pictures and want to test how deep their knowledge really goes. Early questions are approachable (which actor starred in Aguirre?), while the later ones dig into festival prizes, the Minnesota Declaration and the strange details of his life on the road. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Herzog and his major films, and each question carries the sentence that supports it, so if a fact surprises you, you can see exactly where it comes from.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which German city was Werner Herzog born in 1942?
Munich
He was born Werner Stipetić; the family fled to a Bavarian mountain village two weeks later after an Allied bombing raid destroyed the house next door.
Q 02Which volatile actor starred in five Herzog films, beginning with Aguirre, the Wrath of God?
Klaus Kinski
Herzog first met him as a teenager, when the struggling actor lived in the same boarding house as Herzog's family.
Q 03What did Herzog famously cook and eat in public in 1978 after Errol Morris finished Gates of Heaven?
His shoe
He had promised to do it if Morris ever completed the pet-cemetery project; Les Blank turned the meal into a short documentary two years later.
Q 04In Fitzcarraldo, what does the title character try to haul over a hill in the Amazon?
A steamship
Herzog had his crew actually pull the 320-ton vessel up the slope with no special effects, causing three injuries.
Q 05Grizzly Man chronicles the life and death of which bear enthusiast?
Timothy Treadwell
He and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard were killed by a bear in Katmai National Park, Alaska, in October 2003.
Q 06Which Star Wars series featured Herzog as a mysterious character called The Client?
The Mandalorian
He took the role after admiring the screenplay, despite admitting he had never seen a single Star Wars film.
Q 07Herzog played the villain Zec Chelovek opposite Tom Cruise in which 2012 film?
Jack Reacher
It was a rare live-action acting role for the director, who more often appears as a fictionalised version of himself.
Q 08What is the legendary goal of the conquistadors in Aguirre, the Wrath of God?
The city of El Dorado
The film opens on Christmas Day 1560 with Gonzalo Pizarro's men marching down from the conquered Inca Empire into the rainforest.
Q 09Which classic vampire film did Herzog remake with Kinski in 1979?
Nosferatu
It earned a Golden Bear nomination that year, the same year Herzog and Kinski also made Woyzeck.
Q 10Which documentary about Kinski did Herzog release in 1999?
My Best Fiend
The film screened out of competition at Cannes and chronicles their tumultuous professional relationship.
Q 11Herzog's surname at birth was Stipetić. What does the adopted name Herzog mean in German?
Duke
It was his father's surname; he took it because he thought it sounded more impressive for a filmmaker.
Q 12How did Herzog acquire the 35 mm camera he used to start making films?
He stole it from the Munich Film School
He has said he does not consider it theft, describing it as a natural right to a tool to work with.
Q 13What night job did Herzog work during high school to fund his first featurettes?
Welder in a steel factory
Q 21Herzog's first feature, Signs of Life, won a Silver Bear at which festival?
Berlin
It was the Silver Bear Extraordinary Prize of the Jury, his first major award.
Q 22Which Herzog documentary about a pilot shot down over Laos earned him an Emmy nomination?
Little Dieter Needs to Fly
Herzog later retold Dieter Dengler's escape as the feature film Rescue Dawn.
Q 23Which actor was originally cast as Fitzcarraldo but had to leave the shoot with dysentery?
Jason Robards
He had completed forty percent of the film; his doctors then forbade him from returning to Peru.
No production company would take on his projects, so he paid for them himself.
Q 14To which city did Herzog walk in 1974, believing it would keep his mentor Lotte Eisner alive?
Paris
The three-week trek produced the diary Of Walking in Ice; Eisner survived another eight years.
Q 15While being interviewed by the BBC in 2006, Herzog was hit in the abdomen by what?
An air rifle pellet
He carried on the interview about Grizzly Man without seeking treatment, calling the wound "not significant".
Q 16Which Herzog documentary about Antarctica earned him his first Academy Award nomination?
Encounters at the End of the World
It also won Best Documentary at the 2008 Edinburgh International Film Festival.
Q 17Cave of Forgotten Dreams takes viewers inside which French cave?
Chauvet
Despite his general scepticism about 3D, Herzog shot and premiered the film in three dimensions in 2010.
Q 18Which country did Herzog head to after fleeing Pittsburgh for violating his student visa?
Mexico
There he briefly worked in charreada rodeo, injured himself, and turned to smuggling TVs and stereos across the border.
Q 19Which Pittsburgh institution did the 20-year-old Herzog move to the United States to study at?
Duquesne University
He was caught working for a producer at TV station WQED, breaking his visa terms.
Q 20What was the title of the first film Herzog began working on at 19?
Herakles
He made his first phone call only two years earlier, at 17.
Q 24Which rock star's Fitzcarraldo role was written out of the script when he left to go on tour?
Mick Jagger
He was to play Fitzcarraldo's assistant Wilbur before the Rolling Stones tour intervened.
Q 25Fitzcarraldo dreams of building what in the Peruvian city of Iquitos?
An opera house
He is a devotee of the tenor Enrico Caruso; the film ends with an opera company performing on the deck of his ship.
Q 26Which Les Blank documentary chronicles the troubled making of Fitzcarraldo?
Burden of Dreams
Herzog's own diaries from the shoot were later published as Conquest of the Useless.
Q 27How much did the vessel hauled uphill in Fitzcarraldo weigh?
320 tons
The real Carlos Fitzcarrald's boat weighed only about 30 tons and was carried over the isthmus in pieces.
Q 28Which tribe's chief offered to kill Kinski for Herzog near the end of the Fitzcarraldo shoot?
Machiguenga
Herzog declined the offer; the tribe's members had been used extensively as extras.
Q 29Which band composed the soundtrack for Aguirre, the Wrath of God?
Popol Vuh
The kosmische musik group's music became a signature element of Herzog's 1970s films.
Q 30In 1971 Herzog narrowly avoided boarding which doomed airliner while scouting Aguirre locations in Peru?
LANSA Flight 508
The plane was struck by lightning; sole survivor Juliane Koepcke became the subject of his 1998 documentary Wings of Hope.