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# Reading Werner Herzog's memoirs "Every Man for Himself and God Against All", I have reached the chapter "Wives, Children", already nearing the end of the book, after the chapters on his youth, childhood dreams, film shoots and how he solved a puzzle in a
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/chitaiu-memuary-vernera-khertsoga-kazhdyi-za-sebia-a-bog-protiv-vsekh-doshel-do-glavy-zhiony-deti-uzhe-blizhe-k-kontsu-knigi-posle-glav-o-iunosheskikh-godakh-mechtakh-detstva-semkakh-fi/
- Published: 2023-07-28T09:54:44.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:36:10.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Cinema, Books, Observations, Mores

I am reading Werner Herzog's [memoirs](https://clck.ru/34xNcC?ref=theparnassian.com), "Every Man for Himself and God Against All", and have reached the chapter "Wives, Children". We are already close to the end of the book, after the chapters on his youth, childhood dreams, film shoots and how he solved a puzzle in a scientific journal in a dentist's waiting room, and Werner moves on to his three marriages. Almost without emotion, yet with considerable warmth, he literally lists his wives and the children born of them, offering a succinct verdict: "That my children turned out so well they owe not to me but to their mothers." The longest account is reserved for the third, Russian wife, Lena Pisetskaya.

He met Lena at a dinner in the restaurant of his friends, the celebrated Californian Chez Panisse. She was a student and had little wish to attend a gathering with a crowd of strangers; he was reluctantly performing the comradely ritual of sitting down to a table of random people assembled in honour of his fame and his friendship with the proprietors. Herzog saw Lena the moment he entered the room and was instantly enchanted; they talked all evening, and soon he resolved to divorce, left all his property in Europe, the flat, his belongings, and flew to the States with a single toothbrush in his pocket.

Lena's own story is an interesting one. She was born in Sverdlovsk and studied in Leningrad, from where she was expelled for travelling to the USA at the invitation of friends. She stayed there and gained a foothold at Stanford University. The collapse of the USSR found her in America, holding a Soviet passport; she soon obtained American citizenship, and a week later, a husband in Werner Herzog. Lena became a photographer, has published several photo books, travels everywhere with Herzog and photographs a great deal. With each other they speak neither German nor Russian but English, to be on an equal footing, both working in a language that is not their own.