Herzog x 2: Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen (1970) & Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle (1974)

Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen was, in my opinion, a disappointing movie, even a bad and cynical one. Maybe some consider it subversive. I don't. This was such a crude way to hammer home a point about, I suppose, "stripping down civilization" and "nature's revenge is cruel, cruel, cruel". Early on, we see a chicken feeding on another chicken. Get it? If you want to watch a movie about the indifference of nature - watch Grizzly man instead.
Auch Zwerge... - dwarfs and all - was cluttered with metaphors and allegorical hints. And, so I don't forget to mention it: pointless scenes. The story starts with a prison-like institution in the middle of rebellion. The innates rebel against control, their oppressors and society. The rebellion quickly slides into destruction and brutality.
Actually, I doubt that Herzog himself knew what he was up to when directing this one.  Even the music (something "African") seemed to suggest quite repulsive ideas in combination with the images of "savage people" and "the brutality of nature".

Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle is also about civilization, but this time we are watching the trite construction of "civilized men". A young man, Kaspar Hauser, turns up at a village square. He cannot speak and he can barely walk. It is evident that he has grown up with very little contact with other human beings. "Civilization", in this film, means everything from cruel freak shows to a professor in logic who uses Hauser as a test to whether logic is something you can grasp without an education (and what logic!). In all these contexts, Hauser remains an outsider, "an artistic mind" that is necessarily out of touch with the expectations and norms of society.  
In some ways, this film is just as speculative as Auch Zwerge.., but it is far more focused, and even those parts that veer towards the ridiculous or the overstated contain enough ambiguity and humor to be interesting - the brainy ending is a case in point. It's a better film. The points made in this film about social morality and weird ideas about what it means to "grow" or to be "natural" (theology and all) are far better developed than the caricatures we are exposed to in Auch Zwerge...