Ernst Jünger

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Ernst Jünger as a soldier in World War I

Ernst Jünger, (March 29, 1895 – February 17, 1998) was a German author of novels and accounts of his war experiences. Many regard him as one of Germany's greatest modern writers and a hero of the conservative revolutionary movement following World War I. Others dismiss him as a militarist and reactionary.

1 Life and work
2 Bibliography
- 2.1 Selected works
- 2.2 Books about Jünger
3 External links

[edit] Life and work

He was born in Heidelberg and grew up in Hanover as the son of a pharmacist. Jünger went to school between the years of 1901 and 1913 and was member of the "Wandervogel" movement. He ran away from home to join the French Foreign Legion where he served in North Africa. During World War I he served with distinction in the German Army on the Western Front. In September of 1918 he was awarded Germany's highest military decoration of that time, the Pour le Mérite (informally known as the "Blue Max"). Received as a Lieutenant at the age of 23, he was one of the youngest soldiers to ever be given this award. This time of war is described in The Storm of Steel (German title: In Stahlgewittern) which was published in 1920. An autobiographical account of his adventures, it has been seen as somewhat war-glorifying, especially in comparison to the other major German WWI work, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque. Jünger served as a lieutenant in the army of the Weimar Republic until his demobilisation in 1923. He studied marine biology, zoology, botany and philosophy and became a well-known entomologist. He married Gretha von Jeinsen (* 1906 - † 1960) in 1925; they had two children, Ernst (1926-1944) and Alexander (1934-1993).

In the 1920s Jünger published articles in several right-wing nationalist journals, and further novels. As in Storm of Steel, in the book Feuer und Blut (1925, "Fire and Blood") Jünger glorified war as an internal event. He criticized the democracy of the Weimar Republic, but he did not actively support the National Socialist movement around Hitler. Jünger refused the offer to head the Nazi Writer's Union. In 1927 he moved to Berlin. The Adventurous Heart (1929, German title: Das abenteuerliche Herz). In Über Nationalismus und Judenfrage (1930, "On Nationalism and the Jewish Question") Jünger describes the Jews as a threat for the Germans. In 1932 he published The Worker (German title: Der Arbeiter), which called for the creation of a totally mobilized society run by warrior-worker-scholars. Jünger left Berlin in 1933, his house was searched by the Gestapo secret police, and from 1938 he was banned from writing. On the Marble Cliffs (1939, German title: Auf den Marmorklippen) uses metaphor to describe Jünger's perceptions of the situation in Hitler's Germany. He served in World War II as an army captain. Assigned to an administrative position in Paris, he socialized with prominent artists of the day such as Picasso and Jean Cocteau. His early time in France is described in his diary Gärten und Straßen (1942, "Gardens and Roads").

Jünger appears on the fringes of the Stauffenberg bomb plot. He was clearly an inspiration to anti-Nazi conservatives in the German Army, and while in Paris he was close to the officers who carried out the assassination attempt against Hitler. He was not directly involved in the events however, and in the aftermath suffered only dismissal from the army (summer of 1944), rather than execution. His elder son Ernst jr., then a Kriegsmarine cadet, died later that year during internment in a Nazi German military penal camp in occupied Italy, where he had been sentenced to for engaging in "subversive discussions" in his Wilhelmshaven Naval Academy.

After the war, Jünger was initially under some suspicion for his nationalist past, and he was banned from publishing in Germany for several years by the British occupying forces. His work The Peace (German title: Der Friede), written in 1943 and published abroad in 1947, marked the end of his involvement in politics. Rehabilitated by the 1950s, he went on to be regarded as a towering figure of German literature. He remained highly controversial though in the eyes of the German Left, both for his past, and his ongoing role as conservative philosopher and icon.

His diaries from 1939 to 1949 were published under the title Strahlungen (1948, "Radiations"). In the 1950s and 1960s Jünger travelled extensively. His first wife, Gretha, died in 1960, and in 1962 he married Liselotte Lohrer. He continued writing prodigiously his entire life, publishing more than 50 books.

Jünger was among the forerunners of magical realism. His vision in The Glass Bees (1957, German title: Gläserne Bienen), of a future in which an overmechanized world threatens individualism, could be seen as science fiction. A sensitive poet with training in botany and zoology, as well as a soldier, his works in general are infused with tremendous details of the natural world. His critics claim there is an excess of emotional control and precision in his writing. In 1981 he was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca.

Throughout his whole life he had experimented with drugs such as ether, cocaine, and hashish; and later in life he used mescaline and LSD. These experiments were recorded comprehensively in Annäherungen (1970, "Approaches"). The novel Besuch auf Godenholm (1952, "Visit to Godenholm") is clearly influenced by his early experiments with mescaline and LSD. He met several times with LSD inventor Albert Hofmann and they took LSD together. Hofmann's memoir LSD, My Problem Child describes some of these meetings.

Jünger's 100th birthday on March 29, 1995, was met with praise from many quarters, including the socialist French president François Mitterrand.

Jünger was a friend of Martin Heidegger. Jünger was admired by Julius Evola who published a book called L'Operaio nel pensiero di Ernst Juenger (1960), in which he summarized The Worker.

On September 26th, 1996 Jünger, by then actively believing in Jesus Christ, converted to the Roman Catholic Church and began to receive the Sacraments.

Ernst Jünger died on February 17, 1998 in Riedlingen, Swabia, the last living bearer of the military version of the order of the Pour le Mérite.

His brother Friedrich Georg Jünger (1898-1977) was a poet and essayist. His younger son Alexander, a physician, committed suicide in 1993.

[edit] Bibliography

For an English listing, see:
- Jünger's works translated into English

A complete listing:
- Books in German, including those translated

[edit] Selected works

In Stahlgewittern, 1920 - The Storm of Steel (ISBN 0865273103)
Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis, 1922
Das Wäldchen 125 - Copse 125: A Chronicle from the Trench Warfare of 1918 (ISBN 0865273790)
Feuer und Blut, 1925
Das abenteuerliche Herz, 1929 - The Adventurous Heart
Die totale Mobilmachung, 1931
Der Arbeiter, Herrschaft und Gestalt, 1932 - The Worker: Dominion and Gestalt (ISBN 0791404099)
Geheimnisse der Sprache, 1934
Blätter und Steine, 1934
Afrikanische Spiele, 1936
Auf den Marmorklippen, 1939 - On the Marble Cliffs (ISBN 0140029850)
Gärten und Straßen - 1942
Myrdun. Briefe aus Norwegen, 1943
Der Friede, 1947 - The Peace
Atlantische Fahrt, 1947
Sprache und Körperbau, 1947
Ein Inselfrühling, 1948
Heliopolis, 1949
Strahlungen, 1949
Über die Linie, 1950
Der Waldgang, 1951
Besuch auf Godenholm, 1952
Der Gordische Knoten, 1953
Das Sanduhrbuch, 1954
Am Sarazenenturm, 1955
Rivarol, 1956
Serpentara, 1957
Gläserne Bienen, 1957 - The Glass Bees (ISBN 0374521735)
San Pietro, 1957
Jahre der Okkupation, 1958
An der Zeitmauer, 1959
Sgraffiti, 1960
Der Weltstaat, 1960
Ein Vormittag in Antibes, 1960
Das spanische Mondhorn, 1963
Sturm, 1963
Geheimnisse der Sprache, 1963
Typus, Name, Gestalt, 1963
Werke, 1961-1965 (10 vols.)
Grenzgänge, 1966
Subtile Jagden, 1967
Im Granit, 1967
Federbälle, 1969
Annäherungen: Drogen und Rausch, 1970
Ad hoc, 1970
Lettern und Ideogramme, 1970
Sinn und Bedeutung, 1971
Die Zwille, 1973
Zahlen und Götter; Philemon und Baukis, 1974
Eumeswil, 1977 - Eumeswil (ISBN 0941419975)
Sämtliche Werke, 1979 ff (18 vols.)
Paul Léautaud in Memoriam, 1980
Siebzig Verweht, 1980-81
Flugträume, 1983
Aladins Problem, 1983 - Aladdin's Problem (ISBN 070430208X)
Autor und Autorschaft, 1984
Eine gefährliche Begegnung, 1985 - A Dangerous Encounter (ISBN 0941419371)
Zwei Mal Halley, 1987
Die Schere, 1990

[edit] Books about Jünger

The Violent Eye: Ernst Jünger's Visions and Revisions on the European Right by Marcus P. Bullock (Wayne State University Press, 1992, ISBN 0814323340)
The Details of Time: Conversations With Ernst Jünger by Julien Hervier (Marsilio Pub, 1995, ISBN 0941419959)
Ernst Jünger and Germany: Into the Abyss, 1914-1945 by Thomas Nevin (Duke University Press, North Carolina, U.S.A., 1996, ISBN 0822318792)
A Dubious Past: Ernst Jünger and the Politics of Literature After Nazism by Elliot Y. Neaman. (University of California, Berkeley, 1999. ISBN 0520216288)
Ernst Jünger A Writer Of Our Time by J.P. Stern in the "Studies In Modern European Literature And Thought" Series (Bowes & Bowes, Cambridge, 1953)
Ernst Jünger and the Nature of Political Commitment by R. Woods (Stuttgart, 1982)
Ernst Jünger by Gerhard Loose. (ISBN 0805724796)