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Ernst Jünger, Juenger or Junger in English, (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.
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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 in the German Army on the Western Front. This time of war is described in The Storm of Steel (German: In Stahlgewittern) which was published in 1920. The novel has been seen as somewhat war-glorifying, especially in comparison to the other major German WWI novel, All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues), by 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 in 1925; they had two children.
In the 1920s Jünger published articles in several right-wing nationalist journals. In Storm of Steel and Feuer und Blut (eng: 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. He was a soldier as well as a sensitive poet with extraordinary knowledge about plants, nature and insects. The Adventurous Heart (German: Das abenteuerliche Herz) (1929). In Über Nationalismus und Judenfrage (1930, eng: On Nationalism and the Jewish Question) Jünger describes "the Jews" as a threat for the Germans. In 1932 he published The Worker (German: 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 forbidden to write. On the Marble Cliffs (German: 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. His time in France is described in his diary Gärten und Straßen 1942. Jünger was involved in the fringes of the Stauffenberg bomb plot - not directly but as a figure of intellectual inspiration.
After the war his books were forbidden for a few years. Jünger's The Peace (German: Der Friede), written in 1943 and published in 1947, marked the end of his involvement in Politics. Jünger refused to appear at a "Denazification"-tribunal. His diaries from 1939 to 1949 were published under the title Strahlungen (1948). In the 1950s and 1960s Jünger travelled extensively. His first wife, Gretha, died in 1960, and in 1962 he married Liselotte Lohrer.
Ernst Jünger has been among the forerunners of "Magic Realism". Jünger's future-visions of an overmechanized world threatens individualism described in The Glass Bees (German: Gläserne Bienen) (1957) could be seen as "Science Fiction".
Throughout his whole life he had experimented with drugs as: ether, cocaine, and hashish; thirty years later he used mescaline and LSD. This experiments were recorded comprehensively in Annäherungen (1970). The novel Besuch auf Godenholm (1952) 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.
His 100th birthday on March 29, 1995, was met with praises from various individuals and fans, including François Mitterrand.
Jünger was a close friend of Martin Heidegger. Jünger was admired by Julius Evola who published a book called L'Operaio nel pensiero di Ernst Juenger (Rome, 1960), in which he summarized The Worker.
Ernst Jünger died on February 17, 1998 in Wilflingen, Swabia.
He was also the only German who received the military Pour le Mérite of the Kaiserreich and the civil version of the Federal Republic of Germany. With his death the last bearer of the military version died.
Ernst's brother Friedrich Georg Jünger (1898 - 1977) was a poet and essayist.
Bibliography
- For an English listing, see
- Jünger's works translated into English (http://www.juenger.org/bibliography_english.php)
- A complete listing:
- Books in German, including those translated (http://www.juenger.org/bibliography_books_german.php)
Selected works
- In Stahlgewittern, 1920 - The Storm of Steel (ISBN 0865273103)
- Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis, 1922
- Das Wäldchen 125 Basil Creighton - Copse 125: A Chronicle from the Trench Warfare of 1918 (ISBN 0865273790)
- Feuer und Blut, 1925
- Das abenteurliche Herz, 1929 - The Adventurous Heart
- Die totale Mobilmachung, 1931
- Der Arbeiter, Herrschaft und Gestalt, 1932 - Worker: Dominion and Gestalt (ISBN 0791404099)
- Geheimnisse der Sprache, 1934
- Blätter und Steine, 1934
- Afrikanische Spiele, 1936
- Auf den Marmorkippen, 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 Waldang, 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 Occupation, 1958
- An der Zeitmauer, 1959
- Sgraffiti, 1960
- Der Welstaat, 1960
- Ein Vormittag in Antibes, 1960
- Das spanische Mondhorn, 1963
- Sturm, 1963
- Geheimnisse der Sprache, 1963
- Typhus, 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
Books about Jünger
- The Violent Eye: Ernst Junger'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 Junger by Julien Hervier (Marsilio Pub, 1995, ISBN 0941419959)
- Ernst Junger 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 Junger and the Politics of Literature After Nazism by Elliot Y. Neaman. (University of California, Berkeley, 1999. ISBN 0520216288)
- Ernst Junger 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 Junger by Gerhard Loose. (ISBN 0805724796)
- Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890 edited by Philip Rees, (1991, ISBN 0130893013)
- The Appeal of Fascism: A Study of Intellectuals and Fascism 1919-1945 by Alastair Hamilton (London, 1971, ISBN 0218514263)
- Fascism (Oxford Readers) by Roger Griffin (Part II, A., ii. Non-Nazi German Fascisms), 1995, ISBN 0192892495
External links
- Ernst Jünger in Cyberspace IV (http://www.juenger.org)
- Essay on Jüngerian Individualism (http://www.fluxeuropa.com/juenger-anarch.htm)
- Biographical sketch, bibliography (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ejunger.htm)
- At 102 Ernst Jünger (http://www.meaus.com/Ernst%20Junger%20at%20102.html)
- Obituary for a Giant and Visionary: Ernst Jünger (http://www.germanembassy-india.org/news/98mar/gn20.htm)
- "Between the Gods and the Titans" (part I (http://thescorp.multics.org/15jueng.html) and part II (http://thescorp.multics.org/17jueng.html)), Alain de Benoist's review of the life and achievement of Ernst Juenger
- WWII biography of Jünger with photos (http://www.ila-chateau.com/raphael/junger.htm)
- FluxEuropa biography (http://www.fluxeuropa.com/ernstjuenger.htm)
- Ernst Jünger Commemorative Stamp (http://www.worldwar1.com/tgws/thismonthjuenger.htm)de:Ernst Jünger
eo:Ernst JÜNGER fr:Ernst Jünger ja:エルンスト・ユンガー pl:Ernst Jünger sv:Ernst Jünger