Ernest Junger Biography and List of Works

Prolific German novelist and essayist, whose militarism and anti-Semitism, in the 1920s and 1930s, was transformed in his allegory On the Marble Cliffs (1939) into a criticism of German National Socialism. Jünger served as an officer in the German Army in both world wars. His career as a writer spanned over 80 years and his decisions on the crucial moments of his public life showed exceptional independence.

"There are periods of decline when the pattern fades to which our inmost life must conform. When we enter upon them we sway and lose our balance. From hollow joy we sink to leaden sorrow, and past and future acquire a new charm from our sense of loss. So we wander aimlessly in the irretrievable past or in distant Utopias; but the fleeting moment we cannot grasp."
(from On the Marble Cliffs)

Jünger was born in Heidelberg, but he grew up in Hanover where he attended school between 1901 and 1913. Jünger then ran away from home to join the French Foreign Legion. He survived the harsh discipline and served in North Africa. In World War I he distinguished himself at the western front. Jünger was wounded several times and received the highest badge of honour. From 1919 to 1923 he served as an Officer in the army of the Weimar Republic. After studying biology in Leipzig and Naples, he eventually became a well-known entomologist and a number of insect species bear his name. In 1925 he married Gretha von Jeinsen; they had two children.

In the 1920 Jünger contributed to several right-wing journals, including Standarte, Arminus, Widerstandz, Die Commenden, and Der Wormarch. His first book, IN STAHLGEWITTERN, appeared in 1920. It argued that Germany's suffering in WW I was as a prelude to a greater victory and rebirth for the nation. The chaotic hell of the Somme and Langemarck seemed to the author to refer to certain truths and mysteries in man. While not glorifying the firestorms of the big guns and hand-to-hand fighting, Jünger believed that the war was the first encounter in a planetary conflict of ever-increasing violence. His other books mocked the democracy of the Weimar Republic, although on the other hand he rejected Adolf Hitler's offers of friendship in the 1920s. He also turned down the offer to head the Nazi Writer's Union in 1933.

In 1927 Jünger moved to Berlin, becoming a nationalist publicist and writer who welcomed the seizure of power by the Nazis. Jünger was convinced that humanism had lost its cohesive force and the ultimate struggle for power was imminent. A new type of man will emerge who is destined to reorganize the world. During this time he wrote two of his best works, The Adventurous Heart (1929) and The Workers (1932). However, Jünger opposed anti-Semitism and his former lover Else Lasker-Schüler was abused by the right-wing press when she won a literary award in 1932. She was beaten unconscious by Nazi thugs. Junker left Berlin in 1933 just as his ideological opponents were forced to flee, and later, from 1938, he was forbidden to write.

On the Marble Cliffs has been considered the only major act of inner sabotage carried out by German literature under Hitler. By the spring of 1940, some thirty-five thousand copies were in circulation, but after that the authorities stopped further printings. In the story the narrator and his brother Otto return home from a long war and settle in a hermitage carved into a spur of the marble cliffs. Below is the cultured land of Marina, with its vineyards, watchtowers dating from Roman times, and Merovingian castles. The brothers devote themselves to botany and contemplation. But this idyllic life is threatened by Mauretania, ruled by Head Ranger and his thugs and killers. The land of Marina is devastated in an apocalyptic battle, and the brothers escape to the mountain fastness of Alta Plana.

During the WW II Jünger served in the army as a Captain. He lived mostly in Paris associating among others with such artists as Pablo Picasso. He knew about the conspiracy against Hitler in 1944, but did not actively participate into it. However, Jünger was dishonourably discharged for anti-Nazi activities. Jünger's son died fighting in Italy and Junger had no doubt about the outcome of a war, which he regarded as a blind, brutal, force, sentiments he recorded in his diary. Already in 1943 he had noted in his diary: "When all buildings shall be destroyed, language will none the less persist. It will be a magic castle with towers and battlements, with primeval vaults and passageways which none will ever search out. There, in deep galleries, oubliettes and mineshafts it will be possible to find habitation and be lost to the world. Today that thought consoles me."

After the war Jünger's works were banned for a number of years He refused to to appear before a German 'de-Nazification' tribunal. His diaries from 1939 to 1948 were published in one volume under the title STRAHLUNGEN (1948). Jünger's pamphlet DER FRIEDE, written in 1943 and published in 1947, marked the end of his involvement in politics. He became a strong supporter of European unity and promoter of individual rights. During the 1950s and 1960s Jünger travelled extensively. His first wife Gretha von Jeinsein died in 1960 and Jünger married Liselotte Lohrewr in 1962. From 1959 to 1971 he was the co-editor the journal Antaios.

Jünger's later works include SIEBZIG VERWEHT (1980-81), ALADINS PROBLEM (1983) and EINE GEFÄHRLICHE BEGEGNUNG (1985). Jünger also published aphorisms and edited several books. His awards include the Immermann Prize (1964), Humboldt Society Gold Medal (1981), Goethe Prize (1982). He received an honorary degree from the University of Bilbao and in 1959 he received The Great Order of Merit from The Federal Republic of Germany.

As a novelist Jünger is considered among the forerunners of Magic Realism. Jünger painted cold visions of the future, where an over mechanized world threatens individualism, as in The Glass Bees (1957). In his essays Jünger observed, without compassion or outrage, historical and social development - in this he was accused of coldness and inhuman indifference. Jünger preferred the position of a dispassionate observer, preserving his autonomy of thought and his independence. He liked also to make himself the object of observations, during the war and during his experiments with drugs. During the early 1920s he used ether, cocaine and hashish; thirty years later he turned to mescaline, ololuqui, and LSD. His experiments were recorded comprehensively in ANNÄHERUNGEN (1970). Jünger was a close friend of Martin Heidegger, but the dialogue between Jünger and Heidegger was described by Pierre Bourdieu as political-metaphysical junk.

For further reading: The Details of Time by J. Hervier (1995); The violent Eye by Marcus Paul Bullock (1991), Der Mythos der Moderne by Peter Koslowski (1991); Ernst Jünger by Martin Meyer (1990); Ernst Jünger by Gerhard Loose (1974); Der konservative Anarchist by H.P. Schwarz (1962); Ernst Jünger: Gestalt und Werk by G. Loose (1957); Die Schleife by A. Mohler (1955); Ernst Jünger by J.P. Stern (1953); Der heroische Nihilismus und seine Überwindung by A. von Martin (1948); Das Weltbild Ernst Jüngers by E. Brock (1945) - Jünger Museum: Wilflingen, Schwaben (the author's home for 50 years)

IN STAHLGEWITTERN, (1920)
EINE GEFÄRLICHE BEGEGNUNG, (1985)
ZWEI MAL HALLEY, (1987)
DER SCHERE, (1990)