Ernst Jünger (German pronunciation:[ɛʁnstˈjʏŋɐ]; 29 March 1895 – 17 February 1998) was a German author, highly decorated soldier, philosopher, and entomologist who became publicly known for his World War I memoir Storm of Steel.
Ernst Jünger
(1895-03-29)29 March 1895 Heidelberg, Grand Duchy of Baden, German Empire
17 February 1998(1998-02-17) (aged 102) Riedlingen, Germany
The son of a successful businessman and chemist, Jünger rebelled against an affluent upbringing and sought adventure in the Wandervogel German youth movement, before running away to briefly serve in the French Foreign Legion, which was an illegal act in Germany. However, he escaped prosecution due to his father's efforts and was able to enlist in the German Army on the outbreak of World War I in 1914. During an ill-fated offensive in 1918 Jünger was badly wounded and was awarded the Pour le Mérite, a rare decoration for one of his rank. Since new awards of the military class ceased with the end of the Prussian monarchy in November 1918, Jünger, who died in 1998, was the last living recipient of the military class award. [1]
He wrote against liberal values, democracy, and the Weimar Republic, but rejected the advances of the Nazis who were rising to power. During World War II Jünger served as an army captain in occupied Paris, but by 1943 he had turned decisively against Nazi totalitarianism, a change manifested in his work "Der Friede" (The Peace). Jünger was dismissed from the army in 1944 after he was indirectly implicated with fellow officers who had plotted to kill Hitler. A few months later, his son died in combat in Italy after having been sentenced to a penal battalion for political reasons.[2]
After the war, Jünger was treated with some suspicion as a possible fellow traveller of the Nazis. By the later stages of the Cold War, his unorthodox writings about the impact of materialism in modern society were widely seen as conservative rather than radical nationalist, and his philosophical works came to be highly regarded in mainstream German circles. Jünger ended life as an honoured literary figure, although critics continued to charge him with the glorification of war as a transcendental experience in some of his early works. He was an ardent militarist and one of the most complex and contradictory figures in 20th-century German literature.[2]
Ernst Jünger was born in Heidelberg as the eldest of six children of the chemical engineer Ernst Georg Jünger (1868–1943) and of Karoline Lampl (1873–1950). Two of his siblings died as infants. His father acquired some wealth in potash mining. He went to school in Hannover from 1901 to 1905, and during 1905 to 1907 to boarding schools in Hanover and Brunswick. He rejoined his family in 1907, in Rehburg, and went to school in Wunstorf with his siblings from 1907 to 1912. During this time, he developed his passion for adventure novels and for entomology.
He spent some time as an exchange student in Buironfosse, Saint-Quentin, France, in September 1909.
With his younger brother Friedrich Georg Jünger (1898–1977) he joined the Wandervogel movement in 1911. His first poem was published with the Gaublatt für Hannoverland in November 1911.[3] By this time, Jünger had a reputation as a budding bohemian poet.[4]
In 1913, Jünger was a student at the Hamelin gymnasium. In November, he travelled to Verdun and enlisted in the French Foreign Legion for a five-year term, but with the intention of getting to North Africa. Stationed in a training camp at Sidi Bel Abbès, Algeria, he deserted and travelled to Morocco, but was captured and returned to camp. Six weeks later, he was dismissed from the Legion due to the intervention of the German Foreign Office, and escaped prosecution. On the return journey he was told by his father that the cost of representations to the authorities had amounted to a vast sum. Jünger was sent to a boarding school in Hanover, where fellow pupils included future communist leader Werner Scholem (1895–1940).[5]
Ernst Jünger's photobooks are visual accompaniments to his writings on technology and modernity. The seven books of photography Jünger published between 1928 and 1934 are representative of the most militaristic and radically right wing period in his writing. Jünger's first photobooks, Die Unvergessenen (The Unforgotten, 1929) and Der Kampf um das Reich (The Battle for the Reich, 1929) are collections of photographs of fallen World War I soldiers and the World War front, many that he took himself. He also contributed six essays on the relationship between war and photography in a photobook of war images called Das Antlitz des Weltkrieges: Fronterlebnisse deutscher Soldaten (The Face of the World War: Front Experiences of German Soldiers, 1930) and edited a volume of photographs dealing with the first world war, Hier spricht der Feind: Kriegserlebnisse unserer Gegner (The Voice of the Enemy: War Experiences of our Adversaries, 1931). Jünger also edited a collection of essays, Krieg und Krieger (War and Warriors, 1930, 1933) and wrote the foreword for a photo anthology of airplanes and flying called Luftfahrt ist Not! (Flying is imperative! [i.e., a necessity], 1928).[56]
1916 (1914) II. and I. Class
Iron Cross
1917 Prussian Knight's Cross with Swords
House Order of Hohenzollern
1918 (1918) in Gold
Wound Badge
1918 (military class)
Pour le Mérite
1934
The Honour Cross of the World War 1914/1918
1939 Clasp to the Iron Cross Second Class
1956 (for Am Sarazenentum); Culture Prize of the city of Goslar
Bremen Literature Prize
1959 Grand Merit Cross
1960 Honorary Citizen of the Municipality Wilflingen; honorary gift of the Cultural Committee of the Federation of German Industry
1965 Honorary Citizen of Rehburg; Immermann Prize of the city of Düsseldorf
1970 Freiherr- vom-Stein- Gold Medal of the Alfred Toepfer Foundation
1973 Literature Prize of the Academy Amriswil (Organizer: Dino Larese; Laudations: Alfred Andersch, François Bondy, Friedrich Georg Jünger)
1979 Médaille de la Paix (Peace Medal) of the city of Verdun
1980 Medal of Merit of the State of Baden-Württemberg
1981 Prix Europa Littérature the Fondation Internationale pour le Rayonnement des Arts et des Lettres; Prix Mondial Cino the Fondation Simone et del Duca (Paris), Gold Medal of the Humboldt Society
1982 of Frankfurt
Goethe Prize
1983 Honorary Citizen of the city of Montpellier; Premio Circeo the Associazione Italo – Germanica Amicizia (Association of Italian–German friendship)
1985 Grand Cross of the
Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
1986
Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art
1987 Premio di Tevere (awarded by Francesco Cossiga in Rome)
1989 honorary doctorate from the in Bilbao
University of the Basque Country
1990 Oberschwäbischer Art Prize
1993 Grand Prize of the Jury of the Venice Biennale
1993
Robert Schuman Prize, Alfred Toepfer Foundation
1995 honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Arts of the
Complutense University of Madrid
In 1985, to mark Jünger's 90th birthday, the German state of Baden-Württemberg established Ernst Jünger Prize in Entomology. It is given every three years for outstanding work in the field of entomology.
Ernst Jünger was the last living recipient of the military class 'Pour le Mérite'.
Jünger's works were edited in ten volumes in 1960–1965 by Ernst Klett Verlag, Stuttgart,[57] and again in 18 volumes by Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart in 1978–1983, with four supplement volumes added posthumously, 1999–2003.[58] The Sämtliche Werke edition is now partially out of print (out of print as of December 2015: vols. 6, 7, 10, 15–18), and was re-issued in 2015 in paperback (ISBN978-3-608-96105-8) and epub (ISBN epub: 978-3-608-10923-8) formats.
A selection from the full collected works in five volumes was published in 1995 (4th ed. 2012, ISBN978-3-608-93235-5).
The following is a list of Jünger's original publications in book form (not including journal articles or correspondence).
La Guerre d'un seul homme (One Man's War) (1981). Film directed by juxtaposing excerpts from Jünger's World War II diaries during his years in Paris with French propaganda films of the same period.
Edgardo Cozarinsky
(102 år i hjärtat av Europa) (1998), Swedish documentary film by Jesper Wachtmeister and Björn Cederberg[60]
102 Years in the Heart of Europe: A Portrait of Ernst Jünger
France (1913)
German Empire (1914–1918)
Weimar Republic (1918–1923)
Nazi Germany (1939–1944)
