Ernst Jünger
Ernst Jünger (1895-1998) was a significant German writer and philosopher known for his complex relationship with war and society. Born in Heidelberg, he was the eldest of seven children and developed a passion for writing and entomology early in life. Jünger volunteered for World War I, serving as a storm-trooper officer and enduring multiple wounds, experiences that deeply influenced his literary work. His notable books, including "The Storm of Steel," reflect a glorification of war, which has drawn both admiration and criticism over the years.
Post-war, Jünger distanced himself from the Nazi Party, despite various invitations from its leaders, and expressed a controversial elitist view of the working class in his writings. He married twice and had two sons, one of whom died in combat during World War II. In later years, he became known for his philosophical reflections and converted to Roman Catholicism at the age of 101. Jünger’s expansive literary contributions, including diaries and travel writings, earned him numerous accolades throughout his life. He passed away at the age of 102, leaving behind a complex legacy that continues to spark discussion and analysis.
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Ernst Jünger
Writer
- Born: March 29, 1895
- Birthplace: Heidelberg, Germany
- Died: February 17, 1998
- Place of death: Wilflingen, Germany
Biography
Ernst Jünger was born in 1895 in Heidelberg, Germany, the oldest of seven children born to chemist Ernst Jünger and his wife Karoline Jünger, née Lampl. The young Jünger was closest to his brother, Friedrich Georg Jünger, who also became a writer. The family moved from Heidelberg to two other cities before finally settling in Rehburg in 1907. Jünger was criticized for being a dreamer in school, and he longed to go to Africa, the Dark Continent. To that end, he enlisted in the Foreign Legion in 1913 and got as far as Algiers before his father brought the underage soldier home to finish high school.
When World War I began in 1914, Jünger volunteered immediately, taking with him a small notebook for his diary. He was wounded on seven occasions and finished the war in an army hospital, shot through the lung. In 1918, he was awarded the Prussian Ordre pour le Mérite and the Iron Cross First Class. Between 1920 and 1925, he published five books glorifying war and violence, the most famous of which is In Stahlgewittern: Aus dem Tagebuch eines Strosstruppführers von Ernst Jünger (1920; The Storm of Steel: From the Diary of a German Storm-Trooper Officer, 1929).
Jünger left the army in 1923 and spent the next two years studying zoology and philosophy in Leipzig and Naples, Italy. Entomology remained a lifelong passion, with Jünger’s beetle collection containing more than forty thousand specimens. In Jünger’s book Der Arbeiter: Herrschaft und Gestalt (1932), he takes an elitist view of the working class, arguing that it is easier to control working-class people if they are kept uneducated. Such lack of humanity pervades Jünger’s work and gave rise to controversy when the City of Frankfurt awarded Jünger its Goethe Prize in 1982.
Jünger married Gretha von Jeinsen on August 3, 1925. Their older son, Ernst Johann Friedrich Oskar Jünger, was born in 1926 and died in combat during World War II. Their younger son, Alexander Joachim Jünger, became a physician in Berlin.
Despite numerous overtures from Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Jünger kept his distance from the Nazi Party and as a result was regarded with mistrust. After his Berlin residence was searched by the Gestapo in 1933, Jünger stayed away from the large cities. He moved his family to Goslar, then to Überlingen, and finally to Kirchhorst, near Hannover. During World War II, he was mobilized again but spent most of the war doing administrative work in France before being dishonorably discharged; Jünger was acquainted with some of those who plotted the July 20, 1944, attempt to assassinate Hitler. In 1945, Jünger published Der Friede: Ein Wort an die Jugend Europas und an die Jugend der Welt (1945; The Peace, 1948), an acknowledgment of Germany’s guilt and an appeal to the youth of the world for future peace.
After the war, Jünger moved to Ravensburg before settling in Wilflingen in the Black Forest in 1950. Following his wife’s death in 1960, Jünger married Lieselotte Lohrer, née Bäuerle, on March 3, 1962. Lohrer, a Germanist, had worked in the German Literary Archive in Marbach am Neckar, and in December, 1994, Jünger donated his expansive library to that archive. Jünger read the Bible intensively during World War II and converted to Roman Catholicism in 1996, when he was 101 years old. Between 1955 and 1993, he received twenty-five awards for literature from Germany and other European countries. Critics consider Jünger’s best work to be his diaries and the stylistically perfect 1,200 pages he wrote between 1965 and 1980 describing his world travels. He died in 1998 at the age of 102.