Jünger, Ernst
Jünger, Ernst
(ĕrnst yüng`ər), 1895–1998, German writer. Jünger's early war novels were based on arduous army experience. Strongly influenced by NietzscheNietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844–1900, German philosopher, b. Röcken, Prussia. The son of a clergyman, Nietzsche studied Greek and Latin at Bonn and Leipzig and was appointed to the chair of classical philology at Basel in 1869.
..... Click the link for more information. , they glorified war and its sacrifice as the greatest physical and mental stimulants. Among these works are Storm of Steel (1920, tr. 1929), Feuer und Blut (1924), and Copse 125 (1925, tr. 1930). Later he opposed Hitler and rejected his own militarism in a mystical plea for peace, expressed in his diaries of the war years and in the futuristic novels On the Marble Cliffs (1939, tr. 1947), an allegorical attack on Nazism; Gärten und Strassen (1942); and Heliopolis (1949). His later works include The Glass Bees (1957, tr. 1961) and Aladdin's Problem (1983, tr. 1992).
Bibliography
See studies by J. P. Stern (1953), G. Loose (1974), and R. Woods (1982).
Jünger, Ernst
Born Mar. 29, 1895, in Heidelberg. German writer and thinker (Federal Republic of Germany).
An officer in World War I, Jünger became famous as the author of the diary Storms of Steel (1920). He depicted the horrors of war yet simultaneously presented war as an opportunity for “the most profound life experience.” In his pessimistic social utopia The Worker (1932), Jünger portrayed a society of “technological imperialism.” In his view the prototype of the man of the future was the worker-soldier who had renounced “bourgeois-romantic individuality” and achieved total self-mastery, including the ability to overcome pain and even to render himself completely insensible.
In 1933, Jünger refused to join the Prussian Academy of Arts, which had been reorganized by the Fascists. In the novel On the Marble Cliffs (1939) he criticized the Nazi dictatorship in a veiled allegory. After 1945, Jünger published his diaries of the war years, the Utopian novel Heliopolis, several collections of essays, and other works that criticized the modern society of “technological civilization” from an individualist standpoint.
WORKS
Werke, vols. 1–10. Stuttgart, 1960–65.Die Zwille. Stuttgart, 1973.
REFERENCES
Karel’skii, A. V. “Stantsii E. Iungera.” Inostrannaia literatura, 1964, no. 4.Paetel, K. O. E. Jünger in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten. Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1962. (Contains bibliography.)
Schwarz, H.-P. Der konservative Anarchist. Freiburg, 1962.
Baumer, F. E. Jünger. Berlin, 1967.
A. V. MIKHAILOV