by Keith Preston
Perhaps the most interesting, poignant and, possibly,
threatening type of writer and thinker is the one who not only
defies conventional categorizations of thought but also offers a deeply
penetrating critique of those illusions many hold to be the most sacred. Ernst
Junger (1895-1998), who first came to literary prominence during Germany’s
Weimar era as a diarist of the experiences of a front line stormtrooper during
the Great War, is one such writer. Both the controversial nature of his writing
and its staying power are demonstrated by the fact that he remains one of the
most important yet widely disliked literary and cultural figures of twentieth
century Germany. As recently as 1993, when Junger would have been ninety-eight
years of age, he was the subject of an intensely hostile exchange in the “New
York Review of Books” between an admirer and a detractor of his work.(1) On the
occasion of his one hundreth birthday in 1995, Junger was the subject of a
scathing, derisive musical performed in East Berlin. Yet Junger was also the
recipient of Germany’s most prestigious literary awards, the Goethe Prize and
the Schiller Memorial Prize. Junger, who converted to Catholicism at the age of
101, received a commendation from Pope John Paul II and was an honored guest of
French President Francois Mitterand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl at the
Franco-German reconciliation ceremony at Verdun in 1984.
Though he was an
exceptional achiever during virtually every stage of his extraordinarily long
life, it was his work during the Weimar period that not only secured for a
Junger a presence in German cultural and political history, but also became the
standard by which much of his later work was evaluated and by which his
reputation was, and still is, debated. (2)
Ernst Junger was born on March 29, 1895 in Heidelberg, but
was raised in Hanover. His father, also named Ernst, was an academically
trained chemist who became wealthy as the owner of a pharmaceutical
manufacturing business, finding himself successful enough to essentially retire
while he was still in his forties. Though raised as an evangelical Protestant,
Junger’s father did not believe in any formal religion, nor did his mother,
Karoline, an educated middle class German woman whose interests included
Germany’s rich literary tradition and the cause of women’s emancipation. His
parents’ politics seem to have been liberal, though not radical, in the manner
not uncommon to the rising bourgeoise of Germany’s upper middle class during
the pre-war period. It was in this affluent, secure bourgeoise environment that
Ernst Junger grew up. Indeed, many of Junger’s later activities and professed
beliefs are easily understood as a revolt against the comfort and safety of his
upbringing. As a child, he was an avid reader of the tales of adventurers and
soldiers, but a poor academic student who did not adjust well to the regimented
Prussian educational system. Junger’s instructors consistently complained of
his inattentiveness. As an adolescent, he became involved with the Wandervogel,
roughly the German equivalent of the Boy Scouts.(3)
It
was while attending a boarding school near his parents’ home in 1913, at the
age of seventeen, that Junger first demonstrated his first propensity for what
might be called an “adventurist” way of life. With only six months left before
graduation, Junger left school, leaving no word to his family as to his
destination. Using money given to him for school-related fees and expenses to
buy a firearm and a railroad ticket to Verdun, Junger subsequently
enlisted in the French Foreign Legion, an elite military unit of the French
armed forces that accepted enlistees of any nationality and had a reputation
for attracting fugitives, criminals and career mercenaries. Junger had no
intention of staying with the Legion. He only wanted to be posted to Africa, as
he eventually was. Junger then deserted, only to be captured and sentenced to
jail. Eventually his father found a capable lawyer for his wayward son and
secured his release. Junger then returned to his studies and underwent a
belated high school graduation. However, it was only a very short time later
that Junger was back in uniform. (4)
Warrior and War Diarist
Ernst Junger immediately volunteered for military service
when he heard the news that Germany was at war in the summer of 1914. After two
months of training, Junger was assigned to a reserve unit stationed at
Champagne. He was afraid the war would end before he had the opportunity to see
any action. This attitude was not uncommon among many recruits or conscripts
who fought in the war for their respective states. The question immediately
arises at to why so many young people would wish to look into the face of death
with such enthusiasm. Perhaps they really did not understand the horrors that
awaited them. In Junger’s case, his rebellion against the security and luxury
of his bourgeoise upbringing had already been ably demonstrated by his
excursion with the French Foreign Legion. Because of his high school education,
something that soldiers of more proletarian origins lacked, Junger was selected
to train to become an officer. Shortly before beginning his officer’s training,
Junger was exposed to combat for the first time. From the start, he carried
pocket-sized notebooks with him and recorded his observations on the front
lines. His writings while at the front exhibit a distinctive tone of
detachment, as though he is simply an observer watching while the enemy fires
at others. In the middle part of 1915, Junger suffered his first war wound, a
bullet graze to the thigh that required only two weeks of recovery time.
Afterwards, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant.(5)
At age twenty-one, Junger was the leader of a reconnaissance
team at the Somme whose purpose was to go out at night and search for British
landmines. Early on, he acquired the reputation of a brave soldier who lacked
the preoccupation with his own safety common to most of the fighting men. The
introduction of steel artifacts into the war, tanks for the British side and
steel helmets for the Germans, made a deep impression on Junger. Wounded three
times at the Somme, Junger was awarded the Iron Medal First Class. Upon
recovery, he returned to the front lines. A combat daredevil, he once held out
against a much larger British force with only twenty men. After being
transferred to fight the French at Flanders, he lost ten of his fourteen men
and was wounded in the left hand by a blast from French shelling. After being
harshly criticized by a superior officer for the number of men lost on that
particular mission, Junger began to develop a contempt for the military
hierarchy whom he regarded as having achieved their status as a result of their
class position, frequently lacking combat experience of their own. In late
1917, having already experienced nearly three full years of combat, Junger was
wounded for the fifth time during a surprise assault by the British. He was
grazed in the head by a bullet, acquiring two holes in his helmet in the
process. His performance in this battle won him the Knights Cross of the
Hohenzollerns. In March 1918, Junger participated in another fierce battle with
the British, losing 87 of his 150 men. (6)
Nothing
impressed Junger more than personal bravery and endurance on the part of
soldiers. He once “fell to the ground in tears” at the sight of a young recruit
who had only days earlier been unable to carry an ammunition case by himself
suddenly being able to carry two cases of missles after surviving an attack of
British shells. A recurring theme in Junger’s writings on his war experiences
is the way in which war brings out the most savage human impulses. Essentially,
human beings are given full license to engage in behavior that would be
considered criminal during peacetime. He wrote casually about burning occupied
towns during the course of retreat or a shift of position. However, Junger also
demonstrated a capacity for merciful behavior during his combat efforts. He
refrained from shooting a cornered British soldier after the foe displayed a
portrait of his family to Junger. He was wounded yet again in August of 1918.
Having been shot in the chest and directly through a lung, this was his most
serious wound yet. After being hit, he still managed to shoot dead yet another
British officer. As Junger was being carried off the battlefield on a
stretcher, one of the stretcher carriers was killed by a British bullet.
Another German soldier attempted to carry Junger on his back, but the soldier
was shot dead himself and Junger fell to the ground. Finally, a medic recovered
him and pulled him out of harm’s way. This episode would be the end of his
battle experiences during the Great War.(7)
In Storms of Steel
Junger’s keeping of his wartime diaries paid off quite well
in the long run. They were to become the basis of his first and most famous
book, In Storms of Steel, published in 1920. The title was given to the
book by Junger himself, having found the phrase in an old Icelandic saga. It
was at the suggestion of his father that Junger first sought to have his
wartime memoirs published. Initially, he found no takers, antiwar sentiment
being extremely high in Germany at the time, until his father at last arranged
to have the work published privately. In Storms of Steel differs
considerably from similar works published by war veterans during the same era,
such as Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and
John Dos Passos’ Three Soldiers. Junger’s book reflects none of the
disillusionment with war by those experienced in its horrors of the kind found
in these other works. Instead, Junger depicted warfare as an adventure in which
the soldier faced the highest possible challenge, a battle to the death with a
mortal enemy. Though Junger certainly considered himself to be a patriot and,
under the influence of Maurice Barres (8), eventually became a strident German
nationalist, his depiction of military combat as an idyllic setting where human
wills face the supreme test rose far above ordinary nationalist sentiments.
Junger’s warrior ideal was not merely the patriot fighting out of a profound
sense of loyalty to his country nor the stereotype of the dutiful
soldier whose sense of honor and obedience compels him to follow the orders of
his superiors in a headlong march towards death. Nor was the warrior prototype
exalted by Junger necessarily an idealist fighting for some alleged greater
good such as a political ideal or religious devotion. Instead, war itself is the
ideal for Junger. On this question, he was profoundly influenced by Nietzsche,
whose dictum “a good war justifies any cause”, provides an apt characterization
of Junger’s depiction of the life (and death) of the combat soldier. (9)
This aspect of Junger’s outlook is illustrated quite well by
the ending he chose to give to the first edition of In Storms of Steel.
Although the second edition (published in 1926) ends with the nationalist
rallying cry, “Germany lives and shall never go under!”, a sentiment that was
deleted for the third edition published in 1934 at the onset of the Nazi era,
the original edition ends simply with Junger in the hospital after being
wounded for the final time and receiving word that he has received yet another
commendation for his valor as a combat soldier. There is no mention of
Germany’s defeat a few months later. Nationalism aside, the book is clearly
about Junger, not about Germany, and Junger’s depiction of the war
simultaneously displays an extraordinary level detachment for someone who lived
in the face of death for four years and a highly personalized account of the
war where battle is first and foremost about the assertion of one’s own “will
to power” with cliched patriotic pieties being of secondary concern.
Indeed, Junger goes so far as to say there were winners and
losers on both sides of the war. The true winners were not those who fought in
a particular army or for a particular country, but who rose to the challenge
placed before them and essentially achieved what Junger regarded as a higher
state of enlightenment. He believed the war had revealed certain fundamental
truths about the human condition. First, the illusions of the old bourgeoise
order concerning peace, progress and prosperity had been inalterably shattered.
This was not an uncommon sentiment during that time, but it is a revelation
that Junger seems to revel in while others found it to be overwhelmingly
devastating. Indeed, the lifelong champion of Enlightenment liberalism,
Bertrand Russell, whose life was almost as long as Junger’s and who observed
many of the same events from a much different philosophical perspective, once
remarked that no one who had been born before 1914 knew what it was like to be
truly happy.(10) A second observation advanced by Junger had to do with the
role of technology in transforming the nature of war, not only in a purely
mechanical sense, but on a much greater existential level. Before, man had
commanded weaponry in the course of combat. Now weaponry of the kind made
possible by modern technology and industrial civilization essentially commanded
man. The machines did the fighting. Man simply resisted this external
domination.
Lastly, the supremacy of might and the ruthless nature of human
existence had been demonstrated. Nietzsche was right. The tragic, Darwinian
nature of the human condition had been revealed as an irrevocable law.
In Storms of Steel was only the first of several works
based on his experiences as a combat officer that were produced by Junger
during the 1920s. Copse 125 described a battle between two small
groups of combatants. In this work, Junger continued to explore the
philosophical themes present in his first work. The type of technologically
driven warfare that emerged during the Great War is characterized as reducing
men to automatons driven by airplanes, tanks and machine guns. Once again,
jingoistic nationalism is downplayed as a contributing factor to the essence of
combat soldier’s spirit. Another work of Junger’s from the early 1920s, Battle
as Inner Experience, explored the psychology of war. Junger suggested that
civilization itself was but a mere mask for the “primordial” nature of humanity
that once again reveals itself during war. Indeed, war had the effect of
elevating humanity to a higher level. The warrior becomes a kind of god-like
animal, divine in his superhuman qualities, but animalistic in his bloodlust.
The perpetual threat of imminent death is a kind of intoxicant. Life is at its
finest when death is closest. Junger described war as a struggle for a cause
that overshadows the respective political or cultural ideals of the combatants.
This overarching cause is courage. The fighter is honor bound to respect the
courage of his mortal enemy. Drawing on the philosophy of Nietzsche, Junger
argued that the war had produced a “new race” that had replaced the old
pieties, such as those drawn from religion, with a new recognition of the
primacy of the “will to power”.(11)
Conservative Revolutionary
Junger’s writings about the war quickly earned him the
status of a celebrity during the Weimar period. Battle as Inner Experience contained
the prescient suggestion that the young men who had experienced the greatest
war the world had yet to see at that point could never be successfully re-integrated
into the old bougeoise order from which they came. For these fighters, the war
had been a spiritual experience. Having endured so much only to see their side
lose on such seemingly humiliating terms, the veterans of the war were aliens
to the rationalistic, anti-militarist, liberal republic that emerged in 1918 at
the close of the war. Junger was at his parents’ home recovering from war
wounds during the time of the attempted coup by the leftist workers’ and
soldiers’ councils and subsequent suppression of these by the Freikorps. He
experimented with psychoactive drugs such as cocaine and opium during this
time, something that he would continue to do much later in life.
Upon recovery,
he went back into active duty in the much diminished Germany army. Junger’s
earliest works, such as In Storms of Steel, were published during this
time and he also wrote for military journals on the more technical and
specialized aspects of combat and military technology. Interestingly, Junger
attributed Germany’s defeat in the war simply to poor leadership, both military
and civilian, and rejected the “stab in the back” legend that consoled less
keen veterans.
After leaving the army in 1923, Junger continued to write,
producing a novella about a soldier during the war titled Sturm, and also
began to study the philosophy of Oswald Spengler. His first work as a
philosopher of nationalism appeared the Nazi paper Volkischer Beobachter in
September, 1923.
Critiquing the failed Marxist revolution of 1918, Junger
argued that the leftist coup failed because of its lacking of fresh ideas. It
was simply a regurgitation of the egalitarian outllook of the French
Revolution. The revolutionary left appealed only to the material wants of the
Germany people in Junger’s views. A successful revolution would have to be much
more than that. It would have to appeal to their spiritual or “folkish”
instincts as well. Over the next few years Junger studied the natural sciences
at the University of Leipzig and in 1925, at age thirty, he married
nineteen-year-old Gretha von Jeinsen. Around this time, he also became a
full-time political writer. Junger was hostile to Weimar democracy
and its commercial bourgeiose society.
His emerging political ideal was one of
an elite warrior caste that stood above petty partisan politics and the middle
class obsession with material acquisition. Junger became involved with the the
Stahlhelm, a right-wing veterans group, and was a contributer to its paper, Die
Standardite. He associated himself with the younger, more militant members of
the organization who favored an uncompromised nationalist revolution and
eschewed the parliamentary system. Junger’s weekly column inDie Standardite disseminated
his nationalist ideology to his less educated readers. Junger’s views at this
point were a mixture of Spengler, Social Darwinism, the traditionalist
philosophy of the French rightist Maurice Barres, opposition to the
internationalism of the left that had seemingly been discredited by the events
of 1914, irrationalism and anti-parliamentarianism. He took a favorable view of
the working class and praised the Nazis’ efforts to win proletarian sympathies.
Junger also argued that a nationalist outlook need not be attached to one
particular form of government, even suggesting that a liberal monarchy would be
inferior to a nationalist republic.(12)
In an essay for Die Standardite titled “The
Machine”, Junger argued that the principal struggle was not between social
classes or political parties but between man and technology. He was not
anti-technological in a Luddite sense, but regarded the technological apparatus
of modernity to have achieved a position of superiority over mankind which
needed to be reversed. He was concerned that the mechanized efficiency of
modern life produced a corrosive effect on the human spirit. Junger considered
the Nazis’ glorification of peasant life to be antiquated. Ever the realist, he
believed the world of the rural people to be in a state of irreversible
decline. Instead, Junger espoused a “metropolitan nationalism” centered on the
urban working class. Nationalism was the antidote to the anti-particularist
materialism of the Marxists who, in Junger’s views, simply mirrored the
liberals in their efforts to reduce the individual to a component of a
mechanized mass society. The humanitarian rhetoric of the left Junger dismissed
as the hypocritical cant of power-seekers feigning benevolence. He began to pin
his hopes for a nationalist revolution on the younger veterans who comprised
much of the urban working class.
In 1926, Junger became editor of Arminius, which also
featured the writings of Nazi leaders like Alfred Rosenberg and Joseph
Goebbels. In 1927, he contributed his final article to the Nazi paper, calling
for a new definition of the “worker”, one not rooted in Marxist ideology but
the idea of the worker as a civilian counterpart to the soldier who struggles
fervently for the nationalist ideal. Junger and Hitler had exchanged
copies of their respective writings and a scheduled meeting between the two was
canceled due to a change in Hitler’s itinerary. Junger respected Hitler’s
abilities as an orator, but came to feel he lacked the ability to become a true
leader. He also found Nazi ideology to be intellectually shallow, many of the
Nazi movement’s leaders to be talentless and was displeased by the vulgarity, crassly
opportunistic and overly theatrical aspects of Nazi public rallies. Always an
elitist, Junger considered the Nazis’ pandering the common people to be
debased. As he became more skeptical of the Nazis, Junger began writing for a
wider circle of readers beyond that of the militant nationalist right-wing. His
works began to appear in the Jewish liberal Leopold Schwarzchild’s Das
Tagebuch and the “national-bolshevik” Ernst Niekisch’s Widerstand.
Junger began to assemble around himself an elite corps of
bohemian, eccentric intellectuals who would meet regularly on Friday evenings.
This group included some of the most interesting personalities of the Weimar
period. Among them were the Freikorps veteran Ernst von Salomon, Otto von
Strasser, who with his brother Gregor led a leftist anti-Hitler faction of the
Nazi movement, the national-bolshevik Niekisch, the Jewish anarchist Erich
Muhsam who had figured prominently in the early phase of the failed leftist
revolution of 1918, the American writer Thomas Wolfe and the expressionist writer
Arnolt Bronnen. Many among this group espoused a type of revolutionary
socialism based on nationalism rather than class, disdaining the Nazis’
opportunistic outreach efforts to the middle class. Some, like Niekisch,
favored an alliance between Germany and Soviet Russia against the
liberal-capitalist powers of the West. Occasionally, Joseph Goebbels would turn
up at these meetings hoping to convert the group, particularly Junger himself,
whose war writings he had admired, to the Nazi cause. These efforts by the Nazi
propaganda master proved unsuccessful. Junger regarded Goebbels as a shallow
ideologue who spoke in platitudes even in private conversation.(13)
The final break between Ernst Junger and the NSDAP occurred
in September 1929. Junger published an article in Schwarzchild’s Tagebuch attacking
and ridiculing the Nazis as sell outs for having reinvented themselves as a
parliamentary party. He also dismissed their racism and anti-Semitism as
ridiculous, stating that according to the Nazis a nationalist is simply someone
who “eats three Jews for breakfast.” He condemned the Nazis for pandering to
the liberal middle class and reactionary traditional conservatives “with
lengthy tirades against the decline in morals, against abortion, strikes,
lockouts, and the reduction of police and military forces.” Goebbels responded
by attacking Junger in the Nazi press, accusing him being motivated by personal
literary ambition, and insisting this had caused him “to vilify the national
socialist movement, probably so as to make himself popular in his new kosher
surroundings” and dismissing Junger’s attacks by proclaiming the Nazis did not
“debate with renegades who abuse us in the smutty press of Jewish
traitors.”(14)
Junger on the Jewish Question
Junger held complicated views on the question of German
Jews. He considered anti-Semitism of the type espoused by Hitler to be crude
and reactionary. Yet his own version of nationalism required a level of
homogeneity that was difficult to reconcile with the subnational status of
Germany Jewry. Junger suggested that Jews should assimilate and pledge their
loyalty to Germany once and for all. Yet he expressed admiration for Orthodox
Judaism and indifference to Zionism. Junger maintained personal friendships with
Jews and wrote for a Jewish owned publication. During this time his Jewish
publisher Schwarzchild published an article examining Junger’s views on the
Jews of Germany. Schwarzchild insisted that Junger was nothing like his Nazi
rivals on the far right. Junger’s nationalism was based on an aristocratic
warrior ethos, while Hitler’s was more comparable to the criminal underworld.
Hitler’s men were “plebian alley scum”. However, Schwarzchild also
characterized Junger’s rendition of nationalism as motivated by little more
than a fervent rejection of bourgeoise society and lacking in attention to
political realities and serious economic questions.(15)
The Worker
Other than In Storms of Steel, Junger’s The
Worker: Mastery and Formwas his most influential work from the Weimar era.
Junger would later distance himself from this work, published in 1932, and it
was reprinted in the 1950s only after Junger was prompted to do so by Martin
Heidegger.
In The Worker, Junger outlines his vision of a future
state ordered as a technocracy based on workers and soldiers led by a warrior
elite. Workers are no longer simply components of an industrial machine,
whether capitalist or communist, but have become a kind of civilian-soldier
operating as an economic warrior. Just as the soldier glories in his
accomplishments in battle, so does the worker glory in the achievements
expressed through his work. Junger predicted that continued technological
advancements would render the worker/capitalist dichotomy obsolete. He also incorporated
the political philosophy of his friend Carl Schmitt into his worldview. As
Schmitt saw international relations as a Hobbesian battle between rival powers,
Junger believed each state would eventually adopt a system not unlike what he
described in The Worker.
Each state would maintain its own technocratic
order with the workers and soldiers of each country playing essentially the
same role on behalf of their respective nations. International affairs would be
a crucible where the will to power of the different nations would be tested.
Junger’s vision contains a certain amount prescience. The
general trend in politics at the time was a movement towards the kind of
technocratic state Junger described. These took on many varied forms including
German National Socialism, Italian Fascism, Soviet Communism, the growing
welfare states of Western Europe and America’s New Deal. Coming on the eve of
World War Two, Junger’s prediction of a global Hobbesian struggle between
national collectives possessing previously unimagined levels of technological
sophistication also seems rather prophetic. Junger once again attacked the
bourgeoise as anachronistic. Its values of material luxury and safety he
regarded as unfit for the violent world of the future. (16)
The National Socialist Era
By the time Hitler took power in 1933, Junger’s war writings
had become commonly used in high schools and universities as examples of
wartime literature, and Junger enjoyed success within the context of German
popular culture as well. Excerpts of Junger’s works were featured in military
journals. The Nazis tried to coopt his semi-celebrity status, but he was
uncooperative. Junger was appointed to the Nazified German Academcy of Poetry,
but declined the position. When the Nazi Party’s paper published some of his
work in 1934, Junger wrote a letter of protest. The Nazi regime, despite its
best efforts to capitalize on his reputation, viewed Junger with suspicioun.
His past association with the national-bolshevik Ersnt Niekisch, the Jewish
anarchist Erich Muhsam and the anti-Hitler Nazi Otto von Strasser, all of whom
were either eventually killed or exiled by the Third Reich, led the Nazis to
regard Junger as a potential subversive. On several occasions, Junger received
visits from the Gestapo in search of some of his former friends. During the
early years of the Nazi regime, Junger was in the fortunate position of being
able to economically afford travel outside of Germany. He journeyed to Norway,
Brazil, Greece and Morocco during this time, and published several works based
on his travels.(17)
Junger’s most significant work from the Nazi period is the
novel On the Marble Cliffs. The book is an allegorical attack on the
Hitler regime. It was written in 1939, the same year that Junger reentered the
German army. The book describes a mysterious villian that threatens a
community, a sinister warlord called the “Head Ranger”. This character is never
featured in the plot of the novel, but maintains a forboding presence that is
universal (much like “Big Brother” in George Orwell’s 1984). Another
character in the novel, “Braquemart”, is described as having physical
characteristics remarkably similar to those of Goebbels.
The book sold fourteen
thousand copies during its first two weeks in publication. Swiss reviewers
immediately recognized the allegorical references to the Nazi state in the
novel. The Nazi Party’s organ,Volkische Beobachter, stated that Ernst Jünger
was flirting with a bullet to the head. Goebbels urged Hitler to ban the book,
but Hitler refused, probably not wanting to show his hand. Indeed, Hitler gave
orders that Junger not be harmed.(18)
Junger was stationed in France for most of the Second World
War. Once again, he kept diaries of the experience. Once again, he expressed
concern that he might not get to see any action before the war was over. While
Junger did not have the opportunity to experience the level of danger and
daredevil heroics he had during the Great War, he did receive yet another
medal, the Iron Cross, for retrieving the body of a dead corporal while under
heavy fire. Junger also published some of his war diaries during this time.
However, the German government took a dim view of these, viewing them as too
sympathetic to the occupied French. Junger’s duties included censorship of the
mail coming into France from German civilians.
He took a rather liberal
approach to this responsibility and simply disposed of incriminating documents
rather than turning them over for investigation. In doing so, he probably saved
lives. He also encountered members of France’s literary and cultural elite,
among them the actor Louis Ferdinand Celine, a raving anti-Semite and
pro-Vichyite who suggested Hitler’s harsh measures against the Jews had not
been heavy handed enough. As rumors of the Nazi extermination programs began to
spread, Junger wrote in his diary that the mechanization of the
human spirit of the type he had written about in the past had apparently
generated a higher level of human depravity. When he saw three young
French-Jewish girls wearing the yellow stars required by the Nazis, he wrote
that he felt embarrassed to be in the Nazi army. In July of 1942, Junger
observed the mass arrest of French Jews, the beginning of implementation of the
“Final Solution”. He described the scene as follows:
“Parents were first separated from their children, so there
was wailing to be heard in the streets. At no moment may I forget that I am
surrounded by the unfortunate, by those suffering to the very depths, else what
sort of person, what sort of officer would I be? The uniform obliges one to
grant protection wherever it goes. Of course one has the impression that one
must also, like Don Quixote, take on millions.”(19)
An entry into Junger’s diary from October 16, 1943 suggests
that an unnamed army officer had told Junger about the use of
crematoria and poison gas to murder Jews en masse. Rumors of plots against
Hitler circulated among the officers with whom Junger maintained contact. His
son, Ernstl, was arrested after an informant claimed he had spoken critically
of Hitler. Ernstl Junger was imprisoned for three months, then placed in a
penal battalion where he was killed in action in Italy. On July 20, 1944 an
unsuccessful assassination attempt was carried out against Hitler. It is still
disputed as to whether or not Junger knew of the plot or had a role in its
planning. Among those arrested for their role in the attemt on Hitler’s life
were members of Junger’s immediate circle of associates and superior officers
within the German army. Junger was dishonorably discharged shortly
afterward.(20)
Following the close of the Second World War, Junger came
under suspicion from the Allied occupational authorities because of his far
right-wing nationalist and militarist past. He refused to cooperate with the
Allies De-Nazification programs and was barred from publishing for four years.
He would go on to live another half century, producing many more literary
works, becoming a close friend of Albert Hoffman, the inventor of the
hallucinogen LSD, with which he experimented. In a 1977 novel, Eumeswil,
he took his tendency towards viewing the world around him with detachment to a
newer, more clearly articulated level with his invention of the concept of the
“Anarch”. This idea, heavily influenced by the writings of the early nineteenth
century German philosopher Max Stirner, championed the solitary individual who
remains true to himself within the context of whatever external circumstances
happen to be present. Some sample quotations from this work illustrate the
philosophy and worldview of the elderly Junger quite well:
“For the anarch, if he remains free of being ruled, whether
by sovereign or society, this does not mean he refuses to serve in any way. In
general, he serves no worse than anyone else, and sometimes even better, if he
likes the game. He only holds back from the pledge, the sacrifice, the ultimate
devotion … I serve in the Casbah; if, while doing this, I die for the Condor,
it would be an accident, perhaps even an obliging gesture, but nothing more.”
“The egalitarian mania of demagogues is even more dangerous
than the brutality of men in gallooned coats. For the anarch, this remains
theoretical, because he avoids both sides. Anyone who has been oppressed can
get back on his feet if the oppression did not cost him his life. A man who has
been equalized is physically and morally ruined. Anyone who is different is not
equal; that is one of the reasons why the Jews are so often targeted.”
“The anarch, recognizing no government, but not indulging in
paradisal dreams as the anarchist does, is, for that very reason, a neutral
observer.”
“Opposition is collaboration.”
“A basic theme for the anarch is how man, left to his own
devices, can defy superior force – whether state, society or the elements – by
making use of their rules without submitting to them.”
“… malcontents… prowl through the institutions eternally
dissatisfied, always disappointed. Connected with this is their love of cellars
and rooftops, exile and prisons, and also banishment, on which they actually
pride themselves. When the structure finally caves in they are the first to be
killed in the collapse. Why do they not know that the world remains inalterable
in change? Because they never find their way down to its real depth, their own.
That is the sole place of essence, safety. And so they do themselves in.”
“The anarch may not be spared prisons – as one fluke of
existence among others. He will then find the fault in himself.”
“We are touching one a … distinction between anarch and
anarchist; the relation to authority, to legislative power. The anarchist is
their mortal enemy, while the anarch refuses to acknowledge them. He seeks
neither to gain hold of them, nor to topple them, nor to alter them – their
impact bypasses him. He must resign himself only to the whirlwinds they
generate.”
“The anarch is no individualist, either. He wishes to
present himself neither as a Great Man nor as a Free Spirit. His own measure is
enough for him; freedom is not his goal; it is his property. He does not come
on as foe or reformer: one can get along nicely with him in shacks or in
palaces. Life is too short and too beautiful to sacrifice for ideas, although
contamination is not always avoidable. But hats off to the martyrs.”
“We can expect as little from society as from the state.
Salvation lies in the individual.” (21)
Notes:
1. Ian Buruma, “The Anarch at Twilight”, New York
Review of Books, Volume 40, No. 12, June 24, 1993. Hilary Barr, “An Exchange on
Ernst Junger”, New York Review of Books, Volume 40, No. 21, December 16,
1993.
2. Nevin, Thomas. Ernst Junger and Germany: Into the
Abyss, 1914-1945. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996, pp. 1-7. Loose,
Gerhard. Ernst Junger. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1974, preface.
3. Nevin, pp. 9-26. Loose, p. 21
4. Loose, p. 22. Nevin, pp. 27-37.
5. Nevin. p. 49.
6. Ibid., p. 57
7. Ibid., p. 61
8. Maurice Barrès (September 22, 1862 - December
4, 1923) was aFrench novelist, journalist, an anti-semite,
nationalist politician and agitator. Leaning towards the
far-left in his youth as a Boulangist deputy, he progressively
developed a theory close to Romantic nationalism and shifted to the
right during the Dreyfus Affair, leading the Anti-Dreyfusards alongsideCharles
Maurras. In 1906, he was elected both to the Académie françaiseand as
deputy of the Seine department, and until his death he sat with the
conservative Entente républicaine démocratique. A strong supporter of theUnion
sacrée(Holy Union) during World War I, Barrès remained a major influence
of generations of French writers, as well as of monarchists, although he was
not a monarchist himself. Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Barr%C3%A8s
9. Nevin, pp. 58, 71, 97.
10. Schilpp, P. A. “The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell”. Reviewed
Hermann Weyl, The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Apr.,
1946), pp. 208-214.
11. Nevin, pp. 122, 125, 134, 136, 140, 173.
12. Ibid., pp. 75-91.
13. Ibid., p. 107.
14. Ibid., p. 108.
15. Ibid., pp. 109-111.
16. Ibid., pp. 114-140.
17. Ibid., p. 145.
18. Ibid., p. 162.
19. Ibid., p. 189.
20. Ibid., p. 209.
21. Junger, Ernst. Eumeswil. New York: Marion
Publishers, 1980, 1993.
Bibliography
Barr, Hilary. “An Exchange on Ernst Junger”, New York
Review of Books, Volume 40, No. 21, December 16, 1993.
Braun, Abdalbarr. “Warrior, Waldgaenger, Anarch: An Essay on
Ernst Junger’s Concept of the Sovereign Individual”. Archived at
http://www.fluxeuropa.com/juenger-anarch.htm
Buruma, Ian. “The Anarch at Twilight”, New York Review
of Books, Volume 40, No. 12, June 24, 1993.
Hofmann, Albert. LSD: My Problem Child, Chapter Seven,
“Radiance From Ernst Junger”. Archived at
http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter7.html
Loose, Gerhard. Ernst Junger. New York: Twayne
Publishers, 1974.
Hervier, Julien. The Details of Time: Conversations
with Ernst Junger. New York: Marsilio Publishers, 1986.
Junger, Ernst. Eumeswil. New York: Marsilio Publishers,
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Junger, Ernst. In Storms of Steel. New York: Penguin
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Junger, Ernst. On the Marble Cliffs. New York:
Duenewald Printing Corporation, 1947.
Nevin, Thomas. Ernst Junger and Germnay: Into the
Abyss, 1914-1945. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996.
Schilpp, P. A. “The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell”. Reviewed
Hermann Weyl, The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Apr.,
1946), pp. 208-214.
Stern, J. P. Ernst Junger. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1953.
Zavrel, Consul B. John. “Ernst Junger is Still Working at
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