Talk:Ernst Jünger/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Pour le mérite : civil version ?

I deleted the statement that Jünger was holder of the civil version of Pour le Merite. I also read about that, but never found a proof. It may be a rumor. Please correct me if I am wrong. --Linksrechts 19:04, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

War Service - Highly Decorated

There should be more about his World War One record considering he was highly decorated and very well regarded as an officer (including being an early leader/instructor of the Sturmtruppe and one of the first to lead this new type of assault troop into combat).

In 1916 he received the Iron Cross First Class.

In 1917 he received the Ritterkreuz des Hausordens von Hohenzollern (Knight's Cross of the House of Hohenzollern).

In 1918 he received the "Pour le Mérite" (also known as "the Blue Max" - same medal the Red Baron and others wore around their necks), the highest German military decoration of that time (awarded Sept 18th, 1918, notification by telegram received Sept 22nd, 1918 while he was in hospital - which is where he ended the war).

Junger was the youngest recipient of the "Pour le Mérite," which put him in very high standing with his post-war peers - this point especially should be made/noted.

He was also wounded in combat 14 times (at least), receiving the "Gold Wound Stripes" in recognition of this.

All of this is presented in his works - "Storm of Steel" in particular, and is further supported by critics/historians.

Proof of his being awarded the "Pour le Mérite," can be found at http://www.pourlemerite.org/ where his name is listed amongst the army's recipients with date. Also listed there are his other awards.

Further proof can be found in Wikipedia itself under the entry "Pour le Mérite" - http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pour_le_Mérite - where the following is correctly stated - "The last living holder of the Pour le Mérite was novelist Ernst Jünger who died in 1998 and who, at the age of 23, was the youngest ever recipient as well."

Hope that helps those interested.


Update - After writing the above, I decided to add two sentences to the single line that made mention of his war record in the main article. In them I made note of his being awarded the "Pour le Mérite" and how he was the youngest person to ever receive this decoration. The reason for doing so should be obvious, as the sentences themselves make clear just in what they state. Receiving the "Pour le Mérite" would be a very big point in anyone's life, and he received it in recognition of repeated front line combat performance. The fact he was the youngest person to ever receive this award is obviously both of further note, and support for the overall comment's inclusion (which the Wikipedia "Pour le Mérite" article also chose to single out).

Thanks Again

9Fafner9 17:10, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Drawning

I suggest the use of

It comes from the French Page. The B&W one's is still in the first part of the article but not in front of the page and it looks more neutral for the reader IMHO --Neuromancien 06:29, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

On the Marble Cliffs

Hello everyone,

in the article it says that On the Marble Cliffs "uses metaphor to describe Jünger's perceptions of the situation in Hitler's Germany". Jünger himself always rejected this interpretation and stated the book had no direct connection to the NS dictatorship. I've just recently read it and think you could claim that the novel promotes aestheticism as a way of opposition to a world dominated by a ruthless striving for power (well, it says so on the back cover... but I wholeheartedly agree to that idea!). You could also read it as a description of a culture in decline, an ascending dictatorship built on violence and terror, and the way to oppose such a one (by inner migration, which the narrator and his brother Otho practice). The interpretation should not be limited to Nazi Germany, but rather encompass Jünger's whole conception of the aesthete making a stand against the modern world (think e.g. of his chivalric notion of combat, his passionate interest in plants, insects and birds, his social utopias etc.) In the article, one could very nicely connect the Marble Cliffs to Jünger's entire personal philosophy.

Greetings --134.95.140.152 14:25, 18 June 2007 (UTC) (I'm registered as Blödmannshilfsassistent, for some reason only the IP shows up)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 03:58, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Jünger and the Jews

This information about Jünger's anti-Semitism and fascism should be incorporated into the article. --Eloquence

You are right: this is a clear statement of Jünger. He describes the jews as a threat for the germans.
This is not a clear statement at all since it is taken out of context and even with my limited german I can tell that article is heavily biased, it is nothing but intellectually dishonest to draw any conclusions worthy a supposedly neutral and encyclopedic article from something so weak.
Here are some other statements by Jünger, written around the same time as the above statement:
"Anti-semites are like a certain sort of bacteria hunter who when they figure they've exterminated a certain spore perceive a thousand new ones. This is a procedure that can only end in madness, to the point that as in delerium tremens one sees at every step Jews swarming like white mice."
Doesn't really need an explanation.
"the Jew is as dangerous to bourgeois values as he is harmless to the values of heroic youth"
Note that "dangerous to bourgeois values" would be a positive thing from Jünger's viewpoint.
"To the same degree that the German will attains acuity and form, it will become for the Jew even the most delicate, irresolvable folly to become a German in Germany, and he'll find himself facing fis final alternative: either to be or not to be a Jew in Germany."
Here Jünger expresses something that already troubled the Jewish community in Germany - assimilation into German society versus conservation of the Jewish tradition and identity. Jünger concludes that assimilation would be negative, an "irresolvable folly", not for Germany, but for the Jews. In the absence of a Jewish homeland (since the state of Israel did not exist at this point in time) total assimilation is the same as non-violent extermination. The Jewish people would disappear. This is something that has been and is a concern of immigrant/minority groups of any ethnicity or culture all over the world - the choice between assimilation, which would require a rejection of ones original cultural identity (even if only partial, subsequent generations would drift further and further away from it), or to strongly preserve it, very often leading to friction between the minority and the host culture.
"For Jews there is only one lasting station, only one temple of Solomon, and that is Jewish orthodoxy, which I hail just as much as I must hail the genuine and unqualified singularity of every people. Undoubtly it will recover ground to the same degree that the nationalism of the peoples of Europe gains impetus."
Here Jünger extrapolates on the same views. Yes, he supports a homogenous Germany. But make sure to note that he also supports the preservation and homogenity "of every people" to the same extent as he does the German people. He encourages Jewish orthodoxy because it strengthens the Jewish people.
From these quotes it is not far fetched at all to conclude that Jünger considered Jews as a threat to the German people not because he considered Jews "evil" or "inferior", but because he strongly supported the survival and preservation of BOTH. Germans would be just as much of a threat to the Jewish people because, as pointed out before, assimilation into German society would destroy the Jews. Jünger is talking about group dynamics, not of racial theory.
The above quotes are all lifted from pages 109-110 of Ernst Junger and Germany: Into the Abyss, 1914-1945 by Thomas R. Nevin. Nevin provides sources for all of them, but I do not have access to the notes so I can't relay them myself. You'll have to take my word for it, or dig it up in a library.
Now, one does not have to agree with Jünger that all ethnicities and cultures should strive to preserve their unique traditions, customs, traits and beliefs. One does not have to agree with Jünger that two or more groups sharing the same space while at the same time trying to retain their own identity will result in conflict or the eventual assimilation (and thus extinction) of the less successful group. One does not even have to agree that my own interpretations as expressed above are correct, but even so, but one must agree that it is not a clear-cut topic.
All this being said, while I (clearly) have my opinion I fully acknowledge that Jünger's views on Jews is a controversial subject and has been hotly debated for decades. The only appropriate thing and all I ask for is for the article to reflect just that; that it is and has been a controversial issue and strong points have been made supporting both sides. Nowhere will you find objective proof of either position.
Bodychoke (talk) 18:09, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Neutrality

These sentences aren't really objective and also make use of opinion where it doesn't really belong:

"The book has been seen as glorifying war, in comparison to the fictional German WWI 'memoir' All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Remarque, who had minor wartime experience and never saw combat. All Quiet on the Western Front was written ten years after the war ended, while Storm of Steel's earliest incarnations were written in 1920." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.129.23.19 (talk) 17:59, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Text changed. DocteurCosmos (talk) 13:29, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Wife

Is his first wife's name "Greta" or "Gretha"? It appears both ways in the article.

"Gretha" was her name ("Perpetua" in the diaries of WW2). -- 79.223.112.162 (talk) 17:50, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

philosophy work?

The section Nihilism#Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche says that Jünger's interpretations/defense of Nietzsche were influential to Heidegger's, but this article on Jünger doesn't have any information about any philosophical writing he may have done. --Delirium (talk) 23:42, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Bernt Engelmann describes Jünger's curious behaviour in wartime Paris

In Hitler's Germany, pp. 213-214:

"Krupa was pale and jittery. Not until we got to the café did he speak out: 'I went to a barracks on the Place Balard [in Paris], and ... I suddenly noticed a boy - he couldn't have been more than eighteen - tied to a post with his eyes blindfolded. Next to him was a rough pine coffin, and the officer who was about to have him shot was just pulling on white kid gloves. ...'

"Forty-one years later I discovered, quite by chance, the identity of the elegant captain in charge of those executions. The captain was none other than the writer Ernst Jünger, whose novel glorifying war, Amidst Hail of Steel, had been given to us to read in school as an example of 'heroic realism'.

"In his book, Un Allemand à Paris, Gerhard Heller describes Jünger's feelings about the executions. The officer asserted he had tried to make them as humane as possible, yet on the other hand he had been 'interested in observing how a person reacts to death under such circumstances'. ..."

According to Heller, Jünger insisted on characterising his interest in executions as "'a higher form of curiosity'". Engelmann mentions that shortly after he read Heller's book he learned that Jünger had just received the 1982 Goethe Prize from the city of Frankfurt.

Andygx (talk) 19:58, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm... The description is consistent with Jünger's personality, however a few points do deserve mention. First, Engelmann recounts the observations of 'Krupa', not his own experience. Second, Heller, who worked for Goebbels propaganda ministry in Paris during the war, published his account of the event after Jünger's own account in Strahlungen, published in 1949.
This is from pp. 148-149 of A Dubious Past: Ernst Jünger and the politics of literature after Nazism by Elliot Yale Neaman:
Another good example of Jünger's cold-blooded gaze can be found in the war diaries in the section where he was commanded to witness the execution of a German army deserter. "At first," he reported, "I thought of calling in sick but that would be too cheap...in essence it was elevated curiosity which made me do it." The three pages in the diaries that describe the execution exhibit the writer's fascination with the smallest details of the firing squad's shooting method and the victim's physiognomy at the moment of death.
Neaman's book offers a broad context to these remarks, including the views of both admirers and critics, which can't be summarised briefly. Jünger's position in Paris brought him into contact with leading collaborators and his work was part of the machinery of occupation. On the other hand he socialised there with members of the resistance as well as leftist intellectuals and artists, passed information to the resistance and ignored an order to blow up a church in Laon. Any one of these would have gotten an ordinary army captains arrested however Jünger was able to exploit his fame which gave him a degree of protection.
To my mind his most chilling act was when, at the peak of the Battle of the Somme and with the Germans pushed from their trenches and at the limits of their resistance, young Lt Jünger rounded up at gunpoint a group of very reluctant stragglers and broken retreating troops and forced them back into battle. He also describes placing a pistol to a prisoner's forehead and cocking the hammer in the midst of battle during the 1918 offensive.
Isolating these events would not be especially informative, however, in the absence of broader analysis such as Neaman provides about Jünger as an evolving thinker and writer. I'm not well informed about this, so I'll leave the editing here to others.Dduff442 (talk) 17:22, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Untitled

I edited the caption. It said it is Junge in WWI, while he is wearing a medal for WWI service only issued after the war. I altered it to 'during years of the Wiemar Republic.' Whoever uploaded this image please add what type of uniform he his wearing, it looks like WWI or Stalhelmbund to me. TaylorSAllen 19:57, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I think you are doubly mistaken. I assume the medal you refer to is the one in his button hole, which you think is the so-called HIndenburg Cross, which was given for WWI service. That medal was only instituted on July 13, 1934, so if this is a photo of Juenger with this medal, then the picture is not from Weimar but from the Third Reich. However, the medal in the photo is not the Hindenburg cross, it is the Knights Cross with Swords of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern, which during WWI was sort of an intermediate award between the Iron Cross First Class and the Order Pour le Merite. The manner of wear would indicate that this photo was taken when the medal was issued, so the photo is quite unquestionably from WWI. Folcwald 20:43, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Someone (790) keeps reverting "In Stahlgewittern" to a novel. It is, in fact, an autobiographical recount of Jünger's WWI war service, which is properly accounted for in the intro. It is a non-fiction work. (Asav)

Anyone have any information as to where Junger stated his famous quote "Red is the color of domination and rebellion"?

Are you sure this isn't copyrighted? It looks an awful lot like kirjast.sci.fi

Now there is a new-article on Ernst Jünger which isn't copyrighted! I've wrote it on my own using information found on kirjasto.sci.fi and juenger.org

Are you sure this isn't still to close to kirjasto.sci.fi/ejunger.htm ?? It looks awfully similar to me... (gabbe)

Feel free to re-edit this article if you think it's not OK!

In any case, there are/were traces of a German original: I had to correct Weimarer Republik to Weimar Republic and similar things.
S.

Why mention that his youngest son committed suicide in 1993? It seems distasteful in its irrelevance DFernyhough (talk) 21:32, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Banned or not

"from 1938 he was banned by the Nazis from writing. On the Marble Cliffs (1939, German title: Auf den Marmorklippen)"

Was he banned or not? The article on On the Marble Cliffs states that the book wasn't censored. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 27.33.90.76 (talk) 13:25, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

His name was "only" banned from all nazi press. DocteurCosmos (talk) 08:58, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Waldgaenger, or Forest Fleer

I am only passing by, but this is a wrong translation. Literally Wald=wood/forest + Gänger/Gaenger=walker. You find -gaenger in compounds like Fussgaenger - Fuss=foot + Gaenger walk, thus a pedestrian or someone walking. I am no Jünger specialist, but the term is related to the title of a novel he published post WWII, apparently: Waldgänger. Depicting an totalitarian state in which the Waldgänger seems to stand for the 2 to 3 percent of voters that dissent. This as the pure language level above, suggests to me that forest fleer, is the exact opposite of what the term is supposed to signify. Fast translation of the German site for the novel: "Waldgänger" stands for a person who remains mentally independent from the surrounding society and is able to resist, if the respective state is or turns criminal. Just as on the pure language level the context or plot seems to suggest much more fleeing society for the woods than the opposite direction. Admittedly I took only a very cursorily look at the special German Wikipedia page about the book and its plot, but it seemed to confirm my impression about the mistranslation above. In fact it reminded me of the dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. Doesn't wood surface there too? Jünger's Waldgäner is published one year earlier in 1951. But I would like to leave it to people involved here to make the changes they want. Bernt Engelmann in any case has always been closer to me than Jünger. ;) LeaNder (talk) 13:56, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

It's not a "mistranslation", it's the translation chosen in Eumeswil by Joachim Neugroschel (1993). Now, it appears, a translation of Der Waldgang by Thomas Friese has appeared in 2013, and Friese now uses "forest passage" for Waldgang and "forest rebel" for Waldgänger.[1] This is the usual kind of problem you get when you aim at translating not just the sense but also the style and atmosphere of a literary work from any language into any other. --dab (𒁳) 13:37, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

baseless attribution

The German wikipedia article provides NO basis for the attribution "Philosoph".

He was awarded an honorary PhD.

There is a publication on his "poetic philosophy" or "philosophy as a writer".

Neither of these are a basis for the claim that this writer was a philosopher.

Not to remove this claim leaves us either all philosophers or in need of a new attribution for those who are philosophers and recognized as such by their peers.

On the basis solely of "know thyself" this duplicitous and self-serving writer would not even be given to philosophy in a Socratic sense. His entomological work in the 20th Century does not make him a philosopher in the sense of Aristotle. We surely will not claim that writing on politics makes the writer a philosopher even if philosopher Karl Jaspers also wrote a doubtful book on politics in the 30's.

The husband of Hannah Arendt some how secured a teaching position in a philosophy department : it does not make him a philosopher even though his naive students thought him to be one. Her first husband, a Heidegger sycophant of the first generation, became a writer and not a philosopher.

Even on the margins of philosophy, there are a sufficient number of writers who elbow Ernst Juenger off the field.

If in doubt as to WHO is a philosopher in the 20th Century begin with Hilary Putnam and work outwards in many directions across many fields, problems and the very history of the subject. But do note that even someone working in the history of philosophy is not for all that a philosopher even with a PhD from a philosophy department and even if teaching in such a department, for by their work you shall know them.

Contribute nothing to clarifying a problem in philosophy or elucidating a dilemma or paradox or ambiguity in an issue in philosophy and so do not merit the title 'philosopher' ... sauf pour le merite !

G. Robert Shiplett 09:00, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

"this duplicitous and self-serving writer". Really. I understand the problem though. A "philosopher" is a "lover of wisdom", and you cannot just claim this for random people, you need a secondary source to establish that the person is widely or commonly so classified. It does not have much to do with academics in the field of philosophy, any more than a mythographer is a mythopoetic poet, or a historian is a historical figure. For example, Nietzsche was an academic philologist and a 19th-century philosopher not because of his field in academia but because he is recognized as a philosopher by a sufficient number of students of the history of philosophy.
I agree that Jünger was not "a philosopher" in the same sense as Nietzsche. Of course it is still fair to discuss "his philosophy", and "his ongoing role as conservative philosopher and icon", etc., obviously based on secondary references. --dab (𒁳) 13:41, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

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