Ernst Junger

More than twenty years after Ernst Junger’s death in 1998, the controversial German writer’s work continues to compel the attention of readers, critics, and scholars. In early 2019, Junger’s diaries, the Strahlungen, written while he was an officer in occupied Paris during World War II, were published in English to wide acclaim.

These intimate accounts reveal Junger negotiating compliance with acts of subversion and resistance against the Nazi regime. His life is evidence that history can be both real and unrealistic at once, crystallising something essential about a twentieth century that witnessed the rise of total mobilisation, global war, and unprecedented technologies of mass extermination.

This volume presents four new essays by established and emerging scholars on Junger’s work and legacy. Together, they provide biographical, philosophical, psychological, and aesthetic access-points to a major twentieth century German intellectual who, like few others, invites us to investigate the ambiguities, constraints, and imperatives of our own times.

Contributors include Justin Clemens, Nicolas Hausdorf, Birgit Lang, Marilyn Stendera, Giles Fielke