Ernst Jünger Ernst Jünger ( 29 March 1895 – 17 February 1998 ) was a German writer and philosopher . In addition to his political essays , novels and diaries , he is well known for " Storm of Steel " , an account of his experience during World War I . Early life and family . Jünger was born in Heidelberg to a middle - class family and grew up in Hanover as the son of a chemical engineer , who later became a pharmacist . He attended school from 1901 to 1913 and was a member of the " Wandervogel " movement . In 1913 , he ran away from home to join the French Foreign Legion , in which he served very briefly in North Africa . During World War I he served with distinction in the Imperial German Army on the Western Front . He was wounded seven times during his war service . In the first week of January 1917 he was awarded the Iron Cross First Class and in September 1918 was awarded Prussia ' s highest military decoration of that time , the Pour le Mérite ( informally known as the " Blue Max " ) . This he received as a Lieutenant at the age of 23 . He married Gretha von Jeinsen ( 1906 – 60 ) in 1925 . They had two children , Ernst Jr . ( 1926 – 44 ) and Alexander ( 1934 – 93 ) . His brother Friedrich Georg Jünger ( 1898 – 1977 ) was a poet and essayist . His younger son Alexander , a physician , committed suicide in 1993 . Work . His war experiences are first described in " Storm of Steel " ( German title : " In Stahlgewittern " ) which Jünger self - published in 1920 . This book , by which Jünger became suddenly famous , has been seen as glorifying war . Jünger served as a lieutenant in the army of the Weimar Republic until his demobilisation in 1923 . He studied marine biology , zoology , botany , and philosophy , and became a well - known entomologist . In Germany , an important entomological prize is named after him : the " Ernst - Jünger - Preis für Entomologie " . In the 1920s Jünger published articles in several right - wing nationalist journals , and further novels . As in " Storm of Steel " , in the book " Feuer und Blut " ( 1925 , " Fire and Blood " ) , Jünger glorified war as an internal event . According to Jünger , war elevates the soldier ' s life , isolated from normal humanity , into a mystical experience . The extremities of modern military techniques tested the capacity of the human senses . He criticized the fragile and unstable democracy of the Weimar Republic , stating that he " hated democracy like the plague . " Never a member of the National Socialist movement around Adolf Hitler , Jünger refused a chair offered to him in the Reichstag following the Nazi Party ' s ascension to power in 1933 , and he refused the invitation to head the German Academy of Literature ( " Die deutsche Akademie der Dichtung " ) . On June 14 , 1934 , Jünger wrote a “ letter of rejection ” to the " Völkischer Beobachter " , the official Nazi newspaper , in which he requested that none of his writings be published in it . Jünger also refused to speak on Goebbels ’ s radio . He was one of the few “ nationalist ” authors whose name was never found on the frequent declarations of loyalty to Hitler . He and his brother Friedrich Georg quit the " Traditionsverein der 73er " ( veteran ’ s organization of the Hanoverian regiment they had served during World War I ) when its Jewish members were expelled . An attack on Jünger appeared in the Bavarian " Völkischer Beobachter " of October 22 , 1932 , with the title “ Das endlose dialektische Gesprach ” ( the Endless Dialectical Discussion ) , taking Jünger to task for not being an adherent of Blood and Soil racial doctrine , and accusing him of being an " intellectualist " and a liberal . Even though he never endorsed the Nazi Party , and indeed kept them at a careful distance , Jünger ' s " Storm of Steel " sold well into the six - figure range by the end of the 1930s . In the essay " On Pain " , written and published in 1934 , Jünger rejects the liberal values of liberty , security , ease , and comfort , and seeks instead the measure of man in the capacity to withstand pain and sacrifice . In 1927 , he moved to Berlin . In 1929 , his work " The Adventurous Heart " ( German title : " Das abenteuerliche Herz " ) was published . In " Über Nationalismus und Judenfrage " ( 1930 , " On Nationalism and the Jewish Question " ) Jünger describes Jews as a threat to the unity of Germans , and recommends either assimilation or emigration to Palestine . The article appeared as part of a symposium on the Jewish Question in the " Suddeutsche Monatshefte " , in which many Jewish authors participated , and whose editor , Paul Nikolaus Cossmann , was also Jewish . In 1932 , he published " The Worker " ( German title : " Der Arbeiter " ) , which called for the creation of a totally mobilized society run by warrior - worker - scholars . Jünger left Berlin in 1933 ; his house was searched by the Gestapo secret police . " On the Marble Cliffs " ( 1939 , German title : " Auf den Marmorklippen " ) uses metaphor to describe Jünger ' s negative perceptions of the situation in Hitler ' s Germany . He served in World War II as an army captain . Assigned to an administrative position in Paris , he socialized with prominent artists of the day such as Picasso and Jean Cocteau . His early time in France is described in his diary " Gärten und Straßen " ( 1942 , " Gardens and Streets " ) . Jünger appears on the fringes of the Stauffenberg bomb plot . He was clearly an inspiration to anti - Nazi conservatives in the German Army , and while in Paris he was close to the old , mostly Prussian , officers who carried out the assassination attempt against Hitler . He was only peripherally involved in the events however , and in the aftermath suffered only dismissal from the army in the summer of 1944 , rather than execution . His elder son Ernst Jr . , then a Kriegsmarine cadet , was imprisoned that year for engaging in " subversive discussions " in his Wilhelmshaven Naval Academy . Transferred to Penal Unit 999 , he was killed near Carrara in occupied Italy on 29 November . After the war , Jünger was initially under some suspicion for his nationalist past , and he was banned from publishing in Germany for four years by the British occupying forces because he refused to submit to the denazification procedures . His work " The Peace " ( German title : " Der Friede " ) , written in 1943 and published abroad in 1947 , marked the end of his involvement in politics . Rehabilitated by the 1950s , he went on to be regarded as a towering figure of German literature . German publisher Klett put out a ten - volume " Collected Works " ( " Sämtliche Werke " ) in 1965 . The same publishers issued a second edition in 1983 , turning Jünger into one of four German authors who lived to see two editions of his " Collected Works " published ; the other three are Goethe , Klopstock , and Wieland . He remained highly controversial , though , in the eyes of the German Marxist Left , both for his past , and his ongoing role as conservative philosopher and icon . When German Communists threatened his safety in 1945 , Bertolt Brecht instructed them to " Leave Jünger alone . " Jünger was immensely popular in France , where at one time 48 of his translated books were in print . In 1984 , he spoke at the Verdun memorial , alongside with his admirers , French president François Mitterrand and German chancellor Helmut Kohl . His diaries from 1939 to 1949 were published under the title " Strahlungen " ( 1948 , " Reflections " ) . In the 1950s and 1960s , Jünger travelled extensively . His first wife , Gretha , died in 1960 , and in 1962 he married Liselotte Lohrer . He continued writing prodigiously for his entire life , publishing more than 50 books . Jünger was among the forerunners of magical realism . His vision in " The Glass Bees " ( 1957 , German title : " Gläserne Bienen " ) , of a future in which an overmechanized world threatens individualism , could be seen as science fiction . A sensitive poet with training in botany and zoology , as well as a soldier , his works in general are infused with tremendous details of the natural world . His critics claim there is an excess of emotional control and precision in his writing . In 1981 , he was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca . Throughout his life he had experimented with drugs such as ether , cocaine , and hashish ; and later in life he used mescaline and LSD . These experiments were recorded comprehensively in " Annäherungen " ( 1970 , " Approaches " ) . The novel " Besuch auf Godenholm " ( 1952 , " Visit to Godenholm " ) is clearly influenced by his early experiments with mescaline and LSD . He met several times with LSD inventor Albert Hofmann and they took LSD together . Hofmann ' s memoir " LSD , My Problem Child " describes some of these meetings . One of his most important literary contributions was the metahistoric figure of the Anarch ( sovereign individual ) , which evolved from his earlier conception of the Waldgaenger , or Forest Fleer . The anarch is Jünger ' s answer to the question of survival of individual freedom in a totalitarian world . It is developed primarily through the character of Martin Venator in his novel " Eumeswil " . Jünger ' s 100th birthday on 29 March 1995 , was met with praise from many quarters , including the socialist French president François Mitterrand . Jünger was a friend of Martin Heidegger . Jünger was admired by Julius Evola who published a book called " L ' Operaio nel pensiero di Ernst Juenger " ( 1960 ) , in which he summarized " The Worker " . Despite the controversy surrounding his life , Jünger said he never regretted anything he wrote , nor would he ever take it back . Yet , he joined Chancellor Helmut Kohl and President François Mitterrand of France at a 1984 Franco - German ceremony at Verdun , France , where he called the " ideology of war " in Germany before and after World War I " a calamitous mistake " . Death . A year before his death Jünger converted to Catholicism and began to receive the Sacrament s . He died on 17 February 1998 in Riedlingen , Upper Swabia , aged 102 years . He was the last living bearer of the military version of the order of the Pour le Mérite . Accusations of Fascism . Some say Jünger was a fascist . Jünger never betrayed sympathy to the political style of " blood and soil " popular among the Nazis , but according to some of his critics his conservative literature made Nazism highly attractive . The ontology of war depicted in " Storm of Steel " could be interpreted as a model for a new , hierarchically ordered society beyond democracy , beyond the security of bourgeois society and ennui . The writer and critic Walter Benjamin wrote a review / essay of " War and Warrior " , a collection of essays edited by Jünger . The title of Benjamin ’ s review , which was published in " Die Gesellschaft " 1930 , is " Theorien des Deutschen Faschismus ( Theories of German Fascism ) , " and it has been highly influential in its analysis of the relationship between aesthetics and politics . Jünger and Photography . Ernst Jünger ' s photobooks are visual accompaniments to his writings on technology and modernity . The seven books of photography Jünger published between 1928 and 1934 are representative of the most militaristic and radically right wing period in his writing . Jünger ' s first photobooks , " Die Unvergessenen " ( The Unforgotten , 1929 ) and " Der Kampf um das Reich " ( The Battle for the Reich , 1929 ) are collections of photographs of fallen WWI soldiers and the World War front , many that he took himself . He also contributed six essays on the relationship between war and photography in a photobook of war images called " Das Antlitz des Weltkrieges : Fronterlebnisse deutscher Soldaten " ( The Face of the World War : Front Experiences of German Soldiers , 1930 ) and edited a volume of photographs dealing with the first world war , " Hier spricht der Feind : Kriegserlebnisse unserer Gegner " ( The Voice of the Enemy : War Experiences of our Adversaries , 1931 ) . Jünger also edited a collection of essays , " Krieg und Krieger " ( War and Warriors , 1930 , 1933 ) and wrote the foreword for a photo anthology of airplanes and flying called " Luftfahrt ist Not ! " ( Flying is imperative ! [ i . e . , a necessity ] , 1928 ) . Bibliography . For an English listing , see . A complete listing is .