The forest walk
Der Waldgang is an essay by Ernst Jünger published in 1951 . It deals with the question: How do people behave in the face of and within the catastrophe? As a “forest walker”, Jünger describes a person who is mentally independent of the surrounding society and is capable of resisting if the respective state is or becomes a criminal one. With Über die Linie , The Gordian Knot and The World State, Der Waldgang is part of a series of essays in which Jünger dealt with the political situation of his time in the 1950s.
content
The starting point is a consideration of elections that are directed in such a way that there is no longer any real alternative and 98 percent approval is achieved. Some of the cited aspects, such as uniformed election workers, state propaganda or suggestive ballot papers, are reminiscent of sham elections in dictatorships, but Jünger does not explicitly restrict the description to such. The two percent of people who vote no are the possible forest walkers. Jünger places the forest walker next to the worker and the unknown soldiers among the great figures of our time.
That such a forest walker actually has to offer resistance is the exception. In normal cases, Jünger assumes: “In general, the institutions and the regulations connected with them form a viable basis; it is in the air what is right and what is custom. Of course there are violations, but there are also courts and police ”. However, this “forest walker” must anticipate the possibility from the outset and be prepared for this to change and at some point to face a criminal system: “However, you cannot limit yourself to recognizing the true and good on the upper floor while in the Keller the skin is peeled off other people "
In a dictatorship it would be unwise to express an objection openly, it would only bring you to prison. At the same time, by standardizing political life, a dictatorship makes it easier for people who walk in the woods to attract attention. “Symbols light up especially on monotonous documents”. A “no” on a house wall can be enough as a provocation or appeal. Or a mere “W” for forest walkers or resistance. When violence becomes necessary, he wages partisan war with attacks and sabotage. "He can even paralyze armies, as was seen in the Napoleonic army in Spain ".
If the forest walker resists, he is always outside the respective state legal system, whatever it is. So he cannot expect his motives to mitigate the penalty. So he has a right to his actions only in an ethical sense, never before the jurisprudence of the respective state.
reception
The philosopher Thea Dorn pointed out that Jünger's picture of the forest walker had its roots in the myth of the German forest ; the book contains the “most radical link between forest and freedom” in German literature. The forest walker is an "equally elitist and solitary partisan who revolts against the orders of the administered world". Also out of the mythical and fairy-tale-like, Jünger develops a central thought, "which is always worth not to be forgotten - the thought that the forest is the place where everyone is confronted with their primal fears."
Golo Mann , who had rejected Jünger's worker completely , wrote to the author shortly after the appearance of the forest path :
“It is a beautiful book full of deep, true insights and very beautiful formulations [...] Certain pages of the forest walk show that the author is politically very well and deeply informed. My objection is this: there is an EJ who wants to help. There is another, older EJ who wants to look, who aesthetizes: And there is still something about this, the author of the worker , in the woods : [...] And it seems to me that your newer work could do without these categories. "
The book was also understood as an expression of Jünger's dissociation from politics in general: “As indicated in the marble cliffs, there is a decisive lesson that Jünger can draw from National Socialism, that to turn our backs on all conventionally understood and practiced politics be. [...] His counter-model to a political landscape in which "all positions are equally void" and elections have become a mere farce, takes the form of an appeal to educate the elite. "
literature
- expenditure
- The forest walk. Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1951.
- The forest walk. In: Complete Works. Volume 7: Essays I. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-608-93477-4 , pp. 281-375.
- The forest walk. , Audiobook (unabridged), Edition Apollon, 2011, ISBN 978-3-941940-08-6 .
- Secondary literature
- Albert C. Eibl: The forest walk of the "adventurous heart". On Ernst Jünger's aesthetics of resistance in the shadow of the swastika. Winter, Heidelberg 2020, ISBN 978-3-8253-6957-6 .
- Helmuth Kiesel : Ernst Jünger. The biography. Siedler, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-88680-852-6 , p. 598 ff.
- Steffen Martus : Ernst Jünger. Stuttgart / Weimar 2001, ISBN 3-476-10333-1 , p. 191 ff.
- Niels Penke: Ernst Jünger and the North. A staging story. (Frankfurt Contributions to German Studies, Vol. 51). Winter Verlag , Heidelberg 2012, ISBN 978-3-8253-6068-9 , pp. 95-220.
- Erhard Schütz : "... blissfully lost in the woods". Forest walker in German literature since the Romantic era. Edition lumière, Bremen 2013, ISBN 978-3-943245-12-7 , pp. 23-28.
Individual evidence
- ↑ all Works. Volume 7, 1980, p. 317.
- ↑ all Works. Volume 7, 1980, p. 361.
- ↑ all Works. Volume 7, 1980, p. 314.
- ↑ all Works. Volume 7, 1980, p. 295.
- ↑ all Works. Volume 7, 1980, p. 353.
- ↑ all Works. Volume 7, 1980, p. 344 f.
- ↑ Thea Dorn / Richard Wagner: The German soul. Albrecht Knaus Verlag, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-8135-0451-4 , p. 481ff.
- ↑ Golo Mann: Letters 1932-1992 . ed. by Tilmann Lahme and Kathrin Lüssi. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2006 ISBN 978-3-8353-0003-3 , p. 109
- ↑ Florian Grosser: Thinking Revolution. Heidegger and the Political 1919 to 1969. CH Beck, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-62154-3 , p. 365ff.