Friedrich Georg Jünger

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Jünger's house in Überlingen
Plaque on Jünger's house in Überlingen

Friedrich Georg Jünger (born September 1, 1898 in Hanover , † July 20, 1977 in Überlingen ) was a German poet , narrator and essayist critical of culture .

life and work

Friedrich Georg Jünger, the younger brother of the writer Ernst Jünger , was born in Hanover and attended secondary and secondary schools. In 1916 he registered as a war volunteer and was seriously wounded on July 29, 1917 near Langemark . After the war, Jünger studied law and camera science in Leipzig and Halle an der Saale . In 1923 he received his doctorate with a thesis on condominium ownership.

Even before completing his legal training as an assessor in May 1926, he began to get involved in journalism in the context of the nationalist fighting leagues, initially above all the Stahlhelm . Although disciple was never himself a member of such an organization, but he wrote for their in Magdeburg appearing weekly standard , as well as in Munich and Berlin laid Arminius , the time, the NSDAP was close to. His first book was also published in this context: it is an attempt at a national revolutionary manifesto based on the Marxian model ( Aufmarsch des Nationalismus 1926).

In 1928 Jünger followed his older brother to Berlin, where he and Ernst von Salomon , Friedrich Hielscher , Arnolt Bronnen , Rudolf Schlichter , Alexander Mitscherlich and others together. a. belonged to a 'nationalist bohemian '. This scene also maintained interesting contacts with the publisher Ernst Rowohlt and the intellectual 'left', including Bernard von Brentano and Bertolt Brecht . In Berlin, Jünger continued to write for various papers on the national revolutionary spectrum, including Der Vormarsch des Kapp -Putschist Hermann Ehrhardt , Resistance. Journal for national revolutionary politics of the former councilor socialist and social democrat Ernst Niekisch and the realm of the religiously oriented liberation nationalist Friedrich Hielscher (not to be confused with Goebbels' newspaper Das Reich, which appeared in 1940 ). Friedrich Georg Jünger reached a wider public through his numerous articles for the Berlin daily newspaper Der Tag , which belonged to the Scherl publishing house and thus to the Hugenberg Group . The greatest attention was paid to a polemic against Thomas Mann , who then prompted Ludwig Haas to write a reply in his renowned magazine Die literäre Welt . Jünger's radical rejection of the parliamentary system of the Weimar Republic was fueled by the extremely harsh peace conditions of the Paris suburb treaties , which in his view the parties had no adequate concept to counter. Its political radicalization also dates back to 1923, largely due to the French occupation of the Ruhr area and the general culmination of the crisis with high inflation, separatist uprisings, hunger riots and unemployment. Based on Lenin's theory of imperialism , he assumed that the First World War in the “final battle of imperialism ” was only the first phase in a series of global conflicts. In the age of globalization , according to Jünger, there are no longer any areas of retreat: “Those who no longer want to rule are dominated. There is no state of disengagement ”(“ Aufmarsch des Nationalismus ”, 1926). Against this background, he understood his journalistic - also lyrical - work as a contribution to the intellectual rearmament of a defeated and economically exploited country: Germany was to be transformed into a revolutionary "nationalist state" without parties based on the model of a technocratic army organization, based on communist techniques of seizure of power, which should focus entirely on the technical and ideological armament for the coming war for the resources of the earth. Friedrich Georg Jünger was still as Ernst Jünger and Ernst Niekisch, strongly oriented towards the Soviet model: your knowledge they do not respect the last of which was founded in Berlin in 1932 at the instigation of the Soviet embassy " Arplan ", the "Association for the Study of the planned economy " where they u. a. met Karl August Wittfogel and Georg Lukács .

Jünger initially rejected National Socialism, which came to power in 1933 , as the perfection of democracy, as too “bourgeois” and provincial, especially since the rhetoric of the new rulers had at the beginning boldly focused on a peace policy and a restriction to Germany. The ideological opposition was linked to an elite consciousness inspired by Nietzsche, which had to reject National Socialist conformity as a technique of massing. The elegy Der Mohn , published in 1934, contains, among other things, the distich : “The noise echoes painfully in my ears, the reeling resists me / Resists the loud screaming that is called enthusiasm.” This and other of his poems were widely used - in the country itself as in exile - interpreted as a criticism of the National Socialist regime; therefore the Gestapo Berlin opened a file on Jünger, which, surprisingly, remained largely unmolested. His publisher Ernst Niekisch, on the other hand, was arrested with the whole family in 1937 and his publishing house was smashed after the magazine resistance had been banned in 1934. Jünger was able to transfer some of his books published by Niekisch to the Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt in Hamburg and continue to publish them, although he was never a member of the Reichsschrifttumskammer . In view of the social practice of the National Socialist system, he revised his national revolutionary position in order to arrive at a conservative criticism of culture and civilization. Based on this, he interpreted National Socialism even before the Second World War as a representative of a radical, technophile and rationalistic modernity that compensated for its loss of transcendence and meaning through “illusions of technology”. The treatise of the same name, completed in autumn 1939, only appeared after the war under the new title “ The Perfection of Technology ” (1946), because the Hanseatic Publishing House initially did not want to risk the publication of the font.

After frequent changes of location in the 1930s, Jünger finally settled in Überlingen on Lake Constance in 1941 . During this time, Martin Heidegger also sought contact with him, which resulted in a lasting connection and occasional collaboration. Heidegger's later “question about technology” was influenced by Jünger's technology criticism, which was circulating as a copy and print proof during the war . Jünger countered the claim of the politicized and technologized National Socialist society to total control over the individual person, especially under the particularly severe conditions of the German war economy, by referring back to the apparently distant "myth" that was at the center of his essayistic and literary work in the early 1940s moved. In leisure, in purposeless handling of the muses , in play too, a district was to be preserved against the rationalistic grasp of modernity, which could basically keep the possibility of human regeneration open.

Jünger continued the cultural criticism developed in and against National Socialist society after 1945, as he did not interpret the previous twelve years as a “break in civilization”, but rather as a symptom of the negative potential of modern civilization in general. Herbert Marcuse ("Some Social Consequences of Modern Technology", 1941) and James Burnham ("The Managerial Revolution", 1941) in the USA saw this in a similar way ; Jünger, Marcuse and Burnham anticipated the findings of the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman (“Dialectic of Order”, 1992) in many ways. In the post-war years, Friedrich Georg Jünger's criticism of technology triggered the first major debate in West Germany about the mechanization of the living environment. His “Perfection of Technology” must therefore be discussed as an important founding document of the more recent conservative criticism of technology, as it has been for some time , even before Max Horkheimer's and Adorno's “ Dialectic of Enlightenment ” and Heidegger's “Question about Technology”.

Jünger's authorship after the Second World War is characterized by an awareness of tradition, but also strives for formal innovation in poetry. His theoretical considerations on this (“Rhythm and Language in German Poems”, 1952) were u. a. also critically received by Johannes R. Becher in the GDR . He achieved success above all through his narrative prose, which only started to become visible in the 1950s. In addition to numerous stories, there are two autobiographies and three novels. A transmission of Homer's “ Odyssey ” based on the rhythm of speech is also worth mentioning . His essay writing after the war remains committed to a conservative cultural criticism ; His study "The Perfect Creation", published in 1969, is a particularly interesting critique of an absolutization of the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution . At the beginning of the 1970s, Jünger founded the journal Scheidewege together with the engineer and essayist Max Himmelheber , which must be described as the first relevant forum for ecological access and thinking about sustainability in Germany. Co-editor was Jürgen Dahl , who edited the magazine and contributed a column on horticulture and ecology.

In the post-war period, Friedrich Georg Jünger was a prominent author and received numerous honors. When the literary situation in West Germany changed permanently in the 1960s , the author gradually seemed to be forgotten. Since the 1990s, however, there has been a growing interest in a. was reflected in translations of his texts into Italian, Russian and Polish.

Honors

Works

(The year of publication of the first edition and of any revised new editions are given in brackets.)

  • The Deployment of Nationalism (1926), published again in 2010 as a facsimile
  • War and Warriors , in: Ernst Jünger : War and Warriors (1930), pp. 51–67.
  • Theseus in disguise , comedy in five acts (1934)
  • Poems (1934/35)
  • The war , poems (1936)
  • About the comic (1936/48)
  • The Taurus , poems (1937/43)
  • The Missouri , Poems (1940)
  • Letters from Mondello (1943)
  • Hikes on Rhodes (1943)
  • Greek gods (1943)
  • The Titans (1944)
  • The west wind. A volume of poetry (1946)
  • Perfection of technology (1946/49/53/93), now: Frankfurt am Main 2010 (8), ISBN 978-3-465-02636-5
  • The Silberdistelklause , poems (1947)
  • The vineyard house , poems, (1947)
  • The string of pearls , poems (1947)
  • Greek Myths (1947/1957), now: Frankfurt am Main 2001 (5), ISBN 978-3-465-03141-3
  • Orient and Occident , Essays (1948/1966), Frankfurt am Main 1966, ISBN 978-3-465-00238-3
  • Talks (1948), Frankfurt am Main 1948, ISBN 978-3-465-00217-8
  • Nietzsche (1949/99), now: Frankfurt am Main 2000 (2) (with an afterword by Günter Figal), ISBN 978-3-465-03053-9
  • Machine and property (1949/53)
  • Poems (1949), Frankfurt am Main 1949, ISBN 978-3-465-00225-3
  • Thoughts and marks , aphorisms (1949)
  • Dalmatian Night , Tales (1950)
  • Green branches. A memory book (1951)
  • Iris im Wind , Gedichte (1952), Frankfurt am Main 1952, ISBN 978-3-465-00226-0
  • Rhythm and language in the German poem (1952/66)
  • The Peacocks and Other Tales (1952)
  • The oriental city , poems (1952)
  • The games. A key to their importance (1953), Frankfurt am Main 1953, ISBN 978-3-465-00228-4
  • Language and Calculus (1953)
  • Thoughts and marks. Second collection of aphorisms (1954)
  • The first course , novel (1954)
  • The white rabbit , short stories (1955)
  • Black river and wind-white forest , poems (1955), Frankfurt am Main 1955, ISBN 978-3-465-00231-4
  • Two sisters , novel (1956)
  • Memory and Remembrance (1957), Frankfurt am Main 1957, ISBN 978-3-465-00234-5
  • Mirror of the years. Memories (1958)
  • Stations of the Cross , Stories (1961)
  • Language and Thinking (1962), Frankfurt am Main 1962, ISBN 978-3-465-00235-2
  • Return , Stories (1965)
  • There is a knock at the door , Gedichte (1968), Frankfurt am Main 1968, ISBN 978-3-465-00239-0
  • The perfect creation. Nature or science? (1969), Frankfurt am Main 1969, ISBN 978-3-465-00241-3
  • Laura and Other Tales (1970)
  • The Doctor and His Time (1970)
  • Heinrich March , Roman (1979), Frankfurt am Main 1970. ISBN 978-3-465-00556-8
  • Homer's Odyssey (1979)
  • In the deep granite. Postponed Poems (1983)

literature

  • Ulrich Fröschle : Friedrich Georg Jünger and the 'radical' spirit. Case study on literary radicalism of the interwar period . Dresden: Thelem, 2008 (Kulturstudien; 6), 658 pp. ISBN 978-3-939888-16-1
  • Volker Beismann: Searching for traces in the labyrinth. Political journalism in the early works of Friedrich Georg Jünger. Bonn: Stage 1995 (= eleventh stage)
  • Ulrich Fröschle: Friedrich Georg Jünger (1898–1977). Annotated directory of his writings. Marbach am Neckar: German Schiller Society 1998. ISBN 3-929146-88-6
  • Andreas Geyer: Friedrich Georg Jünger. Work and life . Vienna and Leipzig: Karolinger Verlag 2007. ISBN 978-3-85418-121-7
  • Ralf Heyer: "The machine is not a god who gives happiness". Skepticism of progress and ecological visions in the work of Friedrich Georg Jünger. Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verl. 2000. ISBN 3-89821-068-5
  • In the midst of this world of destruction. Friedrich Georg Jünger's correspondence with Rudolf Schlichter, Ernst Niekisch and Gerhard Nebel , ed. v. Ulrich Fröschle u. Volker Haase. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta 2001. ISBN 3-608-93163-5
  • Anton Heinz Richter: A thematic approach to the works of FG Jünger. Berne u. Francfort / M .: Lang 1982. (= European university studies; Ser. 1; 467) ISBN 3-261-04943-X
  • Michael E. Sallinger: Paths and branches. Reflections on Ernst Jünger, Friedrich Georg Jünger, Martin Heidegger, Gottfried Benn, Carl Schmitt, Erhart Kästner and Armin Mohler. Innsbruck u. a .: Studien Verl. 2002. ISBN 3-7065-1758-2
  • Fred Slanitz: Economy, Technology, Myth. Friedrich Georg Jünger thinking. Würzburg: Ergon 2000. ISBN 3-933563-81-X
  • Titan technology. Ernst and Friedrich Georg Jünger on the technical age , ed. v. Friedrich Strack. Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann 2000. ISBN 3-8260-1785-4
  • Lovis Maxim Wambach: Border Crosser Between Jurisprudence and Literature. Werner Krauss, Kurt Tucholsky, Friedrich Georg Jünger and Martin Beradt. Baden-Baden: Nomos-Verl.-Ges. 2000. ISBN 3-7890-6512-9
  • Daniel Morat: From action to serenity. Conservative thinking with Martin Heidegger, Ernst Jünger and Friedrich Georg Jünger. Göttingen: Wallstein 2007.
  • Herbert Holstein, Rainer Drewes: Younger roots in Bramsche. In: "Osnabrücker Land 2009", home yearbook of the KHB-Osnabrücker Land 2009. ISSN  1618-5757 .
  • Henner Reitmeier: A real poet . A portrait. In: Die Brücke 152, 3/2009.
  • Jörg Magenau: Brothers under the stars: Friedrich Georg and Ernst Jünger; a biography , Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2012, ISBN 978-3-608-93844-9

Correspondence

  • Friedrich Georg Jünger: Letters to Sophie Dorothee and Clemens Podewils . In: Sinn und Form , issue 1/2006, pp. 43–59.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ kulturkreis.eu: 1953-1989 sponsorship awards, honorary gifts  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed April 1, 2015)@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.kulturkreis.eu  
  2. ↑ Office of the Federal President
  3. ↑ Here also online nachlesbar, accessed 20 June 2012

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Younger, Friedrich Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German poet, narrator and essayist
DATE OF BIRTH September 1, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH 20th July 1977
Place of death Überlingen