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The Prophet of German Nihilism—Ernst Juenger

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Extract

Is There a philosophy behind what we call Nazism? Humanists addicted to progress will resent this question as a sacrilege against the dignity of the human spirit. H. J. Laski seems to speak from the heart of the majority of anti-Nazis by refusing to look at Nazism and Fascism as anything else than a spiritless system of oppression in the service of monopolistic capitalism.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1945

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References

1 The writings of krnst Juenger are: Jn Slahlgewittan(Berlin: Mittler & Sohn, 1920).Google ScholarDer Kampf ah inneres Erlebnis (Mittler & Sohn, 1922).Google ScholarDas Waeldchen 125. (Mittler & Sohn, 1925).Google ScholarFener uml Dlul (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlansanstalt, 1926).Google ScholarDas abenleuerliche Herz. (Berlin: Frundsberg Verlag, 1929).Google ScholarDcr Arbeiter (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1932).Google ScholarBlaetter und Steine (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1934).Google ScholarAfrifyanische Spiele (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt. 1936).Google ScholarAitf den Marmorlflippen (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt. 1939)Google Scholar .

2 Der Arbeiler, p. 15–4.

3 Das abenieuerliche Herz, p. 23.

4 Das abenteuerliche Herz. p. 110.

5 Der Arbeiter. p. 131.

6 Das abenteurliche Herz, p. 185.

7 Das ahenleuerliche Herz, p. 189.

8 Auf den Marmorlklippen, p. 110.

9 Ernst Juenger's brother, the poet Friedrich Georg Juenger, has published two volumes of poetry. The Taurus (1939) and Poems (1934). The mood that seems to have inspired the often ravishing beauty of many of these poems, is uncannily identical with that of Ernst Juenger's books. There is the same continuous awareness of a nihilist ground of all existence, the same mystical belief in a new-casting of the world through war and fiery destruction. Man's dignity, his only chance of freedom, appears in these poems as that of an incessant warrior who shuns the consolations of religion or wisdom. “Arson,” the significant title of one of the poems, would be the appropriate heading for the whole. In a poem “Poppy,” Friedrich Georg Juenger condemns, however, in a veiled, but unmistakable manner, the plebeian nature of the Nazi movement.