Warrior or Esthete? Reflections on the Junger Reception in France and Germany

Abstract

When ErnstJiQnger won the Goethe Prize in 1982, he became an object of sustained attack for the liberal press in Germany, which saw in him a symbol for the conservative Wende that had just brought Kohl and the Christian Democrats back to power after the only tenure of social democracy the nation had ever experienced.' It seemed impossible that a relic from a past age, a glorifier of the Prussian military and an early exponent of the fascist state, could receive the most prestigious award in German cultural life. In tact, most people were surprised to know that the author was still alive. Measured solely in terms of circulation, Jiinger is a minor writer, whose books are published in the tens, not in the hundreds of thousands like Grass, Enzensberger, or Lenz. Across the Rhine, however, Juinger is celebrated and spoken of with reverence across the political spectrum. Chic postmodernist intellectuals drop his name and the most in-tune professors of literature would not consider initiating their students into contemporary German literature without having them read a title from the grand ecrivain allemand.2 At the level of state, Juinger plays the role of a kind of unofficial reconciler between France and Germany. Mitterand personally invites him to breakfasts in the Elysee, and the war hero and last surviving bearer of the pour le merite is constantly invited to openings of museum