Ernst Jünger was born on March 19, 1895, in Heidelberg, Germany, the son of a pharmacist. He attended private schools in Saxony until the age of 17 or 18, when he ran away to join the French Foreign Legion. His father quickly retrieved him, but in 1914, he volunteered for duty the same day that Kaiser Wilhelm ordered troop mobilization. When World War I began, he was sent to the Western front with the 73rd Fusiliers. He kept diaries while in the trenches from 1915 to 1918, and in 1920 published his first book, Stahlgewittern, based on them.
Jünger was drawn to extremist groups, both right and left wing. In 1923, he published an article in the newspaper of the Nazi party, Volkischer Beobachter, in which he argued for dictatorship and revolutionary nationalism, but he did not join the party despite repeated invitations. His short novel On the Marble Cliffs, published in 1939, was viewed as an anti-Nazi work, but Jünger, back in the army, faced no repercussions. He spent the war as a captain, mainly in Paris, where he made friends with leading artistic and cultural members of society.
Jünger published two books in 1949, Radiations, which contained his war diaries, and Heliopolis, a novel dealing with the rivalry between populist and elitist factions.
In 1950, he removed to a house near Wiflingen, where kept writing into his 90's. He died at the age of 102, on February 17, 1998, survived by his second wife and first son.
From the guide to the Ernst Jünger Papers (MS 381), 1966-1975, (University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries. Special Collections Dept.)
