Ernst Jünger

Born in Heidelberg in 1895, Ernst Jünger became one of the most striking and controversial voices in 20th-century German literature. As a young man he briefly joined the French Foreign Legion, then volunteered for service in World War I. His experiences at the front shaped the book that made him famous, Storm of Steel, and left a lasting mark on nearly everything he wrote afterward.

Jünger went on to publish more than forty books, working as a novelist, essayist, diarist, philosopher, and entomologist. His writing ranged from war memoir to speculative fiction and cultural criticism, and his reputation has long been bound up with the tensions in his work: admiration for courage and discipline, fascination with technology and modernity, and a deep concern with freedom and spiritual pressure in the modern world.

He lived through both world wars and remained a major literary presence for decades, with works including On the Marble Cliffs and The Glass Bees. Jünger died in 1998 at the age of 102, leaving behind a body of work that is still discussed for its power, difficulty, and unusual view of the last century.