February 1, 2011

Ernst Jünger Biographies - and a review thereof ...

If you don't speak German well enough to read the two Jünger biographies that came out more or less simultaneously in 2007, then here at least is a good English review of Helmuth Kiesel's one, Ernst Jünger. Die Biographie. It is by Eliah M. Bures, Department of History, University of California Berkeley.

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(Mr. Bures will talk about Jünger April 23 in Berkeley as part of the (Re)Making Myths conference. His title: "Leute von Übermorgen und von Vorgestern”: Myth and the Construction of Community in Ernst Jünger’s Postwar Imagination")





P.S. The other 2007 biography is Heimo Schwilk's Ernst Jünger: Ein Jahrhundertleben. Schwilk knew Jünger personally and was an admirer, so this one is more personal and intimate, while Kiesel's is more rigorously academic. Personal acquaintance and sympathy as a advantage in biographers? No comment, but in any case you can guess which I prefered.)

  

P.S.S. Infinitely better than any biography, go to the source and read Jünger yourself! There are far too many people who only know him from secondary sources and thus either respect him or disrespect him for none of their own reasons. If you want to discuss him here, we want you to refer directly to his work! 
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5 comments:

  1. César E.R.February 19, 2011 at 7:18 PM

    Read his work 'Orages d'acier' (cool).
    I've been trying to find Euwesmil as you recommended me, but not possible, it's not on stock anymore in spanish. I'll have to try on the second hand stores... I hope.

    Regards.

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  2. Simon FriedrichFebruary 21, 2011 at 3:00 PM

    Good luck, César! I have a number of copies in English - got them for $10 each on sale at Chapters in Canada. Imagine --- like finding gold getting given away for free.

    But what a sad reflection on the reading public and the book sellers that this bible of wisdom is hardly available at all!

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  3. César E.R.February 21, 2011 at 7:49 PM

    Hallo, Simon.
    I'm beggining to read '2666', the famous novel by Roberto Bolaño, from Chile. At the very begining of the book, one of the characters is a confessed amateur of Jünger. It may interest you. I'm not very sure if Bolaño writes a lot about our friend Ernst, but I'm pretty sure that these lines will interest you.
    May be you already hace knowledge of this fact.

    Tchüss!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Simon FriedrichFebruary 22, 2011 at 12:29 PM

    Thanks for the tip, I did not know. What sort of a character is the admirer of Jünger?

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  5. César E.R.February 22, 2011 at 5:13 PM

    He's a chief of a department of german litterature at a spanish university. He's aswell a translator.
    Jünger just appears as a fiction character and he's mentioned in a little ocassion, like descriptive argument of the novel.

    ReplyDelete

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