Ernst Jünger and the "New Nationalism" - V. Plenkov
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E. Junger combined amazing qualities - he was a legendary front-line soldier and the most famous and brilliant writer of the period of the Weimar Republic. He went to the front almost as a boy, was somewhat wounded, distinguished by incredible composure and courage, after one of the wounds he was sent to officer courses. Being already a lieutenant, for one of the combat episodes he received a rather rare highest Prussian military order Pour le Mérite. In the history of the holders of the order, it was said that during the entire war only 14 lieutenants received it, of which two became famous military men - Generals Rommel Scherner, and one writer - E. Junger. It was quite a rarity that the legendary hero - a front-line soldier became a brilliant writer after the war, usually people have someone quality. Initially, he wrote mainly about the war - his most famous story "In Storms of Steel" in the 20-30s. was constantly on the bestseller lists. In the Weimar Republic, it was second in total circulation after Mann's Buddenbrooks. The style and spirit of Jünger's front-line prose was diametrically opposed in spirit and meaning to Remarque's famous novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” and his other books about the war. Remarque in our country was quite popular in the 60-80s, it was translated a lot into Russian (unlike Jünger: there are still no books of his in Russian). What Remarque wrote was an intellectual reflection of a generation weary of memories and talks about the war, and not a living experience and real experience of the war, the spirit and values of which the front-line soldiers lived for four years, during which many millions of them laid down their lives .The spirit and style of Jünger's books about the war had the same effect on the public as good Soviet prose about the Great Patriotic War once did - such concepts as camaraderie, military duty, honor, selflessness, a huge strain of spiritual and physical strength of soldiers in the name of great goals - all these topics cannot be ignored for the sake of pacifism, since people fought, risked their lives and aspired to high goals. Junger's prose, like the aforementioned Soviet military prose, aroused patriotism, the pride of soldiers who honestly and completely fulfilled their duty to their homeland, aroused a romantic attitude towards the war. André Gide , first reading in 1942, "In Steel Thunderstorms", left such a review about her: "This book by Ernst Junger about the war that I have ever read is absolutely reliable, honest, truthful and open." In addition to the named story, Jünger had several other excellent books about the war. The romance of war, the monstrous strain of a person’s moral strength, the romance of overcoming difficulties, the romance of the heroic in Junger after the war turned into political romance: the relationship between romance and the “new nationalism” that Junger professed is absolutely obvious, Junger himself recognized the famous German romantics as his spiritual forerunners Novalis, Hölderlin, Kleist. Some romantic exaggeration of the experience of the war and its significance was common to Ernst Junger. Following Nietzsche, Junger was convinced that war is the most natural manifestation of human life, without war stagnation and degeneration begin to prevail, only in war can the German people be renewed and gain momentum. With Jünger, war, in addition, often acted as an art that should bring aesthetic pleasure. Therefore, Jünger did not see eternal peace in the future, but a permanent state of war. The fact that the improvement of technology could lead to great catastrophes did not bother him, on the contrary, the grandeur of the wars of the future inspired him. Jünger was convinced that future wars would be wars of material resources, in which the "power" of fire, as well as the power of large masses of military equipment. Jünger unexpectedly combined a high degree of romantic enthusiasm and enthusiasm with a good literary style, simple language, brevity, which always ensured his great success (not only in Germany, but also in other European countries, especially in France). Junger was able to create a heroic image of a front-line soldier, free from ridiculous old-fashioned nationalism and patriotism, and that is why it had a charming and dangerous effect on young people capable of romantic inspiration.
In his spiritual and mental make-up, Ernst Junge is a non -conformist, his life motto is given as an epigraph to this section. For this reason, and also because of the undeservedly difficult conditions of the Carthaginian Peace of Versailles, Jünger during the years of the Weimar Republic was in opposition to the "system", was for some time in a volunteer corps, then actively acted as a publicist in the right-wing radical magazine Kommenden, then tried to complete the education of a botanist , but eventually became a writer, and in the political sphere turned to the development of the theory of "new nationalism", the purpose of which was the revival of the national greatness of Germany. In 1931, in the preface to the 13th edition “In the rest of the storms,” he wrote, “We have lost a lot, maybe everything. But one thing will remain with us forever: grateful memories of you, a brilliant army, and the powerful struggle that you waged. To preserve these memories in times without conscience and without honor is the duty of everyone who not only fought for the great future of Germany with his weapons, but was also ready to give his life for this holy goal.
As a staunch enemy of the "system", Jünger was highly desirable on the side of one radical party or another, but he, as a staunch nonconformist, shied away from it. Goebbels really wanted to influence the writer in the Nazi spirit, although he was very jealous of his literary fame (especially since he peed himself, even published a novel, however, not very popular). On the other hand, Karl Radek wrote that bringing Jünger to the side of the communists is much better than getting a majority in elections. And although Junger was at one time close to the most radical direction of the "conservative revolution" -nationalist-revolutionary, he did not succumb to communist agitation either. After 1933, Jünger resolutely said his "no" to the Third Reich, despite the threat to life and freedom, refused honorary membership in the Prussian Academy of Fine Arts (this was a serious political demonstration), often behaved defiantly and survived, apparently thanks to the intercession of Hitler, who ordered not to touch the war veteran. Jünger cannot be considered an uncompromising opponent of Nazism: initially, Hitler made an extraordinary impression on him. During the Second World War, Junger served for some time on the Eastern Front, then at the staff of the German command in France, where he wrote the anti-war essay "Peace", under the influence of which the most famous German general of the Second World War, E. Rommel, joined the movement on June 20, 1944. In the final stage of the war, Jünger's works were not published in Germany. After the war, he was actively engaged in journalism. Jünger still lives in the Swabian village of Wilfinger, a living testament to a turbulent era in German history. In 1995, the German public celebrated the 100th anniversary of his birth.
As a publicist for the "conservative revolution", Jünger was heavily influenced by Nietzsche and Spengler. The journalistic work that made the greatest impression on the German public was the 1932 book "Worker". Nietzschean, Sorelian and Spenglerian motifs permeate this book, and consequently, all the same struggle against bourgeoisness, rationalism and humanism. Jünger proceeded from the fact that world history has entered a phase of violent conflicts, the winner in this struggle will be a hard and selflessly working person, no matter where he does it, at the machine tool, or in the trenches at the front. The consequence of this logic was the cult of technology, work, plan. Jünger's worker was different first of all, an indefatigable thirst for work, this is not a proletarian, but an industrial superman. Jünger's book "The Worker" is just as strongly filled with the pathos of industrial modernization, as well as the works of Soviet publicists of the same time; It was no accident that Karl Radek saw the image of Lenin in the Junger worker. The communists wanted to consider this famous book by Jünger their own political literature. From The Worker, as well as from his other works it followed that E. Junger understood the main task of the "conservative revolution" as the elimination of the parliamentary form of government. Capitalism, on the one hand, and real socialism in the USSR, on the other, Junger, like Spengler, opposed national socialism, interpreted as a community of interests of the entire nation, but if Spengler ignored the proletariat, then Junger spoke on its behalf. In The Worker, created under the significant influence of Georges Sorel, Jünger wrote about the technization and modernization of labor, about the emergence of a new labor aristocracy, like a trench aristocracy, transferring the combat pathos of front-line soldiers to the production process. Rabochy proclaimed the end of the bourgeois era and the emergence of a national, social, imperial and totalitarian state.
The social type of the worker was defined by Junger differently than in Marxism - not on economic grounds, but exclusively from value, moral positions. Jünger did not at all take into account the immediate need of the workers; social position and society did not play any role for him. According to Jünger, a “worker” is a member of the simple human race who feels at home in the world of machines and technology. E. Jünger connected the approval of the worker with the creation of a new Germany. The German historian K. Sonteimer was right when he wrote that Jünger’s “worker” was inspired by Marxist dialectics: “The era of the bourgeoisie will be followed by the era of the worker, the free-market economy and bourgeois political compromises will be followed by the era of authoritarian domination and planning. All nationalists in the end, they revered more the radicalism of the communists than the "diluted" socialism of a democratic orientation.
In the figure of the "worker" E. Junger, a deep inner connection is revealed between the trench experience of the First World War and the new nationalism. Junger - a soldier of the war - the figure of the "worker" seemed the noblest personification of Prussian discipline, the victory of the spirit over the flesh. This new man - "worker", according to Jünger, is able to independently arrange life and take power, slipping from the hands of the bourgeoisie. With the advent of the "worker" (heroic warrior and selfless worker), the bourgeois age is over, there is no more room for bourgeois individualism, individual countries have turned into construction sites, the labor plan on which is more important than constitutions. With sympathy, E. Junger wrote that in some countries judges are condescending to murder, but sentenced to death for failure to fulfil the five-year plan or for the creation of illegal political organizations. The American researcher of right-wing radical movements during the period of the Weimar Republic, K. von Klemperer, believed that Jünger, with such ideas and with his total rejection of rationalism, occupies a place in European thinking that is close to complete nihilism; The prototype of such a nihilist was first introduced in the famous character of the novel by J.S. Turgenev "Fathers and Sons".
E. Junger attached great importance to integral nationalism, which was one of the most significant points in Junger's worldview. In contrast to the old nationalism, it was called "new nationalism"; "new", according to Jünger, was that if the old nationalism was usually oriented towards the old national cultural values, national sovereignty, then the new nationalism was born during the First World War and defended the need to establish an authoritarian state and implied a corresponding spiritual state of the nation. Junger wrote: "Nationalism is the desire to live for a given nation as for a higher being, whose existence is more important than the life of one person." “New nationalism,” added Ernst Junger’s brother Friedrich Georg, “is the spiritual movement of our time, which opposes the spiritual forces that have influenced the feelings and thinking of the last German generation: liberalism and Marxism.” On the other hand, it is clear that the "new nationalism" had much in common with the old nationalism, and later with racism, as evidenced by the following statement by Friedrich Georg Jünger: “Nationalism has something intoxicating, a wild racial pride, a heroic, powerful perception of life. He has no critical analytical inclinations. He does not strive for tolerance, because life does not know it. He is fanatical, because everything racial is fanatical and unfair. Its values do not need scientific substantiation, since knowledge only weakens the primordial life. The power of spiritual community lies in its justification. Blood commonality does not need to be justified, it is already there, it does not need intellectual justification. Supporters of E. Junger distinguished between "new nationalism" and patriotism, which they considered as a manifestation of liberalism; patriotism, in their opinion, is a disease peculiar to the Wilhelmian era. In contrast to indefinite patriotism, the "new nationalism" set the task of restoring the German authoritarian state, and the front-line soldiers were to play a leading role in this. Although some of the Nazis were also under the influence of Jünger and his associates (The Black Front by Gregor Strasser and other organizations), Jünger resolutely rejected any attempts to link racial doctrine to the "new nationalism": race,
according to Jünger, this is not a biological concept, but a metaphysical one . “A bad race,” Jünger wrote, “can be recognized because it seeks to exalt itself by comparing itself with others, and seeks to humiliate other nations by comparing them with itself.” The distant goal of the "new nationalism" is a nation that would include many peoples, a nation that would overlap the concept of Europe and provide the Germans with a leading role in the world. It is interesting to note that, following the Prussian tradition. Jünger was pro -Russian and considered the anti-Soviet policies of the Nazis to be unintelligent.
Very important for understanding Jünger's work is the concept of "total mobilization". Junger wrote: “Germany would have lost the war anyway, even if she had won the Battle of the Marne, the submarine war, since with partial mobilization a significant part of her forces remained intact, which is why she could only count on partial success, and not on total victory.” In the inevitable, according to Jünger, wars of the future, the total mobilization of society is possible only in a total society that is not divided by parties or classes; war, if it is to be successful, must be waged on a broad base, in contrast to the old bourgeois world. According to Jünger, the October Revolution in Russia is closer to a "conservative revolution" than the Weimar Democracy. In the Russian revolution, Jünger admired the way it was carried out: the constant struggle on the frontiers and within it. But Jünger himself demanded a revolution not of the left and not of the right, but only a fundamental one, from this revolution an “empire of workers” was to be born, tough, rational, who mastered modern technology. “This will be,” wrote Galo Mann, “a new aristocracy, whether it cuts coal or flies an airplane. Dominance over the planet will be determined by the "everyday life of wars", the "battle of material resources", in the end, the whole earth will turn into a single factory planned economy under the shadow of a new merciless chivalry. Down with that which connects with the old bourgeois world, down with or flying a plane. Dominance over the planet will be determined by the "everyday life of wars", the "battle of material resources", in the end, the whole earth will turn into a single factory planned economy under the shadow of a new merciless chivalry. Down with that which connects with the old bourgeois world, down with or flying a plane. Dominance over the planet will be determined by the "everyday life of wars", the "battle of material resources", in the end, the whole earth will turn into a single factory planned economy under the shadow of a new merciless chivalry. Down with that which connects with the old bourgeois world, down with all this museum rubbish with a humanist education, a splashing fountain in the market square and other dokukoy! The coming total state will not need poets, dreamers, romantics, village lindens, discussions, and, of course, democracy.
As a result, it should be stated that Jünger's hypertrophied romance mixed with aestheticism, snobbery, literary fiction, which, however, did not prevent his preaching of "new nationalism" from being interesting for young people, who were especially attracted by the glorious front-line past of Ernst Jünger. Needless to say, the significance of his radical theorizing especially jumped after 1929, when all social processes intensified and began to directly put pressure on the political sphere. Like Andrian Leverkühn, the hero of Mann's "Doctor Faustus", Jünger is ready to make an alliance with even the devil himself, he is ready to plunge into the wildest barbarism, if only to achieve the goal - the rejuvenation of German culture, giving it dynamics, youthful enthusiasm, purposefulness and will. Junger -like people were Antoine de Saint-Exupery, who sought liberation from everyday life in flights, romantic, adventurous and very dangerous enterprises, or Henri Malraux, who, like Sartre, preferred various forms of left-wing radicalism in order to give life a new meaning. E. Junger also had the same property as the famous French people mentioned, non-conformism, aversion to the bourgeoisie, which predetermined his appeal to the "conservative revolution". Jünger remains true to himself to this day, maintaining a strong critical distance even to contemporary German democracy; such stability of views and temperament are worthy of respect and imitation.