Ernst Jünger and the German Youth Movement

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to showcase the powerful influence of the Youth Movement on the works of Ernst Jünger, who himself was a member of the Wandervogel and whose first published piece is a poem about the scout’s life on the road. In his later, mature journalistic and fictional works one can notice a critical distance to the Youth Movement ideology and ethos. The novel Afrikanische Spiele ridiculed and depicted them as untrustworthy, a kind of costume for the youth to dress up in when they want to rebel against their parents and educators. As an alternative solution Jünger – in his nationalistic phase (1925–1933) – postulated “severe male breeding” as well as order and discipline which can only be provided by harsh, collective physical labour towards the welfare of the country. In his later phase, under the Third Reich, he found that the only alternative to middle-class life was what he considered to be “life in the middle of a landscape of fire,” as expressed, e.g., through taking part in secret, autonomous male societies.