Ernst Jünger was a highly-decorated soldier during the first World War, fighting on the German side. His wrote about his experiences in a memoir called Storms of Steel, which I reviewed here.
In 1938, Jünger published his other famous book, On the Marble Cliffs. It’s about the protagonist observing an evil leader taking over his country and is obviously an allegory of the Nazis who were taking over Germany at the time. I will not be able to write a more thoughtful review than this one by Daniel Böttger.
There is one addition I’d like to make to Böttger’s review. I think he omitted it because to him, it’s too obvious: On the Marble Cliffs is an extremely German book. Its Germanness doesn’t come so much from its plot, although of course an allegory on Nazism is quite German, but from its esthetics. What the protagonist’s sensory perception focuses on and perceives as beauty is different from what writers with other cultural backgrounds focus on, but similar to what, for example, Hermann Hesse focuses on. Hesse and Jünger were obviously very different authors, but they had the same cultural background. Jünger’s perception of beauty being so very German is important because, as Böttger observes, beauty as a way of dealing with the world’s horrors is the main theme of Marble Cliffs.
Ernst Jünger is not to be confused with Sebastian Junger, a contemporary American writer who also writes about war.
Nehaveigur 