Ernst Jiinger
Talk by Erich Heller
Before 1939 Ernst Jiinger had come to be regarded as the spokesman of a nihilistic generation in Germany who felt that the experience of war had given the lie to all traditional beliefs and ideals. His work illustrates, says Professor Heller, a typically Germanic perversity of the spirit. Yet when, in 1939, he published On the Marble Cliffs it was immediately suppressed by Hitler's censors, who rightly regarded it as an attack on the regime. His more recent work seems to suggest that Jiinger has abandoned his former heroic nihilism.