Эрнст Юнгер - A German Officer in Occupied Paris - The War Journals, 1941-1945

In 1763, the Peace of Paris ended the Seven Years’ War; Prussia retained Silesia.

Frederick II (“the Great”), King of Prussia.

Schwärmen : the root meaning of the verb includes “to swarm, or flock together”; in common usage, it means to dream about, fancy, or be enthusiastic about, and even more strongly, to have a passion for something.

Martin Luther apparently coined this word to designate fanatics, zealots.

Das Käthchen von Heilbronn (1808) is a historical drama; “ Über das Marionettentheater ” [“On the Puppet Theater” (1810)] explores the aesthetic problem of natural grace and self-reflection.

“Butter rations will rise when the portraits of the Führer are unframed,” or when the cream is skimmed off the Führer portraits.” The joke lies in the pun on the word entrahmen , meaning both to remove a picture from its frame [ Rahmen ] and “to skim off the cream [ Rahm ].”

The image refers to the poisonous fish berry, or Indian berry ( Kokkelskörner [ Anamirta cocculus ]).

Reference to carved masks worn by vintners’ guilds during pre-Lenten Carnival processions.

Reference to E. J.’s own book Der Arbeiter. Herrschaft und Gestalt (1932) [ The Worker. Dominance and Form ].

Reference to Max Hattingen.

See Notes from the Caucasus , Kirchhorst, 21 January 1943.

The Shelling of Paris [ Paris-Geschütz ] was a long-distance artillery offensive using the huge new weaponry made by the Krupp firm. Between 12 March and 8 August 1918, Paris was hit by approximately eight hundred shells.

E. J.’s recollection of words he perceived in dreams bears little resemblance to standard communication and thus must be accepted as a highly personal linguistic recombination.

In 1892, the anarchist Ravachol was sentenced to death for murders and a bombing he committed.

Goethe’s Theory of Colors [ Zur Farbenlehre , 1810] describes the perception of the color spectrum, rather than its physical properties.

Cellaris, E. J.’s pseudonym for Ernst Niekisch, was jailed for anti-Nazi resistance in 1937 and, because he was arrested and tried by the police and not by the Gestapo, was sent to a civil prison and not to a concentration camp. He survived the war.

The Convention of Tauroggen, 30 December 1812, was an armistice between the Prussian troops and the Russian army that permitted the Russians to pursue Napoleon’s retreating forces.

See First Paris Journal , Paris, 26 June 1941.

See First Paris Journal , Paris, 12 August 1942.

Reference to Lawrence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1759).

E. J.’s word Sternpilot could also correspond to the modern word “astronaut,” but that would obscure the possibility of a pilot who flies a star.

For this concept, see note to entry of 1 March 1943.

E. J.’s original spelling “Tanzen” recorded incorrectly from memory Alfred C. Toepfer’s estate in Lower Saxony called the “Thansen Hof.”

Munich version: refers to the National Socialist ideology, which was closely associated with the city of Munich where Party headquarters was located.

Die Titanen , poem by Friedrich Georg Jünger, published 1944.

See Notes from the Caucasus , Voroshilovsk, 7 December 1942.

The entire quotation asserts that “One who did not live before 1789 never knew the pleasure of life.”

The dark irony of this phrase is revealed by juxtaposing its terms: soldiers would expect, “To the victorious Wehrmacht from a grateful Party.”

See First Paris Journal , Paris, 22 October 1942.

Tunis fell to the western allies on 12 May 1943. The defeat brought the end to Axis resistance in Africa and the capture of more than 230,000 German prisoners of war.

Der Stürmer : the National Socialist tabloid newspaper known for its virulent propaganda and coarse anti-Semitic and anti-Socialist caricatures.

A quotation from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s drama about tolerance, Nathan der Weise [ Nathan the Wise ] (1779).

This discussion included topics such as the symbolist poet Stefan George and a man who influenced him, the neo-pagan Alfred Schuler, a member of a politically conservative, occult circle, the Blood Beacon, of which the philosopher Ludwig Klages was also a member. Klages wrote a book about George’s poetry in 1902.

César Birotteau (1837), character in a novel of the same name by Honoré de Balzac.

Madame Baret, shopkeeper’s wife with whom Casanova had an affair.

Hitler’s so-called Night and Fog Decree ( Nacht-und-Nebel Erlass ) of 7 December 1941 stipulated that opponents of the regime be arrested and then vanish without a trace. No questions would be answered about a prisoner’s whereabouts. The measure imposed a new level of intimidation on the populace.

This event from 1928–1930 refers to the book by Daniel Floch: Les Oubliés de Saint-Paul on Île Saint-Paul [ The Forgotten Ones on Saint Paul Island ]. The story is of the island in the Indian Ocean where seven workers in the lobster cannery were left to guard the installation, and only three were rescued two years later.

Reference to the accusatory principle, a style of interrogation used in legal proceedings.

E. J. engages here in linguistic mysticism, a subject he had explored in In Praise of Vowels (1934). In this, as in so many speculative passages in his journals, he teases meaning out of word associations. The reference to “Hamann’s H” does not mean the first letter of the philosopher’s name but rather, in Hamann’s philosophy, a silent phonetic sign that connotes secret things—a symbol of the spiritual content of words. E. J. is here attempting to convey the spiritual world that letters embody everywhere (in atoms, in our world, at home.)

Walt and Vult are twin brothers in Jean Paul’s novel, Flegeljahre [ Adolescent Years ] (1804).

Roman emperor who destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE and sacked the temple.

Theodor Fontane, the great novelist of realism in the nineteenth century, descended from Huguenots who emigrated from France to Protestant Prussia in the seventeenth century.

See Notes from the Caucasus , Kirchhorst, 22 January 1943.