Ernst Jünger – Pour le Mérite

Original postwar signature on a postwar portrait photo of Ernst Jünger (29 March 1895 – 17 February 1998) – author, philosopher, decorated First World War officer and one of the most influential (and controversial) German writers of the 20th century.

Jünger first became famous for his WWI memoir In Stahlgewittern (Storm of Steel), based on his front-line experience as a stormtroop officer. Wounded numerous times, he was eventually awarded the Pour le Mérite, making him the last surviving recipient of the military class of this order. Between the wars he became a prominent conservative intellectual, critical of liberalism and the Weimar Republic, yet he kept his distance from National Socialism and rejected offers to become a regime figurehead.

During the Second World War he served as an army captain in occupied Paris, where his growing rejection of totalitarianism found expression in works such as Der Friede (The Peace). Dismissed from the army in 1944 after being indirectly linked to the military resistance, he survived the war and went on to publish more than forty books. By the time of his death at the age of 102 he was widely recognised as a major, if often debated, literary and philosophical voice in postwar Germany.

The photograph is a clear postwar image bearing Jünger’s bold, original autograph, making it a desirable piece for collectors of literary, intellectual or German military history memorabilia.