Fantasies of Friendship: Ernst Jünger and the German Right’s Search for Community in Modernity By Eliah Matthew Bures A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Martin E. Jay, Chair Professor John F. Connelly Professor David W. Bates Spring 2014 Copyright © 2014 By Eliah Matthew Bures All rights reserved Abstract Fantasies of Friendship: Ernst Jünger and the German Right’s Search for Community in Modernity By Eliah Matthew Bures Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Martin E. Jay, Chair This dissertation argues that ideas and experiences of friendship were central to the thinking of German radical conservatives in the twentieth century, from the pre-WWI years to the emergence, beginning in the 1970s, of the New Right. I approach this issue by examining the role of friendship in the circle around the writer Ernst Jünger (1895-1998). Like many in his generation, Jünger’s youthful alienation from a “cold” bourgeois society was felt via a contrast to the intimacy of personal friendship. A WWI soldier, Jünger penned memoirs of the trenches that revealed similar desires for mutual understanding, glorifying wartime comradeship as a bond deeper than words and a return to the “tacit accord” that supposedly marked traditional communities. After 1933, Jünger turned from a right-wing opponent of democracy into a voice of “spiritual resistance” to the Nazi regime. For Jünger and other non-Nazi Germans, friendship was a crucial space of candid communication and nonconformity to the norms of the Third Reich. Jünger’s writings from these years also issued coded signals to sympathetic readers to keep alive conservative values for a post-Nazi future. After WWII, Jünger became one of Germany’s most controversial figures, a critic of modernity who was at the center of a friendship network that joined the veterans and heirs of Weimar’s radical right into a counterculture opposed to what they believed was the decadence of German life. In Jünger’s later works, he portrayed friendship as the last true site of community, an idea that shaped the elitist attitudes of new members of the German right. I use published texts and letters alongside new archival material to make two broad contributions. First, by investigating friendship among twentieth-century German radical conservatives, I bring to light the important work that friendship has done for those facing quintessentially modern problems like alienation and social fragmentation. I argue that the work of friendship for figures like Ernst Jünger has primarily been the provision of needs for affirmation, communication, and mutual understanding. Recognizing these needs helps us see that anxieties about being understood, longings for fellowship, and concerns for the quality of interpersonal relationships have often underlain radical conservatism’s explicit ideas about, say, the virtues of “organic” community or the perils of democratic leveling. I show how these needs and anxieties were closely bound up with the radical conservative 1 critique of modernity, including its elitism, ultra-nationalism, and disdain for mass society and mass culture. It is through friendship, I argue, that German radical conservatives have understood the shortcomings of modern life and envisioned ways to overcome or cope with modernity. My second contribution is methodological. The study of friendship, I argue, can uncover emotional needs and intimate states of mind that are otherwise difficult for the historian to bring to light. Examining friendship among twentieth-century radical conservatives provides fundamental insights into motives, helping us understand why certain emotional demands were felt at certain moments in German history, and how these emotions in turn drove the decision for particular ideological positions. Asking these questions of the German radical right offers a fresh angle on a group usually dealt with through a reductive focus on cultural pathologies and formal ideology. Taking Ernst Jünger and his many friends and interlocutors as a case study, I provide a rich biographical historicization of German radical conservative thinking as it developed over multiple stages throughout the twentieth century. Stressing recurring needs for communication and mutual understanding, I locate new motives for radical conservative ideas. 2 To Erin and Augie i Table of Contents Acknowledgments.................................................................................................................................iii Chapter 1—Introduction: Friendship, Community, Communication, Modernity.......................1 Chapter 2—Imagined Comrades: Rewriting the Great War, 1914-1925.....................................13 Chapter 3—Friends and Enemies: Weimar Radicalism, 1925-1933.............................................55 Chapter 4—Little Colonies: Friendship and the Inner Emigration, 1933-1945.........................93 Chapter 5—Conclusion: Friendship and Elitist Conservatism After 1945...............................131 Selected References............................................................................................................................164 ii Acknowledgments It is surely one of the blessings of our democratic age that writers no longer need preface their work with servile bows to princes and bishops, and can instead direct their gratitude to where it most belongs. This dissertation would not exist in the form it does— indeed, may not exist at all—if it were not for the generosity and criticism of friends and colleagues. Together they provided me with invaluable support at every stage of the dissertation, and with the fellowship of dark humor about the graduate school experience. It is appropriate that a dissertation on friendship begin by acknowledging those friends to whom the profoundest debts are owed. First and foremost is Ryan Acton, whose encouragement and critical intelligence has done the most to shape this dissertation in countless conversations over the course of nearly four years. My research would not have developed as it has were it not for his constructive criticism. (Ryan’s fine cooking also nourished the writer at multiple points in the dissertation’s latter stages.) A more diffuse but no less profound debt is owed to Tim Anderson, a true Renaissance man, who many years ago provided a tremendous stimulus to my interest in ideas through equally countless conversations over the chessboard, and who has proven one of my most challenging interlocutors ever since. Nick Barr Clingan, my colleague in modern European intellectual history, has been a fantastic source of insights, support, and advice ever since I met him in our first graduate seminar ten years ago. His absence from Berkeley has been felt these last years. Simon Grote, another magnanimous friend and intellectual historian who left Berkeley too soon, has offered more encouragement along the way than he probably realizes. Ryan, Tim, Nick, and Simon have also been unfailingly generous in their willingness to read my work, for which I am grateful. At Berkeley, I have benefitted from conversations with an extraordinarily talented group of young historians. At the risk of forgetting others, I feel compelled to mention Joe Bohling, Stephen Gross, Mark Sawchuk, Daniel Immerwahr, Andrew Mamo, Chad Denton, Hannah Murphy, Alexis Peri, Victoria Smolkin-Rothrock, Julian Saltman, Robert Nelson, Nu-anh Tran, Siti Keo, Noah Strote, Ben Wurgaft, and Chris Shaw. Though not a historian, Alvin Henry has also been a great source of advice and support. It was a great privilege to write this dissertation under the guidance of Martin Jay, whose rigor and ingenuity as an intellectual historian has been a tremendous source of inspiration. I have always admired his charitableness in dealing with figures, like Ernst Jünger, who are far from his sensibility and theoretical commitments. To the extent that I manage to approach Jünger in a way both critical and fair-minded, it is thanks to his example. David Bates—another model of rigor and ingenuity in intellectual history—was helpful in pushing me to think about the problems that friendship addresses in different historical moments, and about how Jünger’s own project changed from one stage to the next. He also prompted me to think about the dissertation’s structure and framing at a time when I was lost in the weeds. John Connelly has provided me with much sage advise at several points about the academic job market, and about how to make my work speak to other historians. Many other scholars have provided advice and inspiration along the way. Carl Strikwerda, Norman Saul, and William Keel at the University of Kansas nurtured my early efforts at serious historical work and supported my desire to pursue graduate studies. Elliot Neaman and Thomas Friese shared their knowledge of Jüngeriana and were marvelous collaborators on a side project which bore additional fruit in this one. Tom Brady encouraged me, years ago, to bring more “grace and verve” into my writing—an offhand iii remark that I have tried to take seriously. Members of the BTWH and Der Kreis working groups provided welcome community while this project was being written, as well as many perceptive criticisms. I am also grateful to Tim Anderson and Katharina Heidenfelder for their assistance translating several tricky German passages.