Correspondence and afterlife. The letter archive of Ernst Jünger

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Detlev Schöttker
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature)
• Term: from 2015 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 276099345

Upon his death, Ernst Jünger left a copious, systematically assembled letter archive containing 130,000 documents. There are approximately 90,000 letters to the author, coming from about 5,000 writers and approximately 40,000 letters that were written by the author and which still exist in transcripts or copies. The letter archive is part of Jüngers literary legacy contained in the German Literature Archive in Marbach (DLA). Here the correspondence is recorded in a database according to sender, addressee, date, and subject matter. The letters are searchable online and available for use on-site. Due to the sheer volume of Jüngers correspondence and their inclusion, mention or quotation in his diaries and autobiographical writings, the letter archive has become a component and kind of documentary substructure of the author's opus. In the 20th century Ernst Jünger played a significant role as a political activist, as a literary witness, and as a person to turn to for various people. For this reason, his letter archive is an extremely valuable source for both literary and contemporary history. As a continuation of my work in recent years I would like to explain the epistolary activities of Jünger, the use of letters in his work and the conception of his letter archive in a monograph. An edition of selected correspondence will accompany the monograph to elucidate the source value of the letter archive. The correspondence that has hitherto been edited and widely cited in research literature makes up just 5% of the portfolio. Further publication and the creation of a catalogue of correspondence (which will presumably take decades to complete) would not be sufficient to explain Jüngers epistolary communication and the conception of his letter archive. There is a clear need for further and more extensive opus- and archive-related studies to supplement the existing research which barely scratches the surface. The aim is to show the way Jüngers postal activities were supposed to build networks and to distribute his writings while the letter archive was intended to be a basis for his presence in posterity. Jünger thus becomes the representative of a new form of authorship which probably resulted from a reaction to the establishment of literary archives in Modernism (following precursors in the 18th and 19th century): the author as archivist. The intention is to use Jüngers letter archive as an example of a consciously written collection of texts for posthumous reception, thus illustrating paradigmatically a phenomenon of modern literature. The monography focuses on the epistolary and documentary character of Jüngers key works from Storm of Steel to Siebzig verweht, on the communicative purposes of postal activities and on the explanation of selected correspondence to demonstrate the significance of Jüngers letter archive and of its source value.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants