Ernst Jünger (1895–1998), Strahlungen II, und Stephen Spender (1909–1995), Deutschland in Ruinen. Doppelporträts und exemplarische Texte

In the organizer's words:

Ernst Jünger took part in the First World War as a volunteer, became an infantry officer and received the German Empire's highest decoration for bravery. His description of trench warfare on the Western Front under the title "In Stahlgewittern", first published in 1920, marked the beginning of his literary career. After leaving the Reichswehr in 1923, Jünger lived as a freelance writer from 1925. He made a name for himself as one of the main representatives of the anti-democratic "Conservative Revolution". Courted by the Nazi regime after 1933, Jünger nevertheless kept his distance. From 1939, Jünger was a soldier again, serving as a German occupation officer in France from 1940, most of the time in Paris, where he also found access to French intellectual circles. He was in contact with the representatives of the German military opposition in the Paris occupation administration without being directly involved in their plans. After the liberation of Paris by Allied forces in the summer of 1944, Jünger returned to his private residence near Hanover, where he witnessed the invasion of the British troops. He continued his diary entries, which were published in 1949 under the title "Radiations".

Born in London, Stephen Spender abandoned his studies at Oxford in favor of his early poetic activity. Together with his friend W. H. Auden (1907-1983), he became one of the leading representatives of the young generation of English-language poets. For a time he belonged to the British Communist Party, from which he later clearly distanced himself. At the end of the 1920s/beginning of the 1930s, Spender spent several long periods in Germany. His knowledge of German was so good that he was able to work as a translator of Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), Georg Büchner (1813-1837), Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) and other German poets. In June 1945, he returned to Germany on behalf of the "Allied Control Commission" and wrote an impressive report on his re-encounter with the completely changed country. He also met Ernst Jünger and wrote about it, while conversely Jünger does not mention Spender by name in the published version of his diaries.

As part of the event series "80 years since the end of the war in Europe"

UNEQUAL WORDS. Victors and vanquished, liberators and liberated in Germany in 1945 - double portraits and exemplary texts

With Dr. Katja Schlenker and Prof. Dr. Winfrid Halder

When in the first months of 1945 the forces of the anti-Hitler coalition, led by the United States of America, Great Britain and the Soviet Union, completely conquered the territory of the then German Reich, finally defeated the German Wehrmacht and crushed the criminal Nazi regime, their soldiers and war correspondents encountered members of a nation at the political and moral low point of its entire history. Conversely, the Germans were confronted with the victors and liberators, most of whom seemed foreign to them after twelve years of dictatorship and widespread isolation. Initial impressions were recorded from both sides, the unfiltered directness of which is still impressive today. They also show that the subsequent path of "Western integration" of at least part of Germany, which was embarked upon with significant help from the USA and which opened the way to democracy and self-determination, was neither self-evident nor easy.

The series presents two people who met each other indirectly, less often directly, and recorded their experiences of the supposed "zero hour".