Ernst Jünger was a German writer best known for Storm of Steel, his memoir of infantry service on the Western Front during the First World War. Drawing on diaries he kept in the field, he described trench routine, raids, and bombardments in a precise, matter-of-fact voice. The book first appeared in German in 1920, and Jünger revised it repeatedly over the course of his career.

Born in Heidelberg, Jünger briefly enlisted in the French Foreign Legion before volunteering for the German army in 1914. He was wounded repeatedly and received the Pour le Mérite. After the war he remained in the army for several years before turning to writing. His early work included nationalist essays as well as books about combat, and he later explored political violence in the allegorical novel On the Marble Cliffs, published in 1939.

Jünger’s later work ranged across fiction, essays, travel writing, and journals. His diaries record his years as a German officer in occupied Paris during the Second World War, while novels such as The Glass Bees turn to the effects of technology on human life. Across these forms, he brought the same close attention to objects, landscapes, and gestures that distinguishes his account of the trenches.