Technology and Total Mobilization in Weimar-era Tensions

Abstract

The present article will examine the role of technology in the “mobilization” of society in the 1930s with regard to the intellectual achievements of thinkers from the so-called conservative revolution. The issue of the relationship between technology and the nascent state will be presented using the works of the German writer Ernst Jünger – in particular his most important treatise, Der Arbeiter. Herrschaft und Gestalt. In his descriptions of the observed political and social changes, Jünger diagnosed the birth of a new order that broke down boundaries between the “mechanical” and the “organic,” and, above all, shattered the principles of the old liberal order. One of the most important authors of the so-called conservative revolution, he captured the profound changes in a world in which the necessity of forced change, e.g. through technology, did not eliminate the space for human freedom. In other words, his concept of “total mobilization” did not predetermine a totalitarian future, but neither did it exclude it; while the form of the changes was dictated by the Gestalt, the Form of Being, its content remained a matter of human choice. Jünger’s considerations will be confronted with those of other authors, such as Walter Benjamin, Werner Sombart or national-socialist writers, which describe the emergence of a new form of state and society, as well as the role of technology in this process.