Ernst Jünger was one of the first Germans to speak consistently of the period around the end of the Second World War as a Nullpunkt (zero point) in modern history. For Jünger, and for many other German conservatives, the zero of the Nullpunkt implied nothingness and its philosophical counterpart, nihilism: the belief in nothing and no one. In an attempt to describe the basic premise of this world view, the Munich psychologist Philipp Lersch declared in 1947 that nihilism is “the conviction that behind everything that human beings can desire and expect from life stands the cheerless emptiness of absolute absurdity.” Nihilism meant the rejection of a conventional morality based on the existence of a supernatural being — God — and, at an extreme, a glorification of the relentlessly negative spirit articulated by Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust: “I am the Spirit of Eternal Negation.” From the point of view of Mephistopheles, this negation is quite justified, as “all that gains existence/is only fit to be destroyed.” In its nihilistic meaning, the postwar German conception of a Nullpunkt came to imply that the Germany of the “Third Reich” had reached an absolute negation of morality and ultimately, of all existence; and that the troubled nation had embarked upon a path that led, ultimately, to self-destruction. The nadir of self-negation corresponded with national defeat in 1945 and was, hence, a spiritual, military, and political Nullpunkt.