All Quiet On The Western Front

Essay on the novel

The Western Front - 1914-1918

Erich Maria Remarque

Born in Osnabrück, Germany on June 22, 1898, Remarque (pronounced Raymark) attended school there and at the University of Munster before being drafted at age 18 into the German Army and served on the Western Front. Wounded five times, Remarque, like his protagonist Paul Baumer, swallowed poison gas and sustained injury to his lungs. Remarque took on several post-war jobs and sandwiched work on a novel in between wage-earning pursuits. Copyrighted as Im Westen Nichts Neues (literally, "In the West Nothing is New," in the language of a military situation report) in 1928, All Quiet on the Western Front was Remarque's first book. Though Nazis burned the book and the film based on it in front of Berlin University in 1933, All Quiet on the Western Front sold more than a million copies in its homeland the first year of publication, followed by millions more when translated and distributed in other nations.

Nazi Germany deprived Remarque of German citizenship in 1938. In 1947 he became a U.S. citizen. He died of heart collapse on September 25, 1970 in Switzerland.

World War I branded an indelible mark on Remarque as man and artist. Each of Remarque's 10 other novels, published posthumously in 1972, dealt with war or its aftereffects. When World War II erupted in Europe in 1939, Remarque told reporters, "I think there is no reason in the whole world for any war...This will not be a war on the front. It will be a war on women and children."

Sources: The New York Times Biographical Edition, Vol. 1, No. 52, December 31, 1970; Jacket Notes for Shadows in Paradise by Remarque, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972; and Random House

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