German Literature

Remarque

Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970)

Erich Maria Remarque wrote the most famous novel about World War One in any language: Im Westen nichts Neues (1928/29), All Quiet on the Western Front.

He was born Erich Paul Remark in Osnabrück in 1898. Aged eighteen, he was conscripted and became a soldier on 21 November 1916. In June 1917 he arrived at the Western front in Flanders. On 31 July 1917 he was wounded by a grenade and a shot in the neck; he was treated at a military hospital in Duisburg. He returned to military service on 31 October 1918 and arrived back at the Western Front on 12/13 November 1918, shortly after the Armistice was signed. Later that month, he was awarded the Iron Cross. From 1919-1920 he worked as a schoolteacher in Lohne bei Lingen. His first novel, Die Traumbude (The Dream Booth) appeared in 1920.

In the early 1920s he became a journalist and changed his name to Erich Maria Remarque. Another novel, Station am Horizont (Station at the Horizon), was published in serialised form in 1927-28 in the magazine Sport im Bild, but Remarque made his name with Im Westen nichts Neues / All Quiet on the Western Front. War novels were seen as unprofitable, and the publisher, Ullstein, made Remarque sign a clause promising to reimburse them if sales were poor. The novel was first serialized in November/December 1928 in the Vossische Zeitung; it first appeared in book form in January 1929. It soon became an international bestseller, with over a million copies sold in Germany alone.

Remarque writes a good paragraph. His present-tense narratives are packed full of drama. In 1930, Remarque’s novel was adapated as a Hollywood film, All Quiet on the Western Front, directed by Lewis Milestone, starring Lew Ayres as Paul Bäumer and Louis Wolheim as Stanislaus Katczinsky. The Berlin premiere of the film was disrupted by Joseph Goebbels and a squad of Nazi SA men.

In 1931 Remarque was nominated for the Nobel peace prize and the Nobel prize for literature, but received neither.

Remarque’s first marriage was to Ilse Jutta Zambona, a dancer. He divorced her in 1930 but later remarried her to facilitate her emigration to Switzerland and the USA.

In 1932 Remarque settled in Ascona, Ticino (Tessin), Switzerland. He was stripped of his German citizenship by the Nazis in 1938, and never regained it.

In 1937-40 Remarque was in a relationship with Marlene Dietrich, spending time with her in Paris, Antibes and Beverley Hills.

In August 1943, Remarque’s sister, Elfriede Maria Scholz, née Remark, was arrested by the Nazis and sentenced to death. The judge told her: ‘Ihr Bruder ist uns leider entwischt – Sie aber werden uns nicht entwischen’ (‘Your brother is unfortunately beyond our reach – you, however, will not escape us.’) She was executed by the guillotine in Plötzensee Prison in December 1943.

From 1939-1952 Remarque lived in exile in the USA. After relationships with various Hollywood stars including Greta Garbo and Hedy Lamarr, in 1958 he married the actress Paulette Goddard, the ex-wife of Charlie Chaplin. Remarque and Goddard stayed together and divided their time between Switzerland and New York, until Remarque died from heart problems in 1970. Goddard donated twenty million dollars to New York University, which has a European Studies research centre named after Remarque.

Remarque’s novels include:

Im Westen nichts Neues (1929) All Quiet on the Western Front

Der Weg zurück (1931) The Road Back

Drei Kameraden (1938) Three Comrades

Arc de Triomphe (1946)

Der Funke Leben (1952) Spark of Life

Zeit zu leben und Zeit zu sterben (1954) A Time to Love and a Time to Die

Der schwarze Obelisk (1956) The Black Obelisk

Die Nacht von Lissabon (1962) The Night in Lisbon

English Translations

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, trans. by A.W. Wheen (London: Mayflower Books, 1963)

Erich Maria Remarque, The Road Back, trans. by A.W. Wheen (New York: Ballantine Pub. Group, 1998)

Erich Maria Remarque, Eight Stories: Tales of War and Loss, intro. by Maria Tatar and Larry Wolff, trans. by anonymous [perhaps A.W. Wheen or Denver Lindley] (New York: Washington Mews Books, 2018)