Erich Maria Remarque
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Erich Maria
Remarque
Erich Paul Remark
(1898 - 1970)
German author
Sources: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/remarque.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Maria_Remarque
Early Life
Born on 22 June 1898 in a working-class
family in the German city of Osnabruck
At the age of sixteen or seventeen he made his
first attempts at writing: essays, poems, and the
beginnings of a novel that was finished later and
published in 1920 as The Dream Room
At age 18, Remarque, a third-year student at a
teachers' training college, was drafted into the
German army.
Participation in World War I
November 1916: Drafted into the German Army
Sent to the Western Front (Belgium)
Worked in a support unit behind the lines (laying
barbed wire and building bunkers and dugouts to
fortify gun sites)
July 1917: Wounded by shrapnel in the left leg,
right arm and neck while retrieving an injured
soldier during an attack
Spent the rest of the war recuperating in a
hospital in Germany
All Quiet on the Western Front
•All Quiet on the Western Front was
written in a few months in 1927
•Published in 1929
•Sold 2.5 million copies in twentyfive languages in its first eighteen
months in print.
•The story is narrated in first person
in a cool style, a contrast to patriotic
rhetoric.
Film
In 1930 the book was turned into an
Oscar-winning movie of the same
name.
The film's premiere was disrupted by
Nazi gangs; Remarque was accused
of pacifism. It was not until the 1950s
the film was shown again in West
Germany.
The film was denounced by Goebbels
as anti-German, but the Poles
banned it for being pro-German.
In France it was prohibited until 1962.
Later Life
In 1932 Remarque moved to
Switzerland
In 1933, the Nazis banned and
burned his works
In 1938 Remarque lost his German
citizenship.
In 1939 he emigrated to the United
States, where in 1947 he became a
citizen.
He died on September 25, 1970 in
Switzerland.
Legacy
• With All Quiet on the
Western Front, Remarque
became a spokesman of
"a generation that was
destroyed by war, even
though it might have
escaped its shells," as he
said himself.