Background

Erich Maria Remarque whose real name was Erich Paul Remark, was born on July 22, 1898, in Osnabrück to Peter Franz Remark and Anna Maria (née Stallknecht).

Education

Erich Maria Remarque attended the Teachers' Training College and afterward the University of Münster.

Career

Toward the end of World War I, Remarque served in the army. After the war he worked variously as a press reader, clerk, and racing driver. The immense success of Im Westen nichts Neues (1929; All Quiet on the Western Front) established him as an author. This novel falls into a clearly distinguishable class of antiwar and antimilitary fiction that grew rapidly in Germany in the later 1920s - Arnold Zweig's Sergeant Grischa is another famous example. These books belong in general to that school known as neorealism and are characterized by a matter-of-fact, unpretentious, often colloquial style approximating the newspaper or magazine report.

Although Remarque conceals little of the squalor and bloodiness of life in the trenches, at the same time there is in this book an undeniable sentimental vein which is maintained strongly right through to the pathetic last pages, in which, following the death of his friend, the hero himself falls 2 weeks before the armistice, on a day when all is reported quiet at the front. This novel was translated into some 25 languages and has sold over 30 million copies.

Remarque continued in a similar vein with another war novel, Der Weg zurück (1931; The Road Back). Drei Kameraden (1937; Three Comrades) deals with life in post-war Germany at the time of the inflation and is also a tragic love story.

By 1929 Remarque had left Germany and from that time lived abroad. The pacifism implicit in his works and their strong sense of pathos and suffering could scarcely endear them to the Nazi government. In 1938, in fact, Remarque was deprived of his German citizenship. In 1939 he arrived in the United States and became an American citizen in 1947. His next novel, Liebe deinen Nachsten (1940), was published in America under the title Flotsam.

After World War II Remarque's productivity increased, and he turned more and more to the study of personal relationships set against a topical background of war and social disintegration. Arc de Triomphe (1946), the story of a German refugee surgeon in Paris just before World War II, reestablished his name in the best-seller lists. His later works include Zeit zu leben und Zeit zu sterben (1954; A Time to Love and a Time to Die), Der schwarze Obelisk (1956; The Black Obelisk), Der Funke Leben (1957; Spark of Life), Der Himmel kennt keine Günstlinge (1961; Heaven Has No Favorites), and Die Nacht von Lissabon (1962; The Night in Lisbon). All these novels are competent and gripping narratives and are skillful stories of personal crisis, escape, adventure, and intrigue. Remarque also had one play produced, Die letzte Station (1956; The Last Station). He died in Locarno, Switzerland, on September 25, 1970.

Achievements

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  Erich Maria Remarque was one of the greatest German writers. Basically, he wrote novels of the military and post-war years. In total, he wrote 15 novels, two of them were published posthumously. The quotes of Remarque are widely known and attract with their accuracy and simplicity. His best-known novel All Quiet on the Western Front (1928), about German soldiers in the First World War, was made into an Oscar-winning film. He also received the Julius Möser Medal in December 1963 and in 1967. Remarque was awarded the Great Cross of Merit which is a class of the Bundesverdienstkreuz.

Works

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  • Eight Stories: Tales of War and Loss

    (From the haunting description of an abandoned battlefield...)

    2018
  • The Black Obelisk

    (A hardened young veteran from the First World War, Ludwig...)

    1956
  • All Quiet On The Western Front

    (In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and...)

    1929
  • Spark of Life

    (For ten years, 509 has been a political prisoner in a Ger...)

    1952
  • The Promised Land

    (Biography of Frank Brown, who founded the town of Friends...)

    1970
  • Flotsam

    (Among the thousands of displaced persons traveling the un...)

    1941
  • The Night in Lisbon

    (With the world slowly sliding into war, it is crucial tha...)

    1962
  • Shadows in Paradise

    (After years of hiding and surviving near death in a conce...)

    1972
  • A Time to Love and a Time to Die

    (After two years at the Russian front, Ernst Graeber final...)

    1954
  • The Road Back

    (After four grueling years, the Great War has finally ende...)

    1931
  • Heaven Has No Favorites

    (Lillian is charming, beautiful... and slowly dying of con...)

    1959
  • Three Comrades

    (The year is 1928. On the outskirts of a large German city...)

    1936
  • Arch of Triumph

    (It is 1939. Despite a law banning him from performing sur...)

    1945
  • Full Circle 1956

Religion

Raised as a Roman Catholic, Erich Maria Remarque developed a love for the beauty of churches and the deep sense of the religious rituals.

Politics

Erich Maria Remarque knew nothing of politics, except, as he said with a smile, that Stresemann was Foreign Minister.

Remarque was criticized by the Nazi Germany government and in 1933 All Quiet on the Western Front and The Road Back were both banned and destroyed by the Nazis.

Views

The main theme of Remarque's works is the problems and experiences of the generation that grew up during the war. The inability to maintain control over the most valuable thing a person has - his own life - creates the need for a change of worldview, the search for new values. That is why, in almost each of his works, Remarque teaches the reader special humility, calls for "go with the flow". And even in adulthood, having known the stability of a peaceful life, having seen the world and becoming acquainted with the social mores of different countries, Remarque could not forget his youthful military impressions. In each of his books, Remarque reveals to readers his thoughts on war, suffering, love, friendship and honor.

Quotations: "Life did not intend to make us perfect. Whoever is perfect belongs in a museum."

"Strange how complicated we can make things just to avoid showing what we feel!"

"Never do anything complicated when something simple will serve as well. It's one of the most important secrets of living."

"Keep things at arm's length... If you let anything come too near you want to hold on to it. And there is nothing a man can hold on to."

"But probably that's the way of the world - when we have finally learned something we're too old to apply it - and so it goes, wave after wave, generation after generation. No one learns anything at all from anyone else."

"I did not want to think so much about her. I wanted to take her as an unexpected, delightful gift, that had come and would go again - nothing more. I meant not to give room to the thought that it could ever be more. I knew too well that all love has the desire for eternity and that therein lies its eternal torment. Nothing lasts. Nothing."

Personality

Erich Maria Remarque is the philanthropist and humanitarian who is deeply concerned about the state of the world, for which he has great compassion and idealism. His broad outlook on life allows Remarque to see the big picture, and to often shy away from dealing with the minute details. That is why Erich Maria Remarque attracts people who can fit into her larger plans and take over the areas he considers uninteresting. He is a true egalitarian, rarely prejudiced and would not accept the social biases of people.

Physical Characteristics: Erich Maria Remarque had fair hair, blue eyes, and sunburnt complexion.

Interests

• music, antique collecting, eastern philosophy

Connections

Remarque married actress Ilse Jutta Zambona in 1925. They both were unfaithful to each other, and the marriage ended in divorce five years later. However, they fled together to his home in Switzerland when the Nazis took over Germany.

His love affair with Marlene Dietrich began in 1937 when they met in Venice for the film festival. It continued via letters, cables and telephone calls.

In 1938, Remarque and his ex-wife Ilse Jutta Zambona remarried in Switzerland as a protective measure to prevent her from being forced to return to Germany. They migrated to the United States two years later.

He and Zambona became naturalised American citizens in 1947. They divorced again a decade later and he married actress Paulette Goddard. They remained married until his death.

Father:

Peter Franz Remark

(14 June 1867 - 1954)

Mother:

Anna Maria (Stallknecht) Remark

(21 November 1871 - 1917)

Spouse:

Paulette Goddard

(3 June 1910 - 23 April 1990)

Paulette Goddard was an American actress, a child fashion model and a performer in several Broadway productions as a Ziegfeld Girl.

Sister:

Elfriede Scholz

(25 March 1903 - 16 December 1943)

Elfriede Maria Scholz was a German tailor.

Sister:

Erna Remarque

ex-spouse:

Ilsa Jeanne Zamboui

Partner:

Marlene Dietrich

(27 December 1901 - 6 May 1992)

Marie Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.

References

• Erich Maria Remarque: The Last Romantic Extraordinary, poignant, glamorous, the portrait that emerges in this potent biography of a modern literary giant - the story of a disadvantaged poor boy who at eighteen did indeed serve on the Western Front and subsequently molded himself into a cultured man of the world - is as extravagantly lit by romance as it is shadowed by anguish.
  2003
• Opposite Attraction: The Lives of Erich Maria Remarque and Paulette Goddard Drawing on personal interviews and excerpts from diaries and letters, the author of Umbrella Steps offers a portrait of the romance between Erich Maria Remarque, an exile from Nazi Germany and successful Hollywood screenwriter, and actress Paulette Goddard.
  1995
• Erich Maria Remarque A book by Christine R. Barker.
  1979
• Erich Maria Remarque: A Thematic Analysis of His Novels This critical biography relates the life of Erich Maria Remarque to all his novels and places them within the social and political context of modern Germany. Remarque's development and emergence as a key figure in the contemporary German novel are highlighted through close readings of those books for which he became famous and their subsequent reception by critics. Remarque's writing as a creative source of film adaptation is offered as a special feature of discussion.
  1988
• War in Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front This volume explores the life and work of Erich Maria Remarque; the treatment of war in his World War I classic All Quiet on the Western Front, including debates about its effectiveness as an antiwar novel and whether it was intended as a pacificist work; and current perspectives on war and peace worldwide. This series brings together the disciplines of sociology and literature in a unique format designed to support cross-curricular studies.
  2013
• Erich Maria Remarque: A Critical Bio-bibliography A book by C. R Owen.
  1984