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Erich Maria Remarque

 
Who2 Biography: Erich Maria Remarque, Writer
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  • Born: 22 June 1898
  • Birthplace: Osnabrück, Germany
  • Died: 25 September 1970 (heart failure)
  • Best Known As: Author of All Quiet on the Western Front

Name at birth: Erich Paul Remark

Erich Maria Remarque was the author of 1929's All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen Nichts Neues), a novel based on his experiences as a soldier in World War I. The book -- and its strong anti-war message -- made Remarque an international celebrity (the 1930 film version is a classic of early cinema). He emigrated from Germany in 1931 to Switzerland, then moved to the United States in 1939. He wrote novels and worked briefly in Hollywood, making friends with movie stars such as Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo, and in 1958 he married Paulette Goddard. Remarque's other novels include The Road Back (Der Weg Zurück), a sequel to his most famous book, and Arch of Triumph (Arc de Triomphe, 1945) and Night in Lisbon (Die Nacht von Lissabon, 1962). He died in 1970.

There is some dispute about Remarque's real surname. Some have said Remark is his family name (Kramer) backwards; others insist he was descended from the French, and that his family name was, in fact, Remarque.

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Erich Maria Remarque
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(born June 22, 1898, Osnabrück, Ger. — died Sept. 25, 1970, Locarno, Switz.) German-born U.S.-Swiss novelist. Drafted into the German army at age 18, he served in World War I and was wounded several times. He is chiefly remembered for All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), a brutally realistic account of the daily routine of ordinary soldiers and perhaps the best-known and most representative novel about that war. He moved to the U.S. in 1939 and became a U.S. citizen but settled in Switzerland after World War II. His other works include The Road Back (1931), Arc de Triomphe (1946; film, 1948), and The Black Obelisk (1956).

For more information on Erich Maria Remarque, visit Britannica.com.

Biography: Erich Maria Remarque
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The German author Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970) was a popular novelist whose "All Quiet on the Western Front" was the most successful German best seller on the subject of the soldier's life in World War I.

Erich Maria Remarque whose real name was Erich Paul Remark, was born on July 22, 1898, in Osnabrück. He attended the Teachers' Training College there and afterward the University of Münster. Toward the end of World War I he 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 Nächsten (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 Sept. 25, 1970.

Further Reading

Despite his immense popularity there have been no general studies of Remarque in English or German. His career is briefly summarized in Harry T. Moore, Twentieth-century German Literature (1967). Useful for general background is Ernst Rose, A History of German Literature (1960).

German Literature Companion: Erich Maria Remarque
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Remarque, Erich Maria, pseudonym of Erich Paul Remark (Osnabrück, 1898-1970, nr. Locarno), was twice wounded during the 1914-18 War, after which he had a variety of jobs before becoming a journalist in the 1920s and writing his war novel Im Westen nichts Neues (1929). A world-wide success as a novel and film, it portrays his experiences on the western front with great intensity and intentionally brutal realism. But the pacifism underlying Remarque's treatment of war also met with bitter criticism; in 1933 the novel was one of the books burnt publicly in Berlin by the National Socialist regime.

Remarque continued to make his living as a writer who confined himself to his contemporary background and always found a public. In 1938 he went to Switzerland and was deprived of his German citizenship, which he declined to resume after the 1939-45 War. In 1939 he went to the USA, was granted American citizenship in 1947, and spent the remainder of his life partly in New York, but mainly in Porto Ronco. He wrote a sequel to his first novel, Der Weg zurück (1931); Drei Kameraden (1938) and Der schwarze Obelisk (1956) reflect conditions in the Weimar Republic and the period of inflation, and Der Funke Leben (1952) those in concentration camps (Konzentrationslager); Zeit zu leben, Zeit zu sterben (1954) depicts soldiers in retreat in Russia during the 1939-45 War; and Der Himmel kennt keine Günstlinge (1961), related to Heimkehrerliteratur, resumes experiences following the 1914-18 War. His other novels deal with the problem of exile, Liebe deinen Nächsten (1941), Die Nacht von Lissabon (1963), and, above all, Arc de Triomphe (1946), which was his second great success. Its contrived and sensational plot deals with an act of revenge: Ravic, a German surgeon and a refugee in Paris without papers, manages to kill Haake, a Gestapo agent, who has cruelly murdered a woman with whom Ravic had once lived. The character of Ravic reappears in Remarque's last novel, completed shortly before his death and published posthumously in 1971, Schatten im Paradies. Three of the novels published between 1938 and 1952 appeared first in English translation, Three Comrades (1937), Flotsam, and Spark of Life (1941 and 1952 respectively, the year of their German publication).

Erich Maria Remarque—ein militanter Pazifist. Texte und Interviews 1929-1966, ed. Th. Schneider, appeared in 1993.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Erich Maria Remarque
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Remarque, Erich Maria (ā'rĭkh märē'ä rəmärk'), 1898-1970, German-American novelist, whose original name was Erich Paul Remark. From his experience of trench warfare during World War I, Remarque drew a grimly realistic picture of the horror of battle in his first novel and masterpiece, Im Westen nichts Neues (1929; tr. All Quiet on the Western Front, 1929), an immediate international success. When the Nazis came to power they ordered it burned. Remarque's next work was The Way Back (1931, tr. 1931), a sequel describing the attempt of Germans to come to terms with their postwar situation. Remarque lived in Switzerland after 1932 and emigrated to the United States in 1939. His later books include Three Comrades (1937, tr. 1938), Arch of Triumph (tr. 1946), A Time to Love and a Time to Die (tr. 1954), and Shadows in Paradise (1971, tr. 1972).

Bibliography

See biographies by C. Barker and R. W. Last (1979) and C. R. Owen (1984); studies by R. O. Glaser (1972) and J. S. White (1972)

Wikipedia: Erich Maria Remarque
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Erich Maria Remarque

Erich Maria Remarque (1929)
Born 22 June 1898(1898-06-22)
Osnabrück, Germany
Died 25 September 1970 (aged 72)
Locarno, Switzerland
Occupation Novelist
Nationality German
Notable work(s) All Quiet on the Western Front
Spouse(s) Paulette Goddard (1958-1970)

Erich Maria Remarque (born Erich Paul Remark; 22 June 1898 – 25 September 1970) was a German author, most famous today for his anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front.

Contents

Life

Erich Maria Remarque was born on 22 June 1898 in a working-class family in the German city of Osnabrück, the son of Peter Franz Remark (b. 14 June 1867, Kaiserswerth) and Anna Maria Remark, nee Stallknecht (b. 21 November 1871, Katernberg). 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 (Die Traumbude).

At eighteen Remarque was conscripted into the army. On 12 June 1917 he was transferred to the Western Front, 2nd Company, Reserves, Field Depot of the 2nd Reserves Guards Division at Hem-Lenglet. On 26 June he was posted to the 15th Reserve Infantry Regiment, 2nd Company of Trench Battalion Bethe, and was stationed between Torhout and Houthulst. On 31 July he was wounded by shrapnel in the left leg, right arm and neck, and was repatriated to an army hospital in Germany where he spent the rest of the war.[1]

In 1924, he started to write his last name as Remarque (which had been the family name until his grandfather changed it to Remark in the 19th century). He had already been using the middle name 'Maria' since November 1922. He worked at a number of different jobs, including librarian, businessman, teacher, journalist and editor. His first paid writing job was as a technical writer for the Continental Rubber Company, a German tire manufacturer[2]. He married his first wife, the actress Ilse Jutta Zambona in 1925.[3] The marriage was stormy and, on both sides, unfaithful. After a divorce, they remarried each other in 1938.

Remarque in Davos, 1929.

In 1927 Remarque made a second literary start with the novel Station at the Horizon (Station am Horizont), which was serialized in the sports journal "Sport im Bild" for which Remarque was working. It was published in book form only in 1998. His most famous book, All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues) was written in a few months in 1927, but Remarque was not immediately able to find a publisher.[4] The novel, published in 1929, described the experiences of German soldiers during World War I. A number of similar works followed; in simple, emotive language they described wartime and the postwar years.

In 1931, after finishing The Road Back (Der Weg zurück) Remarque left Germany. He bought a villa in Porto Ronco in Switzerland and lived both there and in France until 1939, when he left Europe for the United States of America with his wife and they became naturalized citizens of the United States in 1947.

In 1933, the Nazis banned and burned Remarque's works, and issued propaganda stating that he was a descendant of French Jews and that his real last name was Kramer, a Jewish-sounding name, his original name spelled backwards. This is still listed in some biographies despite the complete lack of evidence. Also despite clear evidence to the contrary, their assertion that he had never seen active service remains in some references. In 1943 the Nazis arrested his sister Elfriede Scholz, who had stayed behind in Germany with her husband and two children. After a short trial in the "Volksgerichtshof" (Hitler's extra-constitutional "People's Court") she was found guilty of "undermining morale" for remarking that the war was lost. Evidence supports the contention that the verdict and the associated death sentence were issued to punish her brother: Court President Roland Freisler declared, "Ihr Bruder ist uns leider entwischt - Sie aber werden uns nicht entwischen" ("Your brother has unfortunately escaped us - you, however, will not escape us").[5] Elfriede Scholz was decapitated by axe on 16 December 1943.

Remarque's next novel, Three Comrades (Drei Kameraden) spans the years of the Weimar Republic, from the hyperinflation of 1923 to the end of the decade. Remarque's fourth novel, Flotsam (Liebe deinen Nächsten), first appeared in a serial version in English translation in Collier's magazine in 1939, and Remarque spent another year revising the text for its book publication in 1941 both in English and German. His next novel Arch of Triumph, first published in 1945 in English translation, and published in German as Arc de Triomphe in 1946, was another instant best-seller and reached worldwide sales of nearly five million.

In 1948 Remarque went back to Switzerland, where he spent the rest of his life. There was a gap of seven years—a long silence for Remarque—between Arch of Triumph and his next work, The Spark of Life (Der Funke Leben), which appeared both in German and in English in 1952. While he was writing The Spark of Life Remarque was also working on a novel, Zeit zu leben und Zeit zu sterben (Time to Live and Time to Die). It was published first in English translation in 1954 with the not-quite-literal title A Time to Love and a Time to Die. In 1958, Douglas Sirk directed the film A Time to Love and a Time to Die in Germany, based on Remarque's novel. Remarque makes a cameo appearance in this film in the role of the Professor.

In 1955 Remarque wrote the screenplay for an Austrian movie, The Last Act (Der letzte Akt), about Hitler's final days in the bunker of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, which was based on the book Ten Days to Die (1950) by Michael Musmanno. In 1956 Remarque wrote a drama for the stage, Full Circle (Die letzte Station), which played successfully both in Germany and on Broadway. An English translation was published in 1974. Heaven Has No Favorites was serialized (as Borrowed Life) in 1959 before appearing as a book in 1961 and was made into the 1977 movie Bobby Deerfield. The Night in Lisbon (Die Nacht von Lissabon), published in 1962 is the last work Remarque finished. The novel sold some 900,000 copies in Germany and was a modest best-seller abroad as well.

Remarque married the Hollywood actress Paulette Goddard in 1958 and they remained married until his death in hospital at Locarno on 25 September 1970 at the age of 72.[6] He was interred in the Ronco cemetery in Ronco, Ticino, Switzerland after a Catholic funeral. Goddard is also interred there. Goddard left a bequest of $20 million to New York University to fund an institute for European studies which is named after Remarque. The first Director of The Remarque Institute was Professor Tony Judt. The Erich Maria Remarque Papers are housed in the Fales Library at NYU.

List of Works

Note: the dates of English publications are those of the first publications in a book form

Novels

  • (1920) Die Traumbude. Ein Künstlerroman; English translation: The Dream Room
  • (written 1924, published 1998) Gam
  • (1928) Station am Horizont; English translation: Station at the Horizon
  • (1929) Im Westen nichts Neues; English translation: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)
  • (1931) Der Weg zurück; English translation: The Road Back (1931)
  • (1936) Drei Kameraden; English translation: Three Comrades (1937)
  • (1939) Liebe deinen Nächsten; English translation: Flotsam (1941)
  • (1945) Arc de Triomphe; English translation: Arch of Triumph (1945)
  • (1952) Der Funke Leben; English translation: The Spark of Life (1952)
  • (1954) Zeit zu leben und Zeit zu sterben; English translation: A Time to Live and a Time to Die (1954)
  • (1956) Der schwarze Obelisk; English translation: The Black Obelisk (1957)
  • (1961) Der Himmel kennt keine Günstlinge (serialized as Geborgtes Leben); English translation: Heaven Has No Favorites (1961)
  • (1962) Die Nacht von Lissabon; English translation: The Night in Lisbon (1964)
  • (1970) Das gelobte Land; English translation: The Promised Land
  • (1971) Schatten im Paradies; English translation: Shadows in Paradise (1972)

Other works

  • (1931) Der Feind; English translation: The Enemy (1930-1931); short stories
  • (1955) Der letzte Akt; English translation: The Last Act; screenplay
  • (1956) Die letzte Station; English translation: Full Circle (1974); play
  • (1988) Die Heimkehr des Enoch J. Jones; English translation: The Return of Enoch J. Jones; play
  • (1994) Ein militanter Pazifist; English translation: A Militant Pacifist; interviews and essays

References

  1. ^ Remarque Frieden-Zentrum.
  2. ^ "Exactly as it happened... (the story of an encounter in Ticino with Remarque and the coach-built Lancia Dilambda which, following the commercial success of "All quiet on the Western Front", he purchased in 1931 and retained till the late 1960s)". Motor 3506: pages 26 - 30. date 30 August 1969. 
  3. ^ "Erich Maria Remarque". http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/remarque.htm. Retrieved 2009-06-25. 
  4. ^ Robertson, William. "Erich Remarque". http://remarque.org/about_remarque.html. Retrieved 2009-06-25. 
  5. ^ "Elfriede Scholz Obituary" (in German). Osnabrück Cultural Website. 15 December 2005. http://www.osnabrueck-net.de/kulturnachrichten/151205a.html. Retrieved 2009-06-25. 
  6. ^ Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 56: German Fiction Writers, 1914-1945. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by James Hardin, University of South Carolina. The Gale Group, 1987. pp. 222-241.

Further reading

  • Mariana Parvanova, "... das Symbol der Ewigkeit ist der Kreis." Eine Untersuchung der Motive in den Romanen von Erich Maria Remarque. Tenea, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-86504-028-4 (in German)
  • Mariana Parvanova: E.M.Remarque in der kommunistischen Literaturkritik in der Sowjetunion und in Bulgarien. ReDiRoma Verlag, Remscheid 2009, ISBN 978-3-86870-056-5 (in German)

External links


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