Erich Maria Remarque

At 72 years old, Erich Maria Remarque has this physical status:

Erich Maria Remarque (born Erich Paul Remark, 1898 – 1975) was a twentieth-century German novelist.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1928), his first book about the German military experience of World War I (1928), was an international best-seller who established a new literary style, and it was later turned into the Western Front's All Quiet (1930).

Early life

Remarque was born in 1898, as Erich Paul Remark, to Peter Franz Remark and Anna Maria (née Stallknecht), a working-class Roman Catholic family in Osnabrück. He was never close with his father, a bookbinder, but after World War I, he began calling Maria in her honor. Remarque was the third child of Peter and Anna's four children. His siblings were his older sister Erna, older brother Theodor Arthur (who died at the age of five or six), and younger sister Elfriede.

When he published All Quiet on the Western Front in honor of his French ancestors and in order to distinguish himself from his earlier book Die Traumbude, the spelling was changed to Remarque. In the 19th century, his grandfather changed the spelling from Remarque to Remark. Remarque's childhood and lifelong friend Hanns-Gerd Rabe revealed that in fact Remarque had French ancestors, and his great-grandfather Johann Adam Remarque, who was born in 1789, descended on a French family in Aachen, came from a French family. This is contrary to Nazi propaganda's assertion that Kramer ("Remark") spelled backwards) and that he was Jewish.

Personal life

In 1925, Remarque's first marriage was to actress Ilse Jutta Zambona. Both husbands were tumultuous and unfaithful. In 1930, Remarque and Zambona were divorced, but they immigrated to Switzerland together. In 1938, they married in order to keep her from returning to Germany, and in 1939, they migrated to the United States, where they both became naturalized citizens in 1947. They divorced again on May 20, 1957, this time for good. Ilse Remarque died on June 25, 1975.

Remarque had friendships with Austrian actress Hedy Lamarr, Mexican actress Dolores del Ro, and German actress Marlene Dietrich in the 1930s. Dietrich's story began in September 1937, when they first arrived on the Lido while film festival-goals, and then continued until at least 1940, mostly by letters, telegrams, and telephone calls. In the 2003 play Puma, a collection of their letters was published in the book Sag mir, daß du mich liebst ("Tell Me That You Love Me") and then in the 2011 version Puma.

Paulette Goddard, a retired actress from Remarque, married actress Paulette Goddard in 1958.

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Writing career

At the age of 16, Remarque had attempted writing for the first time. Among them were essays, poems, and the beginnings of a book that was published in 1920 as The Dream Room (Die Traumbude). He also scripted a comic series called Der Contibuben, designed by Hermann Schütz, and published in the journal Echo Continental, a rubber and tire company Continental AG's publication.

After returning from war, the horrors of war, as well as his mother's death, gave him a great deal of mental instability and sadness. To honor his mother, he began using "Maria" instead of "Paul" in later years as a professional writer. When he first published All Quiet on the Western Front, he had his surname change to a previous spelling – from Remark to Remarque – to dissociate himself from his book Die Traumbude.

He wrote the novel Station at the Horizon in 1927 (Station am Horizont). It was serialized in the sports journal Sport im Bild, which is where Remarque was employed. (It was first published in book form in 1998). All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues) (1929), his career-defining work, was also published in 1927. Remarque was the first time I had trouble finding a publisher for it. Its text chronicled German soldiers' experiences during World War I. It became a best-selling book and a landmark work in twentieth-century literature on release. It spawned a new generation of veterans writing about war, as well as the commercial publication of a large number of war memoirs. In Germany, as well as other nations that had fought in the German Empire, including the United Kingdom and the United States, dramatic portrayals of the war in theatre and cinema have emerged.

A number of similar works followed Remarque, riding on the heels of All Quiet's triumph on the Western Front. They referred to wartime and the postwar years in Germany in a straightforward, emotive term. He purchased a villa in Ronco, Switzerland, with the considerable financial resources that his published books had brought him. He wanted to live both here and in France.

Remarque's writing was officially condemned in Germany on May 10th, 1933, on the initiative of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and was banned in Germany. Copies were withdrawn from all libraries and banned from being sold or published anywhere in the country.

Germany was rapidly devolving into a totalitarian state, resulting in mass arrests of portions of the population of which the new governing order had disapproved. Remarque left Germany to live in Switzerland's Villa. The Nazis attacked Remarque's French history as well as his Catholic faith. They continued to condemn his writing in his absence, claiming that anyone who would change the spelling of his name from the German "Remark" to the French "Remarque" would not be a genuine German. Remarque had not seen active service during World War I, according to the Nazis. Remarque's German citizenship was revoked in 1938. He and his ex-wife were remarried in 1939 to avoid her repatriation to Germany. They left Porto Ronco, Switzerland, for the United States just days before the outbreak of World War II in Europe. They became naturalized citizens of the United States in 1947.

Remarque continued to write about the German experience after WWI. Three Comrades (Di Kameraden) is his latest book, and it spans the years of the Weimar Republic, from 1923 to the end of the decade. Flotsam, his fourth book, was published in a serial version in Collier's magazine in 1939, and it was called Liebe deinen Nächsten, or Love Thy Neighbour. Both in English and German, he spent another year revising the text for its book debut in 1941. His next book, The Novel Arch of Triumph, was first published in English in 1945, and in German as Arc de Triomphe next year. It was the first instant bestseller, with worldwide sales of over five million. Shadows in Paradise was his last book. While living in 320 East 57th Street in New York City, he wrote it. "The apartment building played a central part in his story," the author writes.

The Nazis arrested Elfriede Scholz, the youngest sister who had remained in Germany with her husband and two children, in 1943. She was found guilty of "undermining morale" by claiming that the war was lost after a hearing at the notorious Volksgerichtshof (Hitler's extra-constitutional "People's Court). "Ihr Bruder is uns regretfully entwischt," court President Roland Freisler said, "Sie doch nicht entwischen" ("Your brother is unfortunately beyond our reach; we will not escape us." Scholz was first deposed on December 16, 1943. Remarque later learned that his sister was involved in anti-Nazi resistance campaigns.

Remarque, a soldier in exile, was unaware of his sister Elfriede's death until after the war. Spark of Life (Der Funke Leben), his 1952 book Spark of Life (Der Funke Life) will be dedicated to her. According to some Germans, the dedication was omitted in the German version of the novel because he was still seen as a traitor.

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