Erich Maria Remarque (/rəˈmɑːrk/;German:[ˈeːʁɪçmaˈʁiːaʁəˈmaʁk]ⓘ;[1] bornErich Paul Remark;[2] 22 June 1898 – 25 September 1970) was a German novelist. His landmark novelAll Quiet on the Western Front (1928), based on his experience in theImperial German Army duringWorld War I, was an international bestseller which created a new literary genre of veterans writing about conflict. The book was adapted tofilm several times. Remarque's anti-war themes led to his condemnation byNazi propaganda ministerJoseph Goebbels as "unpatriotic". He was able to use his literary success and fame to relocate to Switzerland as a refugee, and to the United States, where he became anaturalized citizen.
Remarque was born on 22 June 1898, as Erich Paul Remark, to Peter Franz Remark and Anna Maria (née Stallknecht), a working-classRoman Catholic family inOsnabrück.[3] He was never close with his father, abookbinder, but he was close with his mother and he began using the middle name Maria after World War I in her honor.[4] Remarque was the third of four children. His siblings were his older sister Erna, older brother Theodor Arthur (who died at the age of five or six), and younger sisterElfriede.[5]
The spelling of his last name was changed to Remarque when he publishedAll Quiet on the Western Front in honor of his French ancestors and in order to disassociate himself from his earlier novelThe Dream Room (Die Traumbude).[6] His grandfather had changed the spelling from Remarque to Remark in the 19th century.[7] Research[when?] by Remarque's childhood and lifelong friend Hanns-Gerd Rabe proved that Remarque had French ancestors – his great-grandfather Johann Adam Remarque, who was born in 1789, came from a French family inAachen.[8] This is contrary to the falsehood – perpetuated by Nazi propaganda – that his real last name wasKramer ("Remark" spelled backwards) and that he was Jewish.[9][10]
During World War I, Remarque wasconscripted into theImperial German Army at the age of 18. On 12 June 1917, he was transferred to theWestern Front, 2nd Company, Reserves, Field Depot of the2nd Guards Reserve Division atHem-Lenglet. On 26 June 1917 he was posted to the 15th Reserve Infantry Regiment, 2nd Company, Engineer Platoon Bethe, and fought in the trenches betweenTorhout andHouthulst. On 31 July 1917 he was wounded by shellshrapnel in his left leg, right arm and neck, and after being medically evacuated from the field was repatriated to an army hospital inDuisburg, where he recovered from his wounds. In October 1918, he was recalled to military service, but the war'sarmistice a month later put an end to his military career.[11]
After the war he continued his teacher training and worked from 1 August 1919 as a primary-school teacher inLohne, at that time in the county of Lingen, now in the county ofBentheim. From May 1920 he worked inKlein Berssen in the former County ofHümmling, nowEmsland, and from August 1920 inNahne, which has been a part of Osnabrück since 1972. On 20 November 1920 he applied for a leave of absence from teaching.
He worked at a number of different jobs in this phase of his life, including librarian, businessman, journalist, and editor. His first paid writing job was as a technical writer for theContinental Rubber Company, a German tire manufacturer.[12]
Remarque had made his first attempts at writing at the age of 16. Among them were essays, poems, and the beginnings of a novel that was finished later and published in 1920 asThe Dream Room (Die Traumbude). Between 1923 and 1926 he also scripted a comic series,Die Contibuben, drawn by Hermann Schütz, published in the magazineEcho Continental, a publication by the rubber and tire companyContinental AG.[13]
After coming back from the war, the atrocities of war along with his mother's death caused him a great deal of mental trauma and grief. In later years as a professional writer, he started using "Maria" as his middle name instead of "Paul", to commemorate his mother.[5] When he publishedAll Quiet on the Western Front, he had his surname reverted to an earlier spelling – from Remark to Remarque – to disassociate himself from his novelDie Traumbude.[6]
In 1927, he published the novelStation at the Horizon (Station am Horizont). It was serialised in the sports journalSport im Bild for which Remarque was working. (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 written in 1927. Remarque was at first unable to find a publisher for it.[3] Its text described the experiences of German soldiers during World War I. On publication it became an international bestseller and a landmark work in twentieth-century literature. It inspired a new genre of veterans writing about conflict, and the commercial publication of a wide variety of war memoirs. It also inspired dramatic representations of the war in theatre and cinema, in Germany as well as in countries that had fought in the conflict against theGerman Empire, particularly the United Kingdom and the United States.
Remarque in 1939
Riding on the tail of the success ofAll Quiet on the Western Front, a number of similar works followed from Remarque. In simple, emotive language, they described wartime and the postwar years in Germany. In 1931, after finishingThe Road Back (Der Weg zurück), he bought a villa (Casa Monte Tabor) inRonco, Switzerland with the substantial financial wealth that his published works had brought him. He planned to live both there and in France.[citation needed]
On 10 May 1933, at the initiative of theNazi propaganda ministerJoseph Goebbels, Remarque's writing was publicly declared as "unpatriotic" and was banned in Germany. Copies were removed from all libraries and restricted from being sold or published anywhere in the country.
Germany was rapidly descending into a totalitarian society, leading to mass arrests of elements of the population of which the new governing order disapproved. Remarque left Germany to live at his villa in Switzerland. His French background as well as his Catholic faith were also publicly attacked by the Nazis. They continued to decry his writings in his absence, proclaiming that anyone who would change the spelling of his name from the German "Remark" to the French "Remarque" could not be a true German. The Nazis further made the false claim that Remarque had not seen active service during World War I. In 1938, Remarque's German citizenship was revoked. In 1938, he and his ex-wife were remarried to prevent her repatriation to Germany. Just before the outbreak ofWorld War II in Europe, they leftPorto Ronco, Switzerland, for the United States.[14] They becamenaturalised citizens of the United States in 1947.[15]
Remarque continued to write about the German experience after WWI. His next novel,Three Comrades (Drei Kameraden), focuses on life inWeimar Republic in the years of 1928 and 1929. His fourth novel,Flotsam (in German titledLiebe deinen Nächsten, orLove Thy Neighbour), first appeared in a serial version in English translation inCollier's magazine in 1939. He spent another year revising the text for its book publication in 1941, both in English and German. His next work, the novelArch of Triumph, was first published in 1945 in English, and the next year in German asArc de Triomphe. Another instant bestseller, it reached worldwide sales of nearly five million. In 1943, the Nazis arrested his youngest sister, Elfriede Scholz, who had stayed behind in Germany with her husband and two children. After a trial at the notoriousVolksgerichtshof (Hitler's extra-constitutional "People's Court"), she was found guilty of "undermining morale" for stating that she considered the war lost. Court PresidentRoland Freisler declared, "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"). Scholz was beheaded on 16 December 1943.[16] Remarque later said that his sister had been involved in anti-Nazi resistance activities.[17]
In exile, Remarque was unaware of his sister Elfriede's fate until after the war. He would dedicate his 1952 novelSpark of Life (Der Funke Leben) to her. The dedication was omitted in the German version of the book, reportedly because she was still seen as a traitor by some Germans.[18]
His final novel wasShadows in Paradise. He wrote it while living at 320 East 57th Street in New York City. The apartment building "played a prominent role in his novel".[19]
In 1948, Remarque returned to Switzerland, where he spent the remainder of his life. There was a gap of seven years – a long silence for Remarque – betweenArch of Triumph and his next work,Spark of Life (Der Funke Leben), which appeared both in German and in English in 1952. While he was writingThe Spark of Life he was also working on a novelZeit zu leben und Zeit zu sterben (Time to Live and Time to Die).[citation needed] It was published first in English translation in 1954 with the not-quite-literal titleA Time to Love and a Time to Die. In 1958,Douglas Sirk directed the filmA Time to Love and a Time to Die in Germany, based on Remarque's novel. Remarque appeared in the film as an honorable teacher in hiding from the Nazis.[20]
In 1955, Remarque wrote the screenplay for an Austrian filmThe Last Act (Der letzte Akt), about Hitler's final days in thebunker of theReich Chancellery in Berlin, which was based on the bookTen Days to Die (1950) byMichael Musmanno. In 1956, Remarque wrote a dramaFull Circle (Die letzte Station) for the stage, which played in both Germany and on Broadway. An English translation was published in 1974.Heaven Has No Favorites was serialised (asBorrowed Life) in 1959 before appearing as a book in 1961 and was made into the 1977 filmBobby Deerfield.The Night in Lisbon (Die Nacht von Lissabon), published in 1962, is the last work Remarque finished. The novel sold about 900,000 copies in Germany.[citation needed]
Remarque and Paulette Goddard in Ronco, Switzerland, 1961
Remarque's first marriage was to the actress Ilse Jutta Zambona in 1925.[21] The marriage was stormy, and unfaithful on both sides. Remarque and Zambona divorced in 1930, but in 1933 they fled together to Switzerland.[22] In 1938, they remarried, to prevent her from being forced to return to Germany, and in 1939 they emigrated to the United States, where they both became naturalized citizens in 1947.[23] They divorced again on 20 May 1957, this time for good. Ilse Remarque died on 25 June 1975.
During the 1930s, Remarque had relationships with Austrian actressHedy Lamarr, Mexican actressDolores del Río,[24] and German actressMarlene Dietrich.[25] The affair with Dietrich began in September 1937, when they met on the Lido while inVenice for thefilm festival, and continued until at least 1940, maintained mostly by way of letters, telegrams and telephone calls. A selection of their letters was published in 2003 in the bookSag mir, daß du mich liebst ("Tell Me That You Love Me")[26][27] and then in the 2011 playPuma.[28]
Remarque died of heart failure at the age of 72 inLocarno on 25 September 1970.[30] His body was buried in the Ronco Cemetery inRonco,Ticino, Switzerland.[31] He never regained his German citizenship. Asked about this in an interview on his 69th birthday, Remarque replied that he refused to apply to be naturalized again as he had, after all, never applied to be denaturalized either.[32]
Goddard, Remarque's wife, died in 1990, and her body was interred next to her husband's. She left a bequest of US$20 million toNew York University to fund an institute for European studies, which is named in honour of Remarque,[33] as well as funding "Goddard Hall" on theGreenwich Village campus inNew York City.[citation needed]
The first director of The Remarque Institute was ProfessorTony Judt.[34] Remarque's papers are housed at NYU'sFales Library.[35]
After Erich Maria Remarque's death in 1970, his wife Paulette Goddard lived in the villa until her death in 1990. The villa was bequeathed to New York University as part of the estate of Paulette Goddard.[citation needed] Since New York University was not prepared to pay the associated inheritance tax of 18 million Swiss francs to the Canton of Ticino, the villa was confiscated by the canton.
The canton offered the villa at an auction around 2010, but there was initially no buyer, probably due to the high price and the high costs of modernizing the property.[citation needed] In November 2010, efforts to raise 6.2 millionSwiss francs (US$7M), to buy and save the villa of Erich Maria Remarque and Paulette Goddard from demolition were underway. The intent was to transform the "Casa Monte Tabor" into a museum and home to an artist-in-residence program.[36] In 2017, the property was being offered for sale as a private residence.[37] However by 2021, the property was finally purchased by a German couple who wish to preserve Casa Monte Tabor as a place to promote peace and preserve the legacy of Erich Maria Remarque. It will continue to be used for events on peace topics. The villa was extensively renovated in 2023.
^abAfterword by Brian Murdoch, translator of 1996 English edition ofAll Quiet on the Western Front. London: Vintage Books. 1996. p. 201.ISBN978-0-09-953281-1.
^Landová, Jolana:Exil, Krieg und Flucht in Frankreich zwischen 1933 und 1941, dargestellt an ausgewählten Werken deutscher Schriftsteller, Charles University in Prague, 2009, p. 46.
^"Exactly as it happened... (the story of an encounter in Ticino with Remarque and the coach-built Lancia Dilambda, which followingAll Quiet on the Western Front, he purchased in 1931 and retained till the late 1960s)".Motor. Vol. 3506. 30 August 1969. pp. 26–30.
^Schneider, Thomas (1991).Erich Maria Remarque: Ein Chronist des 20. Jahrhunderts, Eine Biographie in Bildern und Dokumenten (in German). Germany: Rasch Verlag Bramsche. pp. 94–95.
^Bloom, Harold (2001). "Chronology".Modern Critical Interpretations: Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers. p. 157.
^Fuld, Werner; Thomas F. Schneider, eds. (2003).Dass Du Mich Liebst: Erich Maria Remarque — Marlene Dietrich Zeugnisse einer Leidenschaft [Tell Me That You Love Me: Erich Maria Remarque-Marlene Dietrich. Evidence of a Passion] (in German). Koln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch.
^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.
Parvanová, Mariana (2010)."... das Symbol der Ewigkeit ist der Kreis". Eine Untersuchung der Motive in den Romanen von Erich Maria Remarque (in German). München: GRIN-Verlag.ISBN978-3-640-64739-2.
Parvanová, Mariana (2009).E. M. Remarque in der kommunistischen Literaturkritik in der Sowjetunion und in Bulgarien (in German). Remscheid: ReDiRoma Verlag.ISBN978-3-86870-056-5.
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