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
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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
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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
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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.