Tragedy of war was seen through the eyes Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet On The Western Front

WHEN the novel Im Westen Nichts Neues was first published in serial form in a magazine, the World War I story was an unexpected success. However, it would also bring trouble for its author Erich Maria Remarque

A still from the 1930 film All Quiet On The Western Front.

WHEN the novel Im Westen Nichts Neues was first serialised in the Vossische Zeitung magazine, it boosted circulation. There were fears that 10 years on from the Great War people wouldn’t want to read about the conflict. The author Erich Maria Remarque had penned a vivid but depressing account of a young German man struggling to survive the conflict. When it was published as a book in 1929 his preface said it was “neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face-to-face with it”.

The author insisted he had no political point to push, he just wanted to tell what it was like as a soldier serving on the front. The book, translated into English in 1929 by Australian veteran and Rhodes scholar Arthur Wheen giving it the title All Quiet On The Western Front, became an international bestseller, Universal Pictures bought the rights for the record sum of $40,000 and a film starring Lew Ayres premiered in 1930.

Erich Maria Remarque (then known as Erich Paul Remark) in his German uniform in World War I circa 1917.

Despite the success of the work, not everyone was happy. Some thought they recognised themselves as characters in the book and complained that his book tinkered with their real stories. Doctors and nurses who served in the war were also annoyed that they were depicted as uncaring or indifferent to the suffering of soldiers.

But he had angered the Nazis, who disrupted screenings of the film and, after they came to power in 1933, had his books burnt. Remarque was eventually forced to flee Germany, but while his escape saved his life, it left his family at the mercy of the fascists.

Born Erich Paul Remark in Osnabruck, Germany, on June 22, 1898, 120 years ago today, he would later change his surname to that of his great grandfather. His father Peter Franz Remark was a bookbinder who lived in relative poverty, moving the family around looking for work.

Remarque was a good student, who enjoyed writing and music. Educated at private Catholic schools he began training as a teacher before he was conscripted into the army at the age of 17.

Although he would later become known for his anti-war book, he shared widespread patriotic enthusiasm for the war when he was conscripted. His unit was sent to the front near Ypres in Belgium, close to where Adolf Hitler was serving, but there is no record the two ever met.

During the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917, Remarque rescued his comrade Christian Kranzbuhler, thought to be the basis of the character Kemmerich in his book, and witnessed horrors that soon drained him of his patriotic fervour.

Author Erich Maria Remarque with actor Ingrid Bergman in 1947 discuss a film script of his book Arch Of Triumph.

Remarque was injured in the arm, leg and neck by shell fragments from a British bomb on July 31 and spent much of the rest of the war recuperating. He was declared fit just before the armistice but strangely returned home wearing two Iron Crosses and an officer’s uniform.

Reported by Kranzbuhler, the friend whose life he saved, he was charged with impersonating an officer but escaped any serious action because of the chaos that prevailed in Germany after the war.

He returned to teacher training and in 1919 began working as a primary school teacher. But in his spare time he began writing. He wrote music and art critiques for local newspapers as well as publishing some poetry. In 1920 he published his first novel The Dream Room, a hopeful story about love and personal fulfilment.

Giving up teaching he took a range of jobs such as a salesman, organist and publicist, creating a popular cartoon character about a soldier named Captain Hein. He married actor Jutta Ilse Zambona in 1925, but his wife’s unfaithfulness made it an unhappy marriage (they divorced in 1930). In 1927 his serialised novel Station At The Horizon was published. It was about an ex-soldier-turned-racing car driver and his fraught love life. But another, bigger project had formed in his mind, to capture the reality of his war experiences in a fictional story.

German author Erich Maria Remarque in a 1951.

Author Erich Maria Remarque with his wife Paulette Goddard in Venice in 1958.

The success of All Quiet On The Western Front allowed him to focus on writing, but with the rise of Nazism his work was denounced as anti-German. Remarque fled to Switzerland in 1938.

In 1939 he moved to the US where he was feted by Hollywood and was rumoured to have had a romance with Marlene Dietrich. While there he was unaware that his sisters had come under the scrutiny of the Nazis. In 1943 his youngest sister Elfriede Scholz was arrested and charged with undermining morale with “defeatist” remarks. She was executed by beheading.

Remarque had applied for American citizenship in 1941, which was not granted until 1947, but he returned to Switzerland in 1948. After the war many Germans considered Remarque a traitor for abandoning his country.

While on a visit to New York in 1951 he met actor Paulette Goddard, they began a relationship. He dedicated his 1952 book Spark Of Life to Goddard and they were married in 1958. He continued to write until his death in 1970.