All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarque) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—June 22, 1898
• Where—Osnabruck, Lower Saxony, Germany
• Death—September 25, 1970
• Where—Loccarno, Switzerland
• Education—University of Munster


Erich Maria Remarque (pronounced Ray-mark; born Erich Paul Remark) was a German author, best known for his novel All Quiet on the Western Front. He was born into a working class family in the German city of Osnabrück to Peter Franz Remark and Anna Maria (née Stallknecht).

First World War
During World War I, Remarque was conscripted into the army at the age of 18. On 12 June 1917, he was transferred to the Western Front and 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.

Jobs
After the war he continued his teacher training and worked as a primary school teacher from 1919-1920. After teaching he worked at a number of other jobs, including librarian, businessman, journalist and editor. His first paid writing job was as a technical writer for the Continental Rubber Company, a German tire manufacturer.

Novelist
Remarque had made his first attempts at writing at the age of 16. This included essays, poems, and the beginnings of a novel that was finished later and published in 1920 as The Dream Room (Die Traumbude).
He made a second literary start in 1927 with the novel Station at the Horizon (Station am Horizont), which was serialised in the sports journal Sport im Bild for which Remarque was working. It was published in book form only in 1998.

His best known work, All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues), was written in a few months in 1927. Unable to find a publisher the work wasn't published until 1929. The novel describes 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.

At the time he published All Quiet, Remarque changed his middle name in memory of his mother and reverted to the earlier spelling of the family name to dissociate himself from his novel Die Traumbude. (The original family name, Remarque, had been changed to Remark by his grandfather in the 19th century.)

In 1931, after finishing The Road Back (Der Weg Zurück), Remarque bought a villa in Porto Ronco, Switzerland, planning to live both there and in France.

His 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 (in German titled Liebe deinen Nächsten, or Love Thy Neighbor), 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. His next novel, Arch of Triumph (Arc de Triomphe)first published in 1945 in English, and the next year in German. It was another instant best-seller, reaching worldwide sales of nearly five million.

Nazi era
On 10 May 1933, the German government, on the initiative of the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, banned and publicly burned Remarque's works. Remarque finally left Germany to live at his villa in Switzerland. The Nazis continued to decry his writings, claiming he was a descendant of French Jews and that his real surname name was Kramer, a Jewish-sounding name, and his original name spelled backwards. This is still cited in some biographies despite the complete lack of evidence. The Nazis also claimed, falsely, that Remarque had not seen active service during World War I. In 1938, Remarque's German citizenship was revoked, and then in 1939, after he and his ex-wife were remarried to prevent her repatriation to Germany, they left Porto Ronco, Switzerland, for the United States where they became naturalized citizens in 1947.

In 1943, the German government arrested his sister, Elfriede Scholz 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 stating that she considered the war lost. Court President Roland Freisler declared, "Your brother is unfortunately beyond our reach—you, however, will not escape us." Scholz was beheaded on 16 December 1943, and the cost of her prosecution, imprisonment and execution—495,80 Reichsmark—was billed to her sister Erna.

Switzerland
In 1948, Remarque returned to Switzerland, where he spent the rest of his life. A gap of seven years—a long silence for Remarque—separated Arch of Triumph and his next work, Spark of Life (Der Funke Leben) in 1952. While writing The Spark of Life, Remarque was also working on Time to Live and Time to Die (Zeit zu leben und Zeit zu sterben), which was published in 1954. In 1958 Douglas Sirk directed a film adaptation in Germany with Remarque making a cameo appearance as the Professor.

In 1955, Remarque wrote the screenplay for an Austrian film, 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 in both 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 film Bobby Deerfield. The Night in Lisbon (Die Nacht von Lissabon), published in 1962, Remarque's last finished work. The novel sold some 900,000 copies in Germany and was a modest best-seller abroad as well.

Marriages
His first marriage was to the actress Ilse Jutta Zambona in 1925. Their marriage was stormy and unfaithful on both sides. The two divorced in 1930 but fled together to his home in Porto Ronco, Switzerland, when the Nazis took over Germany in 1933; in May 1933, his novel All Quiet on the Western Front was burned in one of the first of the Nazi book burnings and it became clear that neither Remarque nor Zambona could return to Germany.

During the 1930s, Remarque had relationships with Austrian actress Hedy Lamarr and then with Marlene Dietrich. The love affair with Dietrich began in September 1937 when they met on the Lido while in Venice for the film festival and continued through at least 1940, maintained mostly by way of letters, cables and telephone calls. A selection of their letters were published in 2003 in the book Tell Me That You Love Me (Sag Mir, Dass Du Mich Liebst) and then in the 2011 play Puma.

In 1938, Remarque and his ex-wife Zambona remarried each other in Switzerland as a protection to prevent her being forced to return to Germany. In 1939 they emigrated to the United States where they both became naturalized citizens in 1947. They divorced again in 1957, this time for good. Ilse Remarque died on 25 June 1975.

Remarque married actress Paulette Goddard in 1958, and they remained married until his death in Locarno in 1970 at the age of 72. Remarque was interred in the Ronco Cemetery in Ronco, Ticino, Switzerland.

Goddard died in 1990 and was interred next to her husband. She left a bequest of $20 million to New York University to fund an institute for European studies, which is named in honour of Remarque. Tony Judt was the first Director of The Remarque Institute. Remarque's papers are housed at NYU's Fales Library. NYU also named an undergraduate dormitory building after her: Paulette Goddard Hall. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 7/09/2013.)