“I am opposed to anything auto- biographical and biographical... What I have learned in my life I have used in my works and the rest is private and does.

“I am opposed to anything auto-biographical and biographical . . . What I have learned in my life I have used in my works and the rest is private and does not influence the work and this is how I would keep it.”

Born Erich Paul Remark in Osnabruck, Germany, 1898

(Remarque—a French ancestral surname)

Parents were never wealthyAfter the 8th grade, attended a free Catholic training school for teachers to extend his education.

Considered a handsome, artistic young man

1915: Erich’s mother begins two year battle with cancer.

1916: Drafted into the armyJuly 31, 1917, the first day of the battle of Flanders, Erich was wounded in the neck, the left leg above the knee, and the right forearm

Carries a friend out of battle Mother dies in September

Spent months recovering in the hospital, writing poetry and prose

After release, never had to return to battle

When the war ended, he felt a lot of patriotism, but as the years went by he reflected:

“After it was all over I saw all its hideousness, but there was one thing I could not accept: I saw my best friend lying in the mud, his abdomen torn open . . .

“It required many post-war years and much reflection for me to realize the full atrocity of these occurrences.”

Remarque taught at Catholic schools and wrote an unsuccessful novel: Die Traumbude

Quit teaching after one yearTraveled, worked, wrote, and drank heavily

• Published Station at the Horizon (1927) in Sport im Bild, a German magazine and begins using Remarque, the French spelling of his last name.

• The novel is a romance, described by a friend as “unpretentious with first-class radiators and beautiful women.”

1928In spite of his success, becomes depressed and begins writing All Quiet on the Western Front as an attempt to discover the reasons for his depression

“I sought out quite consciously and systematically the cause of my depressions. Through this deliberate analysis I hit upon my war experiences. I could detect the same among many acquaintances and friends. The shadows of the war hung over us even when we did not think of it at all.”

All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel, not a memoir.

The reality is not in biographical events, but in the truth of the brutality of the war.

The novel became an unprecedented success:

an international best-seller

translated into approximately 40 languages

By the 1930’s the Nazi party denounced and banned the book for its lack of patriotism.

Published two more novels compiling a trilogy, both of which chronicle the struggles of soldiers returning to society

The Road BackThree Comrades

By the 1940’s Remarque traveled to America where he wrote more novels and became a successful screen-writer.

Spent the rest of his life writing and moving between America and Europe.

Died in 1970 with his wife Paulette Goddard by his side.