Meet the Author
Erich Maria Remarque
German · 1898–1970 · Novelist
Portrait: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R04034, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, via Wikimedia Commons
A German veteran of the First World War whose novel of a young soldier’s war became one of the best-known antiwar books ever written.
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Why read Erich Maria Remarque?
Remarque was drafted as a teenager and wounded on the Western Front, and he wrote about the war as the young men in the trenches lived it. All Quiet on the Western Front refuses to glorify combat. Read him to understand what the war took from a generation.
A life in six dates
- 1898Born in Osnabrück, Germany
- 1916Drafted into the German army
- 1917Wounded on the Western Front
- 1929Publishes All Quiet on the Western Front as a book
- 1933His books are burned by the Nazis
- 1938Stripped of his German citizenship
- 1947Becomes a United States citizen
- 1970Dies in Locarno, Switzerland
Themes across the work
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Context that actually matters
The First World WarTrench warfare on the Western Front killed millions and shaped everything Remarque wrote.
Weimar GermanyHis novel appeared in a country still divided over how to remember its defeat.
ExileThe Nazis attacked his work as unpatriotic, and he spent the rest of his life outside Germany.