All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet On the Western Front

Born Erich Paul Remark (later changed to Remarque) on June 22, 1898, he grew up in a Roman Catholic family in Osnabruck in the province of Westphalia, Germany--a city in the northwest part of what is now West Germany. He adored his mother, Anna Maria, but was never close to his father, Peter. The First World War effectively shut him off from his sisters, Elfriede and Erna. Peter Remark, descended from a family that fled to Germany after the French Revolution, earned so little as a bookbinder that the family had to move 11 times between 1898 and 1912. The family's poverty drove Remarque as a teenager to earn his own clothes money (giving piano lessons). In November 1916, when Remarque was eighteen and a third-year student at Osnabruck's Lehrerseminar (teachers college), he was drafted for World War I. After basic training at the Westerberg in Osnabruck (the Klosterberg of the book), he was assigned to a reserve battalion, but often given leave to visit his seriously ill mother. In June 1917, he was assigned to a trench unit near the Western Front. He was a calm, self-possessed soldier, and after carrying fellow comrades to safety during battle, he himself was severely injured and was sent to the hospital in Duisburg for much of 1917-1918. He was there when his mother died in September 1917.

The war ended before Remarque could return to active service, but even though he had not experienced front-line fighting at its worst, the war had changed his attitudes forever. He had learned to realize the value of each individual life, and had become disillusioned with a patriotism that ignored the individual. To him and many of his companions, civilian careers no longer held any meaning. In 1929, he published All Quiet on the Western Front, a novel about the experiences of common German soldiers during World War I. Remarque stripped the typical romanticism from the war experience in his shocking anti-war novel. The novel instantly became an international success, and also was turned into an Academy Award winning movie. After reading the book, I can’t even fathom what a different lifestyle Remarque led, fighting for survival every day while I find myself watching hours of TV searching for entertainment day after day. One can imagine the intense emotions that Remarque included in his story, seeing as how his first hand experiences have affected him so greatly.