“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 wealthy After the 8 th 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 army July 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

Remarque taught at Catholic schools and wrote an unsuccessful novel: Die Traumbude Quit teaching after one year Traveled, 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.”

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 Back Three Comrades

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