Erich Maria Remarque - read the author's books online for free

Genres: The novel

Erich Maria Remarque (born Erich Paul Remarque) is one of the most famous and widely read German writers of the 20th century.

Born on June 22, 1898 in Germany, in Osnabrück. He was the second of five children of bookbinder Peter Franz Remarque and Anna Maria Remarque.
In 1904 he entered a church school, and in 1915 - in a Catholic teacher's seminary. From childhood he was interested in the works of Zweig, Dostoyevsky, Thomas Mann, Goethe and Proust.
In 1916, at the age of 18, he was drafted into the army. After multiple wounds on the Western Front, July 31, 1917 was sent to the hospital, where he spent the rest of the First World War.
After the death of his mother in 1918, he changed his middle name in her honor.
In the period from 1919, he first worked as a teacher, and at the end of 1920 changed many professions, including working as a tombstone seller and Sunday organist in the chapel at the hospital for the mentally ill.
In October 1925 he married Ilse Jutta Zambona, a former dancer. Jutta suffered from consumption for many years. She became the prototype for several heroines of the writer's works, including Pat from the novel Three Comrades. The marriage lasted a little over 4 years, after which they divorced. However, in 1938, the writer married Jutta again - to help her get out of Germany and get the opportunity to live in Switzerland, where he himself lived at that time, and later they left for the USA together. Officially, the divorce was issued only in 1957. Until the end of his life, Jutta was paid a cash allowance.

 

From November 1927 to February 1928, his novel "Station on the Horizon" was published in the magazine Sport im Bild, in which he worked at that time. In 1929, Remarque published his most famous work, All Quiet on the Western Front, describing the brutality of the war from the perspective of a 19-year-old soldier. Several more anti-war writings followed; in simple, emotional language, they realistically described the war and the post-war period.
In 1933, the Nazis banned and burned the author's works, and announced (although this was a lie) that Remarque was supposedly a descendant of French Jews and his real name was Kramer (the word Remarque spelled backwards). After that, Remarque left Germany and settled in Switzerland.

 

In 1939, the writer went to the United States, where in 1947 he received American citizenship.

His older sister Elfriede Scholz, who remained in Germany, was arrested for anti-war and anti-Hitler statements. At the trial, she was found guilty and on December 16, 1943 she was executed (guillotined). Remarque dedicated his novel The Spark of Life, published in 1952, to her. 25 years later, a street in her hometown of Osnabrück was named after her.

In 1948, Remarque returned to Switzerland. In 1958 he married Hollywood actress Paulette Goddard. The writer died on September 25, 1970 at the age of 72 in the city of Locarno and was buried in the Swiss cemetery of Ronco in the canton of Ticino.