(It was not.) Driven into exile-though a luxurious one-in neighboring Switzerland, Remarque, who had bought himself a nobleman’s rank and had aristocratic leanings, did not vigorously or vocally oppose the Nazis even so, his Aryan status having been proven to the satisfaction of the authorities, he wisely refused entreaties on the part of Hermann Goering to return to Germany and take on a job as Minister of Culture for Prussia. “It would have given him a rueful satisfaction to know that it is in Germany that his work and reputation are nowadays held in the highest reputation,” Tims rightly observes, for Remarque was one of the first non-Jewish writers to attract the wrath of the Nazi regime his books were banned and burned for their supposed defeatism, while Hitler’s propagandists chortled that Remarque (or “Remark,” as the writer rendered his name well into adulthood) was an anagram for Kramer.

Still, he observes, German readers are rediscovering Remarque, who wrote plenty of frothy romances alongside his classic cri de antiguerre. A welcome life of the German writer, the first in English, best known in his time and now for the classic novel All Quiet on the Western Front.Įnglish biographer and novelist Tims never quite explains why Remarque (1898–1970) should merit renewed interest today, when almost all of his books have long since gone out of print in English translation.

Erich maria remarque books