Erich Maria Remarque

Erich Paul Remark was born in Germany on 22 June 1898 and served in the Imperial German Army during World War I. A decade later he published All Quiet on the Western Front, a novel drawn directly from that experience, and it became an international bestseller that invented a new genre: veterans writing plainly about combat. The book was adapted to film multiple times, but its anti-war themes brought condemnation from Joseph Goebbels, who called Remarque unpatriotic. He used his literary fame to escape, first to Switzerland as a refugee, then to the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen. He died on 25 September 1970.