Preface

Summary

ALTHOUGH SINCE 1998, the centenary of his birth, much more of Erich Maria Remarque's work has become available than before, this study is concerned with his principal achievement, his novels, evaluating them on their own terms with regard to theme and style. Two errors have been prevalent in past Remarque studies. The first is that Remarque is a writer of Trivialliteratur, a notion encountered especially in German criticism, though things are now beginning to change. Salomo Friedlaender, writing as Mynona in 1929, published an overblown attack criticizing Remarque's style with the arresting title Hat Erich Maria Remarque wirklich gelebt? and it has had its successors. This is probably based on a combination of issues: that his style somehow does not match the high seriousness of tone expected of the supposedly great novel; that his works have always been and still are popular; and that most have been filmed. This study presents him as a writer of considerable importance to twentieth-century Germany — and he remains very much a German writer despite his exile years — who treated serious themes in a way that holds the readers’ interest. One biography refers to him as a “chronicler of the twentieth century,” and most of his novels indeed reflect German problems in that century: two world wars and the successive Weimar and Nazi regimes in Germany, and more particularly their effects on the individual. On the other hand, his themes are also universal, dealing with human relationships. That he is a lastingly popular writer ought also to count in his favor. It is gratifying that in the years since his centenary there has been a marked increase in scholarly studies of his work, as a glance at the current bibliographies in the well-established Erich Maria Remarque Jahrbuch/Yearbook makes clear. Admittedly though, scholarly considerations of Remarque have moved fairly rapidly from the dismissive towards the impenetrable. The internationalism of Remarque scholarship is also patent. Earlier studies, too, tended to focus rather too much on Remarque's biography, but we are now able to take a more objective view of the work.

The second error is that he was a one-novel writer. This idea is often encountered, or has clearly had some implicit influence, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world.