Remarque lived a colorful life, and most of his works are autobiographical, though seldom in much more than an incidental way. His protagonists like to recall boyhood haunts and pleasures that were also Remarque's own: they, too, collected butterflies and read Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jack London, Friedrich Hölderlin, and Thomas Mann. Streets and houses where the author lived and places where he worked appear again and again in the novels; and characters are often named directly after or modeled in thinly disguised fashion on people he had known. Recognizing such real-life references increases one's enjoyment of the works and, perhaps, one's sense of their authenticity, though it is not necessary for understanding the novels themselves. In the infrequent interviews he granted, Remarque always insisted that the events of his life were not important for his fiction and that, like any decent novelist, he wanted to be known for the latter. Nevertheless, Remarque was a successful, famous, and colorful man.
He was born in Osnabrück on 22 June 1898 as Erich Paul Remark. He later took the middle name Maria from his mother, Anna Maria Remark, and the spelling Remarque from French ancestors.
This is a free page. This page contains 173 words. This
biography contains 11,554 words (approx. 39 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Erich Maria Remarque Access Pass.
