"Let the ministers and generals fight." The tragedy of the German writer who was an enemy to the Nazis, whose works were burned, and whose sister was executed

“Let the ministers and generals fight it out.” The tragedy of the German writer who was an enemy of the Nazis, whose works were burned, and whose sister was executed

Keep crawling with fortitude; at the end of any road, the Creator awaits you anyway!

God has indeed bestowed upon the souls of writers and creators destinies that are either incomparably beautiful or equally tragic. Yet among them is one German writer whose works were burned in bonfires in his own homeland, whose sister was beheaded—with the bill for her court and imprisonment expenses sent to her family—and whose entire life and creative career were spent amidst world wars. You will not find much difference between his works and his biography. This is, of course, Erich Maria Remarque!

The moment his name is heard in the literary world, the horrors of war, the anguish of a lost generation, and the melancholy clinking of glasses echo in the mind of every reader. Besides being the author of some of the world's most widely read books sold in millions of copies, he had a tragic yet fascinating life path filled with endless suffering, secrets, accusations, and slander.

In this article, we will travel together along that path from those trenches to a quiet cemetery in Switzerland (while trying as much as possible not to spoil the plots when discussing the works).

Tombstones, the meat grinder, and Remarque

June 22, 1898. Osnabrück, Germany. A baby was born into the family of a bookbinder. He was named Erich Paul. His childhood years passed under the strict rules of Catholic seminaries and constant conflicts with his father. From his youth, he was drawn to art and music, but fate had prepared a completely different "concert" for him.

1916. The bloodiest phase of the First World War. The 18-year-old Erich, along with his peers, was thrown into the swamps of Flanders, and on June 17, 1917, to the Western Front, where invisible death and poison gases reigned. These young men, who went straight from school desks into battle, soon realized one truth: high-flown speeches about patriotism were not worth a penny in the face of enemy bullets. A year later, wounded in five places, he ended up in a military hospital. Shrapnel tore his body, but the greatest wound was inflicted on his psyche. While he was in the military hospital, the 19-year-old's mother, Anna Maria, died of cancer.

"I saw her dead in the hospital, but I could not recognize her," he wrote in his diary.

The war ended. But the young men returning from the front could not adapt to peaceful life. They returned to their homes, but their home was no longer there. What didn't Remarque do to make a living: he worked as a schoolteacher, in a mental asylum, as an accountant, and even traded in tombstones in cemeteries. It was his experiences as a tombstone salesman that later formed the basis of his novel "The Black Obelisk." It depicts individuals trying not to lose their humanity against the backdrop of devalued money, inflation, and people committing suicide every day.

1928. Remarque sat in front of a typewriter and decided to pour all the demons inside him onto paper. He finished writing a novel in just six weeks. This work was published in 1929 under the title "All Quiet on the Western Front."

Before declaring war, a public festival should be organized, just like at a bullfight, with music playing and tickets being sold. Then the ministers and generals of the enemy countries should enter the arena and fight it out with each other. Whichever country wins is considered the victor. That would be fair. But now? Completely unknown people are killing each other.

An explosion occurred. The book did not just become popular; it shook everyone. The work was translated into 26 languages in a very short time and sold half a million copies in its first year alone. The book lacked the heroic spirit that was common in works about war in those years. It contained only hunger, lice-infested food, severed legs, and the sorrowful eyes of 32 surviving soldiers from a 150-man company. Remarque became the voice of millions of the "lost generation." But the price of this success was bound to be very heavy.

Exile and the Kramer myth

"Where they burn books, they will also in the end burn people." These words by Heinrich Heine became a terrifying prophecy for Germany.

On December 5, 1930, the premiere of the Hollywood film adaptation of the novel "All Quiet on the Western Front" was taking place at the "Mozartsaal" cinema in Berlin. Because the work did not portray German soldiers as "invincible heroes" and exposed the bloody reality of war, the Nazis, led by Joseph Goebbels, prepared to disrupt this screening. They sneaked into the hall, threw stink bombs in the middle of the show, scattered sneezing powder, and released hundreds of mice into the crowd. As a result, panic broke out in the hall, people were forced to flee, and the screening was stopped.

"Within ten minutes, the hall was in utter chaos. The police were powerless. The angry crowd directed its wrath against the Jews. This is our first major victory. We shouted, 'Out with the Jews, hail Hitler!' The police sympathized with us. The newspapers supported us. The nation is on our side. In a word—victory," Goebbels wrote in his diary.

For the fascists, Remarque's work was a betrayal that stained the honor of the German soldier. They also launched a smear campaign to discredit this writer, who had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. They claimed that Remarque had not participated in the war at all, that his real surname was "Kramer" spelled backward, and that he was Jewish.

Yet this "Jew" had been awarded the Iron Cross First Class in 1918. On January 5, 1919, Remarque renounced the medal and honorary badge and was discharged from the army.

May 10, 1933. Berlin, Bebelplatz. Students carrying crimson torches threw masterpieces of world literature into the fire with their own hands. The books of Karl Marx, Jack London, Thomas Mann, and Erich Maria Remarque burned in the bonfire. The Nazis began their future by turning books to ashes. Realizing his life was in danger, Remarque moved to Switzerland. In 1938, Nazi Germany officially stripped him of his citizenship. He had now become an exile known to the whole world, but without a homeland of his own.

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A life under the guillotine and a check for 495 marks

Remarque lived in safety—first in Switzerland, then in the USA. But his family remaining in Germany was in the Nazis' crosshairs. The writer's sister, Elfriede Scholz, made a living as a tailor. In 1943, she remarked to one of her clients, "The war will end in defeat anyway, soldiers are dying for nothing." Following a denunciation, Elfriede was immediately arrested by the Gestapo.

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At the trial, the notorious judge Roland Freisler looked at her and said: "Unfortunately, your brother has escaped our hands and left the country, but we have caught you!" On December 16, 1943, the 43-year-old Elfriede was beheaded under the guillotine.

However, the most horrific and cold-blooded event occurred after that. The fascist state sent a letter to Remarque's family. Inside the letter was an invoice—the state demanded the payment of 495 marks and 80 pfennigs for the expenses of keeping Elfriede in prison, her trial, and her execution (down to the sharpening of the guillotine blade). This news broke the writer's heart. He lived with this pain and sense of guilt until the end of his life, and later dedicated his novel "Spark of Life," which exposes the horrors of concentration camps, specifically to the memory of his deceased sister.

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The fake baron, love in limbo, and the secrets of "Three Comrades"

Remarque's personal life was as contradictory and passionate as his works. In 1925, he married the dancer Ilse Jutta Zambona. They spent time in theaters and expensive restaurants, and Remarque even bought a title of nobility for 500 marks to carry himself like an aristocrat. Their marriage lasted only 3 years, and they divorced. However, when the Nazi persecution began, Remarque remarried her in 1938 to save his ex-wife and took her with him to Switzerland. It is this Ilse Jutta who is the prototype for the character of Patricia Hollmann (Pat) in the novel "Three Comrades," which we all love to read. (Even when Remarque officially divorced her in 1957, he continued to pay her a large pension until the end of his life).

The brightest yet most toxic love in the writer's life was his relationship with the American film star Marlene Dietrich. Dietrich was beautiful, charming, but completely free and selfish. Remarque loved her madly, was jealous, and suffered. Their relationship was like a race car heading toward a cliff. The writer based the character of Joan Madou in his novel "Arch of Triumph" precisely on Dietrich. Just as the love in the work was tragic, it ended the same way in real life. They parted.

A woman can love you as if she will never leave you, and leave you as if she never loved you.

1951. New York. Remarque met her at a time when he was living in the grip of depression, alcoholism, and neurasthenia. She was Paulette Goddard, a 40-year-old actress and the former wife of Charlie Chaplin. Cheerful, free, and looking at life with love, this woman pulled the writer out of deep depression.

They began spending time together. Paulette's life energy gave Remarque so much strength that he finished writing the novel "Spark of Life." It was in this work that he first equated the inhuman nature of fascism and totalitarian regimes. Under Paulette's influence, he wanted to live again, but Remarque's past wounds never fully healed. He still drank constantly, writing in his diaries that "when sober, he could not talk to people, let alone himself."

When Remarque wrote his famous novel "Heaven Has No Favorites" (literally "Borrowed Life"), he depicted passion, life on the edge of death, and racing. The protagonist, Lillian, suffers from tuberculosis and awaits her death, but spends her money on luxurious dresses and cafes to live her final months to the fullest. This is the nature of a person facing death. The main idea of the work is simple: a person appreciates life only when they feel with their entire being the end of every moment and the transience of their life.

Who knows, perhaps life was given to us as a punishment for a sin we committed in another world. Perhaps our current life itself is hell, and those in church are mistaken when they talk about the torment of hell after death...

Ghosts on the ruins: the final stop

In 1952, after a thirty-year absence, Remarque visited his homeland, Germany. He saw Osnabrück, ruined but being rebuilt. There he met his father and his surviving sister, Erna. However, the ruins of Berlin shocked him. He felt on the streets as if he were among "ghosts, zombies whose souls had been violated." Germany was now foreign to him too; he could not accept this homeland spiritually. The government did not restore his citizenship either (even when they awarded him a medal in 1967, this was overlooked).

By the 1960s, the writer's health began to deteriorate sharply. He suffered several strokes in 1963 and 1965. He lived mainly in the Swiss towns of Locarno and Ascona, as well as in Rome with Paulette during the winters. At the end of the summer of 1970, his heart failed him again.

On September 25, 1970, the 72-year-old Erich Maria Remarque passed away in a hospital in Locarno. Not many people gathered at the modest funeral in Switzerland. His former lover, Marlene Dietrich, had sent a bouquet of red roses to his grave. However, his wife, Paulette Goddard, out of her feminine pride and jealousy, did not allow those roses to be placed on her husband's grave.

In lieu of a conclusion...

Erich Maria Remarque wrote just as he lived. He did not create artificial heroes in his works. His characters feared, cried, betrayed, and drank, but in the most difficult moments, they did not lose their humanity—their loyalty to their brother.

"The state and the homeland are not the same thing," he wrote. The state exiled him, burned his books, and killed his sister. But the Homeland—the soul of humanity and the memory of readers worldwide—embraced him forever.

Life is borrowed. We do not know when we must return it. Therefore, even in the face of death, one must manage to live.