Erich Maria Remarque Books In Order

Publication Order of All Quiet on the Western Front/The Road Back Books

Publication Order of Washington Mews Books Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Plays

Publication Order of Anthologies

Erich Maria Remarque was a bestselling literary fiction author from Germany. The author was born to master machinist and bookbinder Peter Franz Remarque and Anna Maria Stallknecht his wife. He was born in the industrial town of Osnabruck, Westphalia in 1898.

As members of the poorer working classes, his family had to move from house to house for more than a dozen years. They once lived in the rooms that served as the offices of the publishing company where his father worked.

Remarque was brought up in a very strict Catholic homeland and went to a parochial school, where his experiences would later inspire some of his works.

So that he could pay for his schoolbooks and several other hobbies he used to give piano lessons to young girls as he was a gifted organist and pianist. When he had the time he performed magic tricks fished in the river and composed essays and poems.

Since he had few professional choices given his social class, he went on to attend Lehrerseminar for elementary education courses.

In November 2016, Erich Maria Remarque was drafted as an infantryman and went to complete his basic training just after he won an essay contest. By 1918, he managed to get a medical discharge, and soon after, he was suffering from major postwar disillusionment and trauma.

He was also suffering from regret following the dashing of his hopes of becoming a career concert pianist. For the next decade, he went about looking to find something to create meaning in his life and ended up in a special veterans seminary.

Remarque graduated with a degree in Herder’s folk songs and Goethe’s verse in 1919, even though he only got average grades. It was during this time that he started writing poems and essays that would be published in a local paper.

He started working as a substitute teacher in Lohne where he lived with a local family. He also did other odd jobs such as carving tombstones, writing art reviews, selling fabric, and playing the organ at Michaelis Chapel.

In 1922 he worked as a humor writer and editor for Echo Continental an in-house magazine.

In the post-war era, Remarque began confronting the wartime torments that had always been in his dreams and thoughts for decades. Within a few weeks, Erich composed the work “West Nothing New” driven by cigars and strong coffee.

The work would go on to become serialized in “Vossische Zeitung,” a very popular literary magazine. The work would, later on, be published as an English novel under the title “All Quiet on the Western Front.”

While most publishers did not believe there was anyone still interested in World War I, the work beat all expectations. It became a bestseller selling more than a million copies within a year, and it would later be translated into nearly thirty languages.

It was also adapted into a movie set on a 930-acre farm in Irvine, California produced by Universal Studios. Featuring real flamethrowers, landmines, and howitzers, the movie was nominated for an Academy Award for best direction and best picture.

Erich Maria Remarque’s novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” tells the story of nineteen-year-old Paul Baumer who is a German soldier based in France during World War I.

Alongside several of his classmates, Baumer was hoping that he would have an exciting adventure. But his hopes are dashed as soon as he gets into basic training, as they are broken down and tossed right into the fighting.

It is here that the horrors of death replace the beauty of nationalism. The young men find themselves living in terror as they deal with shrapnel and all manner of explosions.

The story is an exploration of the tribulations and trials that war brings firsthand to those who participate in it. Baumer tries to justify fighting in France trying to survive on meager rations.

He is witness to how devastating war can be s only a few of his class come out of the war and survive. He also has to face up to life realities which allow his pragmatism to come to the surface and turns sensitivity on its head.

When a soldier is killed right in front of him, they scramble for his supplies with no regard for the dead man’s humanity. This makes for a refreshing exploration into the meaning of life and the various lessons offered.

“The Road Back” by Erich Maria Remarque while being a novel that is much less acclaimed as compared to his debut, is just as heartbreaking and thought-provoking.

The story is set during the closing stages of the First World War where several young German soldiers are talking. They are dreaming of going back home and think of what peace will be like, even as their hearts are filled with both longing and fear.

They also grieve for lost comrades who have died but cannot wait to be reunited with family and friends and go back to their old lives. When the war finally comes to an end, they are hoping that they will get a hero’s welcome only to meet with a lack of understanding and indifference.

Life had gone on while they were fighting for their homeland and for those left behind nothing much has changed. But everything has changed for the young men.
They are no longer lads with innocent dreams and hopes of youth but rather men wizened by their experiences, damaged psychically and physically that they can no longer fit in their society.

Erich Maria Remarque’s novel “Three Comrades” is a work written from a first-person perspective.

The lead is Robert Lohkamp who fought on the German-French front and has become disillusioned following his horrifying experiences. He shares his experiences with his two comrades Gottfried Lenz and Otto Koster, who are his business partners running an auto repair shop in Berlin during the 1920s.

It is a city filled with the jobless in which there is increasing violence between the right and the left. The novel opens in the seedy backstreets where prostitutes engage with hopeless men from the war.

While Robert and his partners make a somewhat good living driving an old taxi and selling cars, the country is increasingly going into dire straits.
It is in such circumstances that he meets a mysterious and beautiful young woman named Patrice Holmann who is from the upper-middle class. They soon embark on a whirlwind romance as he introduces her to a life of races and bars.

Slowly but surely, he becomes less nihilistic as he comes to acknowledge how important Pat is to him.