'The Black Obelisk' (1956) is an excellent representative of those postwar books. He then lived through the years of postwar economic depression in his defeated country. He was in a position to know about both, since at age eighteen he was drafted into the army, and was badly wounded. However, for the rest of his career he wrote more books about the aftereffects of the war than the war itself. The complete works of Remarque are both highly interrelated with his Osnabrück background and speaking thematically of a critical examination of German history, whereby the preservation of human dignity and humanity in times of oppression, terror and war always was at the forefront of his literary creation.Įrich Maria Remarque (1898-1970) is best known for his WWI novel, 'All Quiet on the Western Front' (1929), and rightfully so. Remarque's novels have been translated in more than fifty languages globally the total edition comes up to several million copies.

The first publication attained worldwide recognition, continuing today.Įxamples of his other novels also internationally published are: The Road Back (1931), Three Comrades (1936, 38), Arch of Triumph (1945), The Black Obelisk (1956), and Night in Lisbon (1962). German history of the twentieth century essentially marks biography of Remarque and fundamentally influences his writing: Childhood and youth, the Weimar Republic, and most of all his exile in Switzerland and the United States. People most widely read literature of author with pen name of Erich Paul Remark in the twentieth century. Experiences of German-born American writer Erich Maria Remarque in World War I based All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), his best known novel.

The obelisk book