Erich Maria Remarque, Im Westen nichts Neues [All Quiet on the Western Front]

Alfred D. White (Cardiff University)
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In 1927 Remarque decided to write about the Great War, partly in order to express the trauma he carried from his own experiences as a soldier on the front line. The result is something between reportage and novel, not claiming to reproduce particular events yet never far from lived experience.

Im Westen nichts Neues

[

All Quiet on the Western Front

] was first serialized in 1928 in the

Vossische Zeitung

. The book edition of 1929 sold 3.5 million copies in the first 18 months after its publication. Remarque narrates almost without a cohesive plot, working through standard situations in a soldier’s life between 1914 and 1918: naïve enthusiasm, training, loss of friends, alienation from civilian life, helplessness under fire, war as a machine, sexual encounters, meeting the enemy,…

1246 words

Citation: White, Alfred D.. "Im Westen nichts Neues". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 November 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16864, accessed 19 March 2024.]

16864 Im Westen nichts Neues 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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