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Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front)
All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque that would become one of the best selling and most enduring stories of the Great War published. Remarque was a young German conscript into the Army who fought for the final year of the war on the Western front, where he was seriously wounded. he taught for a short time after the war but was troubled by his experiences and had trouble devoting himself to a single career, finding writing in the middle 1920s.
Published in 1929, the book was a slow starter but soon found an audience based on Remarque's simple use of language and blunt, carefully told storyline. The book caught the attention of the world, weary of the war, because it tried to explain how jingoism and optimism taken to extremes in the minds of young men was crushed by the unromantic realities of war. Millions of veterans and their families were soon buying the book, trying to understand the war years from the eyes of the people who fought it.
Remarque's career was not over with a single book, although his later books (mostly best sellers) are not commonly read. He published after "All Quiet" a series of works following the characters form the first book through the post war year.
In a tragic footnote to Remarque's life, the NAZI government banned all of his writings and organized massive book burnings in the 1930s. So paranoid was the NAZI government about the memory of Remarques work that they arrested his sister, Elfriede Scholz, in 1943, beheading her on December 10 if that year. The statement of the court illustrates their actiual goal when the judge said "Ihr Bruder ist uns leider entwischt—Sie aber werden uns nicht entwischen" ("Your brother is unfortunately beyond our reach—you, however, will not escape us")
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