All Quiet on the Western Front becomes instant bestseller – archive, 1929
All Quiet on the Western Front tells the story of Paul Bäumer, a young German soldier fighting on the western front during the first world war. Bäumer and several of his friends join the army voluntarily after listening to the patriotic speeches of their teacher, but soon become disillusioned after experiencing the horrors of the battlefield.
After being serialised in 1928 in the German newspaper Vossische Zeitunghe, Erich Maria Remarque’s book was first published on 31 January 1929, and instantly became a bestseller. In March 1929 it was translated into English and the following year was adapted into an Oscar winning Hollywood film. All Quiet’s sense of empathy for a putative enemy did not find favour with the German Nazi party and in December 1930 filmgoers were attacked at several early showings of the movie in Germany. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the book was banned, along with the rest of Remarque’s works, and it became one of the most common books destroyed in the infamous Nazi book burnings.
Editorial: German war books
17 April 1929
Although the British, but Goering’s Seeschlacht, a lyrical drama of the Jutland Battle and a first faint premonition of the German Revolution; Sorge’s imaginative play , Kantorowicz’s magnificent biography of the Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick II, ’s Duineser Elegien, the verse of Bert Brecht – these, and others, still await the English translator.
