Novel
All Quiet on the Western Front
Im Westen nichts Neues
Erich Maria Remarque · 1929
Synopsis
Paul Bäumer and his schoolmates have enlisted together, driven by the patriotic speeches of their teacher Kantorek. After training harshly conducted by Corporal Himmelstoß, they are sent to the Western Front, where an older reservist, Stanislaus Katczinsky, known as Kat, teaches them how to survive. Their comrade Kemmerich, his leg amputated, dies in the field hospital, and Paul, home on leave, discovers that he can share nothing of what he has lived through with his own people.
Context
Serialised in the Vossische Zeitung from November 1928, the novel appeared in book form from Propyläen on 29 January 1929 and was translated into more than twenty languages in its first year. The Nazis, who disputed even its author's experience of the front, burned copies of it in the book burnings of 1933. It has been adapted for the screen three times: by Lewis Milestone in 1930, by Delbert Mann for television in 1979, and by Edward Berger in 2022, the first German adaptation.
Who it is for
A short novel, told by a young soldier, which follows life in the trenches and the estrangement from the civilian world.
Prizes and reception
Two and a half million copies in twenty-two languages in its first eighteen months; editions now exist in more than fifty languages.