“In one attack our company commander, Bertinck, falls. He was one of those superb front-line officers who are foremost in every hot place.”

E.M. Remarque (1898 to 1970), from All Quiet on the Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque, pseudonym of Erich Paul Remark, was a German novelist who is chiefly remembered as the author of Im Westen nichts Neues (1929; All Quiet on the Western Front), which became perhaps the best-known and most representative novel dealing with World War I.

Remarque was drafted into the German army at the age of 18 and was wounded several times. After the war he worked as a racing-car driver and as a sportswriter while working on All Quiet on the Western Front. The novel’s events are those in the daily routine of soldiers who seem to have no past or future apart from their life in the trenches.