Arc de Triomphe (novel)

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Arc de Triomphe is a novel by the German writer Erich Maria Remarque published in 1945. He describes the life of refugees in Paris on the eve of World War II .

action

1938: The German surgeon Ravic fled to Paris from political persecution by the National Socialist German regime . He lives illegally in France and is threatened with deportation at any time. He works as a surgeon for unscrupulous French doctors who exploit him economically, taking advantage of his position without rights. Ravic drinks a lot, has unfortunate affairs and cannot forget the torture and persecution by the Nazis. He shares this fate with other persecuted: German and Austrian Jews, Spaniards and Russians.
He falls in love with the singer Joan Madou, who has also fled fascist Italy , although he believed he had already lost his ability to love unconditionally.

The political news suggests that a great war is looming. One day Ravic rediscovers his former torturer, Haake, among the Gestapo officers who, disguised as tourists, are trying to track down German refugees in Paris. He offers himself to him as a tour guide, lures him into an ambush, murders him and removes the body without being discovered.

The novel ends with Joan Madou fatally injured by a jealous lover. When Ravic helps her euthanasia , they both confess their love. Shortly afterwards , the Germans invade Poland , triggering World War II . Ravic allows himself to be arrested by the French police without resistance and taken to an internment camp for Germans. Ravic knows that if France is defeated, he will be murdered by the Nazis and he accepts his fate.

publication

The German-language manuscript of the novel was completed in December 1944 in a "first final version" and then went to the translators, since it was to be released on the American market first in English. Denver Lindley and Walter Sorell did the translation, and a heavily abridged preprint as a serialized novel was published from September 15 to October 20, 1945 in the high-circulation magazine Collier’s with illustrations by Mario Cooper . In December 1945 the book edition was published by Appleton-Century . The Book of the Month Club voted the book the top title of its monthly selection, and on March 10, 1946, the title topped the New York Times bestseller list , where it stayed for eight weeks. In the annual bestseller list of Publishers Weekly 1946 it reached number 7 in the department "Fiction" ( fiction ).

The path of the work to the German-speaking book market was far more difficult. Here Switzerland initially offered itself as a publishing location, as the book market in post-war Germany was down. In the winter of 1945/46, Remarque asked his friend and art dealer Walter Feilchenfeldt , who lived in Zurich , to find a possible publisher. He chose the Zurich publishing house FG Micha , founded in 1944 , which turned out to be a bad mistake. It was one of the many Swiss publishers that had been founded in 1943 and hoped for a boom after the end of the Second World War. Contemporary critics saw them as "business cycle publishers". Micha-Verlag offered a large advance payment and received a publishing contract for the German-language edition. Micha published the book in the autumn of 1946. According to Remarque researcher Thomas F. Schneider , the publisher tried to offset the expenses for the advance payment with a very high edition in order to reduce the cost per book. However, only about 40,000 copies could be sold (according to Frank Möller's estimate). The remaining copies were not allowed to settle so that FG Micha at station kiosks, the book among other verramschte . Several thousand books were left with Feilchenfeldt and other business partners. The market was spoiled by the cheap oversupply, but the publishing contract prevented Remarque from doing anything about it. In December 1951 bankruptcy proceedings were opened against the publisher. After the rights to Remarque fell back in 1951, his new agent Felix Guggenheim succeeded in 1952 in placing the book with the Kurt Desch publishing house . This, too, was not unproblematic, since Desch published a cheap book series “Welt im Buch” in addition to his main program, in which he also included Arc de Triomphe in an abbreviated version, apparently without obtaining Remarque's consent.

Internationally, however, the novel was a great success. Between 1945 and 1948 translations were made in 22 languages, and in 2017 Thomas F. Schneider counted a total of 43 languages ​​into which the novel was translated.

filming

The novel was filmed four times: Triumphal Arch (1948) with Ingrid Bergman , Charles Boyer and Charles Laughton and In the Shadow of the Triumphal Arch (1985) with Anthony Hopkins and Lesley-Anne Down became famous . There are also film adaptations in Argentina (1964) and Poland (1993).

literature

  • Thomas F. Schneider: "If you are really lost, you no longer speak." About Erich Maria Remarques Arc de Triomphe . In: Erich Maria Remarque: Arc de Triomphe. Novel. In the version of the first edition with appendix and an afterword edited by Thomas F. Schneider. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2017, pp. 669–692.

Web links

  • Maren Koch: Arc de Triomphe. Novel. Online on the website of the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Center Osnabrück

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas F. Schneider: "Who is really lost, speaks no more" , p. 684; first number of the preprint .
  2. ↑ Thomas F. Schneider: "Who is really lost, speaks no more" , p. 684; David Immerwahr: The Books of the Century: 1940-1949 , online ; Bill Berish: Arch of Triumph: The Number One Best Seller , online ; Keith L. Justice: Bestseller index. All books, by author, on the lists of Publishers Weekly and the New York Times through 1990 . McFarland, Jefferson and London 1998, p. 254.
  3. ^ Swiss Booksellers Association: Adressbuch des Schweizer Buchhandels , 1947, p. 25.
  4. ↑ Thomas Fleischer: Remarque's return to the German-language book market after 1945 . In: Thomas F. Schneider (Ed.): Erich Maria Remarque. Life, work and global impact . Rasch, Bramsche 1998, pp. 267-276, here: p. 268; Jürg Zbinden: Great moments or missed opportunities. On the history of the Swiss book trade 1943–1952. Chronos, Zurich 1995, pp. 63–75, here: p. 66.
  5. ↑ Thomas F. Schneider: "Who is really lost, speaks no more" , pp. 686–688; Thomas Fleischer: Remarque's return to the German-language book market after 1945 . In: Thomas F. Schneider (Ed.): Erich Maria Remarque. Life, work and global impact . Rasch, Bramsche 1998, pp. 267-276, here: pp. 268-270; Frank Möller: Grabbing the wheel of fortune by the spokes. Joseph Caspar Witsch - His authors, his publishing program and the literary business of the early Federal Republic . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2015.
  6. ↑ Thomas F. Schneider: "Who is really lost, no longer speaks" , pp. 685–686.
  7. ↑ On this film, see Laura Drauschke, Mathias Kavermann, Carolina Koch, Kristina Niehaus, Saskia Scheurich, Lea Schumann, Meike Wienken, Annika Wilken, Marleen Wolff, Laura Zimmermann: Arco di Triunfo . Online on the website of the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Center.
  8. ↑ For this film adaptation, see Luk Triumfalny , online on the website of the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Center.