nothing new in the West

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Cover of the first edition 1929

Nothing new in the West is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque , written in 1928 , which describes the horrors of World War I from the perspective of a young soldier. Thomas Schneider, editor of a new paperback edition of the text and head of the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Center in Osnabrück since 2000 , describes the novel as a “perfectly constructed […], alternating […] sequence of cruel, deterrent, emotionally upsetting with retarding and reflexive but also humorous standard situations of the 'war' ”. Although Remarque himself described the book as apolitical, it has become a classic in world literature as an anti-war novel.

Nothing new in the West appeared as a preprint in the Vossische Zeitung for the first time since November 10, 1928 , and in book form by Propylaen Verlag on January 29, 1929. According to the publisher, it had a circulation of 450,000 copies within eleven weeks. It was translated into 26 languages ​​that same year. To date, there are editions in over 50 languages, the estimated sales figures worldwide (as of 2007) are over 20 million.

The Nazis themselves Remarque had made with his novel enemies. As part of their character assassination campaign against the unpopular author, they questioned his authenticity and spread the rumor that he did not take part in the First World War at all. During the National Socialist book burnings in 1933 , numerous copies of In the West Nothing New were destroyed.

The US film adaptation of the same name by Lewis Milestone from 1930 also achieved worldwide fame . Another film adaptation of the same name was shot in 1979.

content

Western Front in Flanders, 1917

Paul Bäumer is one of a group of soldiers on the Western Front during World War I. In the resting position behind the front, he remembers his school days. The patriotic speeches of his teacher Kantorek had led the whole class to volunteer for military service. Under the drill of their instructor Sergeant Himmelstoss, they already learn in the basic training that all values ​​that have been conveyed to them in school so far lose their validity in the barracks yard. They are transferred to the Western Front, where they are prepared for the dangers of the battlefield by the experienced combatant Stanislaus Katczinsky. Katczinsky is a role model for Paul Bäumer's soldiers and friends and has authoritarian influence over them. He becomes the unofficial leader. Paul learns to survive, to distinguish the different projectiles by the sound, to find something to eat even under the most adverse conditions and to arm himself against the real enemy, death.

During a short stay at home, Bäumer realizes how much his experiences at the front have changed him in the meantime. It is impossible for him to share the cruel experiences in the trenches with his family and other civilians . Disappointed, he returns to those people who have now become the closest to him, to his comrades at the front. He is wounded in an attack and spends a few weeks in the hospital before returning to the front. Over the next few months, Bäumer's group will gradually be crushed. One after the other dies in gas and grenade attacks, in barrage or in hand-to-hand combat. Finally, Bäumer was also fatally hit shortly before the end of the war, "on a day which was so calm and so quiet that the army report was limited to the sentence that nothing new was to be reported in the West."

Chapter overview

Chapter 1

The company is astonished to note that there are almost double food rations, as only 80 men of 150 have returned from the front. The 19-year-old narrator Paul Bäumer describes how he and his classmates were persuaded by their teacher Kantorek to enlist in the army . Looking back, he realizes that the worldview conveyed by the educator cannot be combined with the reality experienced at the front.

The comrades visit the seriously wounded Franz Kemmerich in the hospital , who at the time did not even know that his leg had to be amputated. The comrades see to it that the dying Kemmerich receives morphine from the medic ; At the same time, Müller, one of them, tries to get the injured man's good boots so that he can wear them himself.

Chapter 2

Paul wonders how the hard life in the barracks prepared him for the war and how his superior Himmelstoss bullied him during his basic training, and wonders what his life will be like after the war. He believes that without military training he would have gone crazy in the trenches and mourns his friend Kemmerich, who has since died in the hospital.

Chapter 3

Katczinsky (everyone just called Kat ), who repeatedly beautifies and eases the life of a soldier with the "most important" things, is described as an indispensable figure of identification for the young soldiers. A conversation follows about the military, war and the source of power. - Tjaden has a major anger against Himmelstoss because he suffered particularly from the NCO's training methods. Memories are awakened of an action in the past, in which the comrades intercepted Himmelstoss on his way and gave him a good beating.

Chapter 4

Paul's company is filled with young recruits and has to go to the front for the fortification . In the distance you can hear the cries of wounded horses going through the marrow and bone. On their return, the company is suddenly attacked with artillery fire and poison gas and hides between burial mounds in a cemetery, several soldiers are killed.

Chapter 5

Paul and his friends wonder what to do after the war ends. They are interrupted by Himmelstoss, who was their hated instructor during basic training; Tjaden and Kropp oppose him and are punished mildly for it. Later, an action by Kat and Paul Bäumers brought them a roast goose, which everyone devoured hungrily and gratefully.

Chapter 6

Again it goes to the front. The company had to hold out in the trench under strong artillery fire for three days. In the process, scarce food rations, a plague of rats and psychological pressure hit the soldiers hard until the feared French attack finally took place. As if death were after them, they no longer see people in their opponents, but try to become dangerous animals, to kill everyone who comes towards them. The next day, another massive enemy attack takes place, which claims many victims, especially among the inexperienced recruits, including Paul's friend Haie Westhus. Out of 150 men, only 32 return to the camp.

Chapter 7

After the frontline deployment, the company is transferred back to the field recruit depot. Paul and his friends meet three women who secretly visit them at night. Later, Paul goes on home leave for two weeks and visits his sick mother. However, he has problems finding his way back home, where a completely transfigured picture of the situation at the front prevails; because the horror of experiences at the front makes everyday life appear strange. He visits his former classmate Mittelstaedt, who in the barracks grinds and ridicules her teacher Kantorek, who has since been drafted and who has bullied her and made her volunteer at the front. At the end of the vacation he tells Kemmerich's mother about the death of her son. He thinks about his life and his relationship with his mother.

Chapter 8

After the vacation, Paul is posted to the Heidelager for a few weeks, where he meets Russian prisoners who have to live a miserable life there under miserable circumstances. He shares his cigarettes with them . At the end of his stay, he is visited by his father and sister and receives potato pancakes prepared for him by his cancer-stricken mother (she does not seem to be recovering from it - there is no mention of when she dies, but certainly after hearing the news of Paul's death at the end); he gives two of them to the Russians.

Chapter 9

Paul drives back to his company. After a brief inspection visit by the emperor and a discussion about the cause and meaning of the war, we go back to the front. While on patrol , the soldiers are surprised by an enemy attack. Paul saves himself in a bomb crater and plays dead. When a Frenchman named Gérard Duval also jumps into this hopper, Paul thrusts his bayonet dagger into the stomach out of fear of death . Out of grave feelings of guilt, he promises the dying person that he will look after his family, although he knows that he will not be able to keep this promise. Because of the ongoing danger, Paul has to stay next to the dead man for a whole day until he can crawl back into the German trench. Excited, he tells his friends about the personal confrontation with the enemy and his remorse. Kat and Albert try to calm him down.

Chapter 10

First, the soldiers guard an abandoned village where they can have a good time. But in an opposing offensive, Paul and Albert are wounded and first go to the hospital, where Paul is operated on and then transferred to a Catholic hospital. Albert's leg is amputated there. After a few weeks in the hospital, Paul is given vacation leave and has to say goodbye with a heavy heart to Albert, whose further fate the reader in the novel learns nothing of. Paul is requested by the regiment again and drives back to the front. - Paul is now 20 years old, so he has been a soldier for two years ; it is around a year older than at the beginning of the narrated event.

Chapter 11

Paul experienced many more missions at the front. His friends Berger, Müller, Leer, their brave company commander Bertinck die and finally Katczinsky too - despite a desperate attempt to rescue Paul. Detering deserted , but was picked up again and probably shot . Some young soldiers suffer from front-line seizures. They are not up to their terrible experiences. Paul describes how miserable the situation of the Germans is and how much the Allies are superior; several times he conjures up the summer of 1918 with all its torments. Even Paul can hardly bear the cruelty of the war: “Why? Why is there no end? " Although the soldiers are informed about the armistice in the east and although the narrator introduces the terms "mutiny" and "revolution" into his story, neither Paul nor the other surviving soldiers get the idea that they themselves are actively contributing to the hoped-for end of the war could.

Chapter 12

Paul is calm because he has swallowed gas . All of his friends have already fallen; he is the last of seven men in his class; he expects an early armistice. He worries about whether his generation can still find their way after the war; he is calm and collected.

In October 1918, shortly before the end of the war, Paul fell, according to an anonymous narrator. His face looks almost peaceful. At the front it is so quiet that day that the army report is limited to the sentence that “there is nothing new to report in the West”.

Central themes

Traumatization from the horrors of war

The novel presents vividly the horrors of war are. On the Western Front , the largely realistic picture emerges of the invention of chemical weapons (poison gas) and the use of modern artillery and machine guns marked trench warfare . Remarque impressively describes the cruel battle at the front, the battlefields covered with corpses, the miserable life in the trenches and the bloody everyday life in the hospital .

These horrors have a disillusioning effect on the soldiers' psyche: constant attacks and counter-attacks rub their nerves, they never lose their fear. Constantly tormented by hunger and thirst, they vegetate under inhuman conditions, lose all their ideals and increasingly turn into panicked animals, only eager to satisfy their most primitive needs. Even the survivors, far from being able to process their cruel experiences, will (Paul Bäumer suspects) ultimately remain destroyed by the war and, as Paul Bäumer's depressing home leave suggests, will no longer be able to find their way back to normal, civil life. With this, Remarque, who puts the knowledge he gained after the war into his character Paul Bäumer, describes the syndrome that is now known as post-traumatic stress disorder .

The topos of the "lost generation"

In the foreword or motto of the book, the theme is given as “to report on a generation that was destroyed by the war - even if it escaped its grenades”. It's about the generation that was sent away from school to go to war. Remarque took the term “ Lost Generation ” coined by Gertrude Stein from a discourse that arose in the USA.

On the occasion of a letter from Kantorek, Paul remembers how he got the whole class excited about military service (pp. 15–18). Kantorek and the other teachers “should become mediators and guides to the world of adulthood for us eighteen-year-olds”; but the first death destroyed the worldview they conveyed and the assumption that they had greater insight than the students. “We were suddenly terribly alone; - and we had to deal with it on our own. ”At the beginning of the second chapter (p. 23) Paul reflects on the special situation of his generation:“ The older people are all firmly connected to the former, they have reason, they have women , Children, job and interests. [...] We weren't rooted yet. The war swept us away. ”In the 6th chapter (p. 111) it is reported how Paul is alone at night after a close combat of the company and remembers the landscapes of his youth, which will perhaps remain alien to him forever : "We are abandoned like children and experience like old people, we are raw and sad and superficial - I think we are lost ."

Some biographers Remarques see in Paul Bäumer's thesis, according to which members of the "lost generation" were spoiled for life after the war, a main reason for the success of the novel: Everyone who failed in their professional or private life after the war had themselves can refer to this “diagnosis” in Remarque's novel. Remarque's biography proves the opposite: Even and especially the writing down of the sentence: “I think we are lost” paradoxically made Remarque a successful author and multimillionaire.

The myth of camaraderie

In the final printed version of the novel, the comradeship between the soldiers is rated as “the most important thing”: “The most important thing, however, was that a solid, practical sense of togetherness awoke in us, which then increased in the field to the best that the war produced: for Comradeship! ”(P. 29). Katczinski, in particular, "is indispensable" (p. 37). It is only logical that his comrades should help Paul over his worst crisis, namely the experience of having to spend a long time together in a funnel with a Frenchman who was seriously injured, died and later died (pp. 185–202).

In the long-unpublished typescript version of the novel, however, Bäumer is left alone with his guilt by his “comrades” after his return from the funnel. In this version, the isolation of the individual in war is still a partial aspect of being lost (p. 449f.). Remarque's novel The Way Back (1930) shows that the (front) comradeship is completely unsuitable for civil post-war society.

In view of the fact that there were 29,000 local war clubs in Germany during the Weimar Republic , which intensely cultivated comradeship and the "myth of combatants at the front", it apparently did not seem opportune for Propylaea publishers to publish a text in which comradeship was openly in Question was asked. By asserting that the print version was capable of destroying the myth of comradeship “through a disillusioning description of everyday war life”, the online lexicon “Wissen.de” calls into question the success of the publisher's efforts. Even Dieter Wunderlich stressed that Erich Maria Remarque did not "blessed" in his novel the camaraderie, but appropriate praises by Ernst Junger and other "right" Authors something I want to oppose.

On the other hand, the “Spiegel” stated in 1952: “Even in the ' Drei Kameraden ', which appeared in 1936, the title trio escapes from a life that it cannot or does not want to understand, to the island of noble companionship. Twenty years after the end of the war, Remarque's life is a continuation of war comradeship by other means, and even today he still uses the word 'comrade' as his favorite address to guests at an advanced hour. "

Further orientation points and benchmarks

The narrator finds a great sense of security in the earth, which he worships like a friend, a brother, a mother (p. 52f.).

Points of contact with the philosophy of life show (especially in the last chapter) Paul's thoughts on whether “life” will not prevail against all hopelessness and destruction (“the softness that made our blood restless, the uncertain, the startling, the coming, the thousand Faces of the future, the melody from dreams and books, the rustling and the premonition of women ”, p. 258).

In chapter 6 he says about the randomness of the grenade impacts: “It is this chance that makes us indifferent ... Every soldier only stays alive through a thousand accidents. And every soldier believes and trusts chance. "(P. 92)

Nothing is reported about prayer at the front. Apparently, this is of no importance to the protagonist. God as an authority does not appear either - he is only mentioned once by name, and that only in empty phrases: “Oh God, what is sacred to me? - something like that changes quickly with us. "(p. 163)

Futile hope of salvation

The plot of the novel follows the logic of a tragedy : One after the other of the seven comrades of Paul Bäumer falls out as combat companions: Kemmerich, Westhus, Kropp, Detering, Müller, Leer and finally Kat.Da Paul Bäumer at the end his comrades as a source of strength absent, it is logical (a kind of “dramaturgical necessity”) that he too dies. Only Tjaden (although that is not explicitly stated in the novel either) survived the war.

The life plans from the time before the war all appear to be obsolete. Concrete plans for a possible "time after" are not developed in the novel. At the same time, pictures of the “beautiful life” appear again and again, to which, however, no rational path from the reality of front life is shown. Significantly, the final chapter speaks of a “rapture of salvation” (p. 257).

Paul Bäumer suspected in 1918 that the war could not last long (p. 251) and assumed that the war would soon end with a peace treaty or a revolution (“If there is no peace, then there is revolution”, p. 257). He hopes in vain that he will not die “last”. The revolution appears in the narrator's diction as something that “exists” - like the weather.

Although Bäumer, like his fellow combatants, has become tired of the war, at the end he distances himself from thoughts of mutiny (p. 248), and in view of the retreat from the overwhelming superiority of the Western Allies and the undoubtedly imminent defeat of the war, he shares the reader with “a halo more martyrial Willingness to make sacrifices' ”defiantly with:“ We are not defeated. ”(P. 252)

In summary, Thomas Becker attests Paul Bäumer a "negative reconciliation with the reality of the war without giving it a positive meaning."

interpretation

Paul Bäumer stands for the normal citizen from the bourgeoisie and is 19 years old at the beginning. He has no training and “learns” to be a soldier. His classmates are labeled as types , not characters. They all belong to the " lost generation ". Everyone suffers the horrors of war, everyone is dead in the end. Katcinsky stands for the older soldiers (40 years old) who are needed in war. His ideals are destroyed in war. He becomes confidante of the protagonist. Sergeant Himmelstoss stands for the typical "little man" who gets a certain power over others in the army and uses it. Class teacher Kantorek stands for the state-supporting class in the empire and advocates war. As an authority figure, his students obey him and go to war “voluntarily”. He teaches meaningless educational content that only serves to prepare for war.

Style and literary quality

Style of the novel

The Erich Maria Remarque Peace Center Osnabrück considers "the narrative style based on episodes, the dramatic dialogue, the journalistically concise, precise characterization of people" to be the most important features of the style of Erich Maria Remarque's novel.

Jörg F. Vollmer also emphasizes the episode structure and the scenic rendering as essential stylistic features of the novel. He also rates the present tense as the tense of representation , the change from “I” to “we” and the “aesthetics of horror” as characteristic. Vollmer even goes so far as to claim that Remarque had "introduced the figure of the ' zombies ' into war literature " with his novel .

Belonging to the literary movement of the “ New Objectivity ” can be recognized by the fact that even the worst events are predominantly told in a calm, serene-looking, often balancing tone, which can be aesthetically demanding. Example:

Grenades, gas plumes and tank flotillas - crush, gnaw, death.
Dysentery, flu, typhus - choking, burning, death.
Digging, military hospital, mass grave - there are no more options. (P. 249)

Features of the New Objectivity are: an objective, realistic writing; a sober and emotionless storytelling; renouncing pathos to the point of liberation from all pathos; the renouncement of decorative and ornamental things; Precision; Assembly; fact-based presentation, concentration on "facts"; the acceptance of the power of things, things and situations; the postulate of truthful presentation; objectivity through observation; turning away from psychologizing, from feelings of melancholy, sadness, etc .; the rejection of “wrong” poeticizing; to understand the matter completely from within and want to represent it to the last consequence.

In some parts of the novel, however, echoes of the style of Expressionism that should actually be overcome by the New Objectivity become clear, e.g. B. in Chapter 4 (p. 52f.), Where the narrator speaks directly to “Mother Earth” full of pathos , or in Chapter 11, where “Summer 1918” is evoked anaphorically , right on the verge of kitsch (p. 250f .). "Expressionist" also appear to be formulations such as "Blacker darkness than night rushing towards us with gigantic humps" (p. 62), which interrupt the factual representation. Salutations like: “Oh, you dark, musty corporal rooms with the iron bed frames, the diced beds, the lockers and the stools in front of them!” Or: “You instruction hours in the morning” (p. 42) seem downright funny.

Evaluation of literary quality

The publisher's advertisement quotes Stefan Zweig: "A perfect work of art and an undoubted truth at the same time."

The online encyclopedia “deutsche-biographie.de” published by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek criticizes the underestimation of the works of Erich Maria Remarque by “literary experts” in Germany: “R. is as a writer of the German literary studies and criticism - in contrast to the Anglo-Saxon. German studies - underestimated since its artistic beginnings and brought into connection with colportage , entertainment prose or trivial literature . "

Marcel Reich-Ranicki judged the novel in 1961: “'Not New in the West' […] contains excellently written fragments as well as very bad sections and testifies to unusual literary talent and provocative showmanship. [...] His prose is set in the epic no man's land: neither serious criticism of the times nor innocent entertainment, neither real literature nor absolute trash. "

In 1993, the “Spiegel” spoke of a “somewhat petty-bourgeois pedantic objectivity” of scenes in the book. Nothing new in the West shows “how, in the midst of European self-tearing, German sentimentality and longing for idylls blossomed, an almost comfortable boredom and scout-like companionship in the face of millions of deaths. Skat is pounded and the kitchen bull is duped, you sizzle potato pancakes in spite of the enemy fire as if you were nuts, visit official and unofficial brothels and even successfully defend yourself against the real enemy of the German soldier, the harassing grinder. "

Jörg Friedrich Vollmer points out that Remarque has filled a gap. Because "authors who can be assigned to the literary ' high ridge ' and from whom an aesthetically demanding presentation would have been expected" would have "rarely tried [...] to do literary justice to the event of the modern war." Ernst Jünger had that in 1931 justified with the words: "The great difficulty that the last war posed to any design consists in its monotony."

It should be noted that at the end of the 1920s the quality segment in the literature business of the Weimar Republic was undergoing massive restructuring, with the foundations of today's book marketing being developed. In the course of this reorganization, publishers declined to make a clear distinction between “high-altitude literature” and “entertainment literature”, as they had to fight for their survival in competition with one another on the book market and with the then new media of film and radio and were above all interested in that their goods were selling well. For Walter Delabar, there is nothing new in the West “at the interface between art, political and entertainment literature”.

History of the creation of the novel

Unlike Paul Bäumer, Erich Maria Remarque did not fight on the Western Front for two years. He was only transferred to this in June 1917, and after just a few weeks, on July 31, 1917, Remarque was so badly injured that he spent the rest of the war in a hospital in Duisburg . There he asked soldiers about their experiences in the war and noted the results of his interviews. He kept a diary from August 15 to October 16, 1918. In an entry dated August 24, 1918, he called for a "fight against the threatened militarization of the youth, against militarism in every form of its excesses" for the period after the end of the war. (P. 286)

As early as 1917 he began a story about the war with a "Jürgen Tamen" as the protagonist, a character who is very similar to Detering in In the West Nothing New . Remarque began his first text with the title Nothing New in the West in the summer of 1927. In the autumn of 1927, he had a typescript made of his handwritten drafts, which, according to Thomas F. Schneider, was more political, clearly pacifist and more focused on the person of Bäumer and his individual thoughts than the later print version (p. 307).

Memorial plaque in the German military cemetery Langemark

This version was too radical for Ullstein-Verlag. At the request of the publisher, Remarque willingly defused his typescript version and took part in the publisher's advertising campaign for the book, which also shaped Remarque's image. According to an advance notice from the Vossische Zeitung , which belongs to the Ullstein Group , Erich Maria Remarque is “not a writer by profession” (p. 319), but “[a] iner from the gray crowd” (p. 318). The text is “lived life and yet moved away by a creative power that lifts personal experience into a sphere of general validity without artifice, without distortion and distortion. This is how the first real monument to the 'Unknown Soldier' ​​was created. "(P. 319)

In fact, Remarque had become a journalist right after the end of the First World War, so he was a professional writer. Remarque did not belong to the “soldiers who wrote, but [to] the writers who were at war.” The assumption suggested by the Vossische Zeitung of readers that the text contained only Remarque's personal experiences is misleading, especially Remarque (unlike Paul Bäumer) did not volunteer for military service and was only used for a short time on entrenchment work, during which he was injured by an artillery shell, so that he could not gain his own experience on the front line. In addition, the newspaper fails to recognize that there are no fictional texts without fictions in the sense of free inventions and that the novel definitely has "tricks" (such as the construction of an arc of tension that creates a climax by " action ”scenes, which are interrupted by periods of rest, turn out more and more dramatic).

Function of the novel

A central motif of the novel is the soldiers' inability to adequately speak about their war experiences during the war. "Something like that" cannot be told, says Paul Bäumer during his home leave (p. 148). It is “a danger for me if I put these things into words, I am afraid that they will then become gigantic and no longer be manageable. Where did we go when everything became very clear to us what was going on out there. ”(P. 148f.) The conversation near the front about the causes of the war is also broken off, because:“ It won't change that way [= by talking] ”. (P. 184).

In an interview with Axel Eggebrecht on June 14, 1929, Remarque explained: “We were all - and are often still restless, aimless, now exalted, now indifferent, but at the bottom of our hearts are unhappy. The shadow of the war also hung over us when we didn't even think about it. ”(P. 360f.) Thomas F. Schneider interprets the writing of Nothing New in the West , following on from this analysis, as an“ act of liberation, as self-therapeutic attempt to get rid of the traumas of the war, which had reached into the present of 1928, in a cathartic act ”(p. 436f.). For Remarque's readers, too, the novel was "useful" in this sense (p. 381ff.).

Erich Maria Remarque did not succeed in getting rid of his tendency to depression by writing the novel. The sensational success after 1928 repeatedly triggered painful attacks of depression in the sensitive writer, who was plagued by artistic identity crises.

Classification of the novel

In the novel Nothing New in the West , the war experiences of the young volunteer Paul Bäumer and his comrades at the front in the First World War are described. As a literary processing of the traumatic experiences of the warring generation, the work stands in the context of a number of other novels, mostly also published in the late 1920s and early 1930s, through which works such as In Stahlgewittern by Ernst Jünger (begun in 1920) were intended to be countered by critical literature.

Remarque describes the war from the point of view of a common soldier and himself points out that his novel does not want to convey an objective picture of the First World War, but rather describes the experiences of a small group of ordinary soldiers and therefore cannot grasp a multitude of facets of the war. The question of the causes of the war is largely ignored in Remarque's novel and is only discussed once in Bäumer's company (pp. 180–184). Unlike Remarque in 1918 (pp. 285–289), the soldiers did not draw any practical conclusions from their insights. Although the ceasefire and later peace on the Eastern Front (as a result of the political changes in Russia) are briefly addressed in the novel, rebellion does not appear to any of the German soldiers on the Western Front as an option.

Remarque's sources

Since he was only able to gather front-line experience himself for a month, Remarque noted above all the reports and stories of other combatants and used them for his novel.

Sensée Canal at Hem-Lenglet

Many statements in the accurately kept diary of his former classmate Georg Middendorf, with which Remarque shared all of his experiences from his departure from Osnabrück to his injury at the front, cannot be found in Im Westen . By reading the diary entries, the reader learns z. B. that the field recruit camp was in a place called Hem-Lenglet near Cambrai in north-eastern France, but the company had to fight in the Belgian province of West Flanders , namely near Houthulst . Remarque and Middendorf did swimming exercises in Hem-Lenglet (see p. 265), but not in the canal that Hem-Lenglet actually has (it is the Sensée Canal); it was contaminated and full of ammunition so that you couldn't swim in it. The episode with the French women on the other side of the Canal is even more fictitious (cf. pp. 129-136).

Another combatant Remarque used as a source was August Perk . Many of the stories that Perk told the author during his time as a teacher in Lohne immediately after the end of the war did not find their way into Im Westen later . Remarque also met the farmer Deitering in Lohne, who has many similarities with the character in the novel Detering.

By not mentioning locations in the novel, the reader should not see that Remarque mixed up different stories. Attentive readers, however, do not miss the fact that the dream of a cinema in Valenciennes (pp. 186f.) Does not quite fit in with Paul Bäumer's information to the major that he was on duty between Langemarck and Bixschoote (p. 146).

Text type

The subtitle “Roman” has only appeared on the cover of Nothing New in the West since 1957 (p. 459, note 9). Despite the long hesitation of the publishing house, explicitly specify a type of text, there is hardly any doubt that Erich Maria Remarque's work on the Western Front , a novel is a first-person narrator, Paul Bäumer, acts as the organizer of the narrative material. This is embedded before Chapter 1 and at the end of Chapter 12 in the form of a framework text by an entity that does not introduce itself to the reader. Thomas F. Schneider states apodictically: "The fact that Remarque wrote a fictional and not a documentary or even autobiographical text is undisputed based on the research results of the last few years" (p. 441).

How Remarque dealt with reality is exemplified by the figure Franz Kemmerich. Remarque was friends with a Christian Kranzbühler who had been adopted by his stepfather Kemmerich. Kranzbühler received a shot in the knee on July 25, 1917 (p. 280), so that his leg had to be amputated. He survived the war. Franz Kemmerich, on the other hand, was shot through the thigh (p. 15) and did not survive it. Kranzbühler's mother is said to have been angry about the portrayal of Kemmerich's mother as a “fat woman weeping” (p. 32), who appears to the narrator “a little stupid” (p. 162). Remarque also assumes in a diary entry from 1918 that every fifth German soldier was “sentenced to death” by those responsible for the war (p. 287). This shows that he is aware that the drama that he builds up years later in his novel from the beginning (right at the beginning it is stated that almost half of Paul Bäumer's company was incapacitated in one day) is not typical for the war as a whole. This kind of “exaggeration” is typical of fictional works. It is particularly noticeable that nobody in Paul Bäumer's environment suggests that he will survive the war, and that the narrator often destroys the reader's hopes for the survival of a wounded man in the form of predictions. The status of “being lost” is therefore not the result of reality, but of the intention of the narrator or the author to make a statement. The reader should feel hopeless.

Despite the changes in reality typical of a novel and the free inventions it contains, for the chief reviewer at Ullstein Verlag, Carl Jödicke, who had to decide whether to accept the typescript, Remarque's text was not a novel, as the author is the people as "almost willless objects of war fury" (p. 312). According to Schneider, the publisher tried to market the work as an “authentic work”, i.e. as a factual eyewitness report and not as a fictional text, in order to satisfy the readers' supposed need for non-fictional war memorial literature (p. 438). Remarque described the text to a US journalist in 1946 as a "collection of the best war stories" (p. 439).

One of the main reasons for the difficulty of classifying the text as a novel is that the narrative self is dead at the end of the text. By telling the text in the present tense, the illusion arises that Bäumer is dying at the end of the plot "right now". Such an illusion is actually only possible in dramas whose action always apparently takes place in the present. In contrast, narratives always relate to the past, which is also proven by Paul Bäumer's preliminary interpretations as the narrator, in which he anticipates the “future” (related to the narrated time ). Johann Wolfgang Goethe responded to a similar problem in his novel The Sorrows of Young Werther in the form that a fictitious editor publishes letters Werther wrote before his death and appears as the fictional editor at the end of the novel. In Remarque's novel, however, it remains unclear on what occasion Paul Bäumer is said to have put his thoughts on paper or from where else the second narrator at the end of the novel knows Paul Bäumer's thoughts.

Anti-war novel?

The book was not offered as an anti-war novel from the start. The opening credits read: “This book is not meant to be an indictment or a confession. It is only intended to attempt to report on a generation that was destroyed by the war - even if it escaped its grenades. ”This introductory thought and the assertion that Remarque's book is“ apolitical ”are intended to create the impression that the novel is not pacifist work, therefore a war, but not an anti-war novel. The statements contained in the final printed version of the work are not explicitly directed against the war. Carl von Ossietzky suspected a reaction that was not intended by Remarque : “What could have been thought of as a deterrent by Remarque, especially young people read as a promise to redeem them from a peace that would leave them with only a miserable future with their everyday lives low wages or unemployment, with housing shortages and homelessness promised. The search for the liberating adventure, the disagreement with Remarque in the rejection of the war made her reach for his book, determined her reading behavior. "

Other works by Remarque on the subject of "War"

In The Way Back , Remarque's 1930/31 sequel to Nothing New in the West , the author describes how the survivors after the war try to regain a foothold in civilian life. Most of the characters from the first part are only mentioned by name, only the soldier Tjaden is still alive.

Remarque's opposition to war

Remarque justifies the renouncement of an explicit confession to pacifism in his novel with the fact that he had considered a confession book to be superfluous, since after all everyone is against the war. In an interview with Friedrich Luft in 1963, however, he relativized this statement with the words: "I always thought that everyone was against the war until I found out that there are some who are for it, especially those who don't have to go."

The following aspects make his self-presentation seem implausible:

  • During his home leave, the narrator in Remarque's novel meets “patriots” who, despite the high number of dead in 1917, have not come to the conclusion that the war should be broken off. (P. 149f.)
  • As a “disciple reader”, Remarque had to “retrospectively [...] upgrade the war experience”, “insist on the usefulness, yes inevitability of war for the stable, cohesive nation, as well as [the] ennobling of certain anti-pacifist values ​​(struggle, sacrifice, leadership , Suffering, misfortune, pain) ”.
  • In 1928 not only were not all people against the war. On the contrary, the pacifist camp in Germany was extremely weak: the heterogeneity of the various author factions, the plurality of styles of representation and the low social acceptance of war-negative positions made clear the weakness of the pacifist “camp”.
  • In the diary that Remarque wrote in 1917/1918 in the Duisburg military hospital, the author stated: “A minority dictates, commands the vast majority: Now is war! You have to renounce all plans if you are to become the rawest and most brutal animals, you are to die for the fifth part ”(p. 287). With this statement, Remarque shows that he recognized as early as 1918 that there were people interested in war and that even then he was a person who thought in political categories.

At most, Remarque was naive insofar as he was not always fully aware of the scope of his actions. B. did not prevent the termination without notice of the employment relationship as an editor at “Sport im Bild” by giving notice of one's own.

Aygül Cizmecioglu doubts that Remarque was a pacifist in 1928. Although he enjoyed the image of a pacifist, he confessed relatively late in his life that “he had always been an apolitical person.” The opposition to Jünger, wrote the “Spiegel” in 1952, was mainly explained by this that Remarque had moved out of the sphere of influence of the German national Hugenberg Group as a client of Remarque's earlier work to that of Ullstein Verlag. In 1977, Armin Kerker even went so far as to claim that “Remarque stood in the camp of the political right before his world success”. Lutz Hagestedt, on the other hand, sees Remarque's discontinuity in 1998 as the insecurity of the petty-bourgeois upstart: “God yes, Privy Councilor Hugenberg, the 'man from the dark', the leader of the German National Party, is already drooling against the Weimar Republic. Remarque doesn't seem to mind. He plays the role of the apolitical parvenus ”. Remarque is said to have said to Thomas Mann in exile: “As if by chance, I ended up on the side I am on now; But I know that it happens to be the right one. "

Thomas F. Schneider finishes the collection of sources in the appendix of his novel edition with Remarque's essay Have my books a tendency from 1931/1932. He introduces the text with the words: "It [the text] clarifies [...] Remarque's position by no means unpolitical and is clear evidence of his opposition to the war" (p. 424). Nonetheless, in this text Remarque defends the “heroism” of the German soldiers in the First World War and at least assesses its final phase as a “heroic defensive war” (p. 428).

At a meeting of the League for Human Rights in the Bach Hall in Berlin, Erich Maria Remarque is said to have said in a speech on January 26, 1931 , according to the Berliner Tageblatt : “Nobody will be able to belittle the tremendous performance of the German soldiers or want to belittle it. But it must be resolutely opposed to using the memory of these achievements now to glorify the war and thereby to diminish the boundless misery it created about it. […] The legacy of the dead does not mean: vengeance - it means: never again! ”(P. 417).

Jorg F. Vollmer names one of the few “hard criteria” by which one can recognize the authenticity of an author's opposition to war, the “perception of the opposing side's perspectives”. Remarque was one of the first German-speaking authors after the end of the First World War to meet this criterion by arranging a scene in which Paul Bäumer put himself in the shoes of his French "comrade" Gérard Duval.

reception

literature

In 1929 the book In the East nothing new by the author Carl August Gottlob Otto was published , which not only shows strong parallels to Remarque's work in terms of name.

In 1930, the parody Before Troja Nothing New by Emil Marius Requark (in reality Max Joseph Wolff ) was published anonymously by Brunnen-Verlag in Berlin . The self-description: “Requark's book is the memorial of the soldier who has been unknown for three thousand years. Written by a living man ”parodies the subtitle of the Ullstein edition of Im Westen nicht Neues (“ Remarque's book is the memorial of our unknown soldier. Written by all the dead ”).

Film adaptations

The novel was filmed twice. The first film adaptation , a US production from 1930 by Lewis Milestone , is considered one of the 100 best films in American film history . The producer Carl Laemmle received an Oscar for this film in the “Best Film” category, Milestone received an Oscar in the “Best Director” category.

The German premiere of the film in the Metropol in Berlin caused a scandal. On the instructions of the then Berlin NSDAP- Gauleiter Joseph Goebbels , National Socialist thugs occupied the hall and prevented other cinema guests from visiting; the demonstration had to be canceled. After multiple repetitions of the disruptive actions throughout the German Reich (e.g. by laying stink bombs , exposing large numbers of white mice and repeatedly by occupying the cinemas) the film was canceled for the time being. Only after a revision of the cinemas Law ( Lex Remarque ), which entered into force on 31 March 1931, the film was released on June 8, 1931 "for certain groups of people and in closed events" again. On September 2, 1931, the film was generally re-approved in a further abridged version. The production company also had to undertake "in future to only show this version approved by the German censorship authorities abroad". With the seizure of power by the Nazis was nothing new in the West finally prohibited.

Less popular, but also received positive reviews, was a remake of the anti-war film, directed by Delbert Mann, as a US-British co-production for television . This remake was awarded a Golden Globe for best TV film in 1980.

Theatrical performances

In the 2014/2015 season, adaptations of the novel for the stage will be performed in Bochum , Braunschweig , Celle , Göttingen , Hamburg , Hanover , Karlsruhe and Münster . One of the main reasons why theaters in Lower Saxony in particular are adopting the novel is that the novel was compulsory reading for high school graduates in 2016 in German lessons at high schools in Lower Saxony.

Graphic novel

The illustrator Peter Eickmeyer adapted the novel In the West Nothing New in 2014 as a graphic novel. The Erich Maria Remarque Peace Center in Osnabrück dedicated its own exhibition to comics from April to July 2014.

music

Elton John wrote a song that was critical of the war under the title All Quiet on the Western Front in 1983, which also refers to the film.

In 1999, the punk band Die Toten Hosen released the single Schön sein as a bonus track, the song Im west nothing new , which uses war as a metaphor for the monotony of work, as “daily struggle” and exploitation or as the dark side of the capitalist, western world is felt.

The contemporary composer Nancy Van de Vate also wrote her work on the book in 1999 under the title All Quiet On The Western Front , an opera in three acts with a libretto in English or German. It premiered in 2003 at the New York City Opera under the direction of George Manahan.

Based on the English name of the novel, the Czech heavy metal band Kryptor named their live album, recorded at a rock festival in Košice (eastern Slovakia ) in 1996 , Na východní frontě boj! (All Fight On The Eastern Front!) .

Others

On July 9, 1931, the teaching committee of the Prussian state parliament ordered the removal of the book from all school libraries.

expenditure

  • Nothing new in the West. Propylaea Publishing House, Berlin 1929.
  • Nothing new in the West. Novel . Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 2013, ISBN 978-3-462-04581-9 .
  • Nothing new in the West. Novel. Edited and provided with materials by Thomas F. Schneider . Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 2014, ISBN 978-3-462-04632-8 .
  • Nothing new in the West. Audio book . Der Hörverlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-89940-680-X (5 CDs).

Secondary literature

  • Roman Dziergwa: The reception and the dispute over the novel “Nothing New in the West” by EM Remarque in the literary public of pre-war Poland . In: "Studia Germanica Posnaniensia". Poznań 1993. pp. 59–68 ( online )
  • Peter Dbod: Media special: Nothing new in the West. Part 1. Facets of a nuanced topic for German lessons. With master copies: 3 lyrics (Elton John, Die Toten Hosen, Marius Müller-Westernhagen) on the same topic; The fight for Remarque , from: Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung , No. 27, 1929; Axel Eggebrecht in conversation with Erich Maria Remarque . From: The literary world , June 14, 1929. In: German lessons . Westermann Verlag. October 2003. Issue 5. pp. 42-47.
  • Peter Eickmeyer: Nothing new in the West. A graphic novel based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque . Splitter, Bielefeld 2014, ISBN 978-3-86869-679-0 .
  • RA Firda (1993): All Quiet on the Western Front: Literary Analysis and Cultural Context. New York: Twayne.
  • Wolfhard Keizer, explanations on Erich M. Remarque: Nothing new in the west , text analysis and interpretation (vol. 433), C. Bange Verlag , Hollfeld 2012, ISBN 978-3-8044-1979-7 .
  • Günther Oesterle: The war experience for and against. “Nothing new in the west” by Erich Maria Remarque (1929) , in: Dirk van Laak (ed.): Literature that wrote history, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2011, pp. 213–223, ISBN 978-3-525- 30015-2 .
  • Hubert Rüter: Erich Maria Remarque. Nothing new in the West. A bestseller of war literature in context. Schöningh, Paderborn 1980, ISBN 3-506-75044-5 .

Web links

Notes and sources

  1. ↑ Thomas F. Schneider: The war image of the 'simple' soldier. Erich Maria Remarques “Nothing new in the west” and the western cultural tradition . literaturkritik.de , November 2008.
  2. ^ A b Tilman Westphalen: Ein Simplizissimus of the 20th century. Epilogue to Nothing New in the West , in: Erich Maria Remarque: Nothing New in the West , Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne, 20th edition 1998, p. 211
  3. ↑ For other views see section Anti-War Novel?
  4. ↑ Focus online: "Nothing new in the West": Testament of the fallen
  5. ↑ Quoted from the original publisher's prospectus of Propylaea, which was enclosed with the 450th thousand.
  6. ↑ Nothing new in the West. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, 27th edition 2007, ISBN 978-3-462-02731-0 , epilogue, p. 200: "Nothing new in the West is distributed in a total of at least 20 million in 50 languages."
  7. ↑ If one takes into account the pirated prints of the book, 40 million copies of the novel could even have been printed (cf. Manuela Bernauer: “The war is the father of all things”. Representations of war in Erich Maria Remarques Nothing new in the west, Ernst Jüngers In Stahlgewittern and Arnold Zweig's The Dispute about Sergeant Grischa . Diploma thesis. Vienna, March 2012, p. 34 f.)
  8. ↑ In chap. 7 (p. 146; the page numbers here and in the further course of the article refer to the paperback edition of KiWi-Verlag 2014; ISBN 978-3-462-04632-8 ) Paul Bäumer informs an officer on home leave that he is between Langemarck and Bixschoote , in other words in the Belgian province of West Flanders .
  9. ↑ Milena Fee Hassenkamp: Psychological suffering in the First World War From the battlefield to the hell of neurologists . Süddeutsche Zeitung . March 19, 2014
  10. ^ Foundation German Historical Museum Berlin: Warrior Associations . Living Museum Online
  11. ^ Konradin Medien GmbH: Remarque, Erich Maria: The way back . Lexikonwissen.de
  12. ↑ Dieter Wunderlich: Ernst Jünger 1895–1998 / biography
  13. ↑ Citizens of the world against their will . The mirror . Issue 2/1952. January 9, 1952, p. 23
  14. ↑ See Tilman Westphalen: Ein Simplizissimus of the 20th century. Epilogue to Nothing New in the West , in: Erich Maria Remarque: Nothing New in the West , Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne, 20th edition 1998, p. 210
  15. ↑ See also Remarque: Nothing new in the West - about the saving (analysis) in the blog of the retired teacher "norberto42"
  16. ^ Jörg Friedrich Vollmer: Imaginary battlefields. War literature in the Weimar Republic. A sociological study of literature . Dissertation Free University of Berlin. 2003, p. 179
  17. ↑ Thomas Becker: Literary protest and secret affirmation. The aesthetic dilemma of the Weimar anti-war novel . Butzbach-Griedel 1994, p. 86.
  18. ^ Claus Gigl: Reading aids. Erich Maria Remarque - Nothing new in the West. Klett Verlag, Stuttgart, 2014, pp. 48–60.
  19. ↑ Erich Maria Remarque Peace Center Osnabrück: The early work
  20. ^ Jörg Friedrich Vollmer: Imaginary battlefields. War literature in the Weimar Republic. A sociological study of literature . Dissertation Free University of Berlin. 2003, p. 42
  21. ^ Jörg Friedrich Vollmer: Imaginary battlefields. War literature in the Weimar Republic. A sociological study of literature . Dissertation Free University of Berlin. 2003. p. 57 and p. 156-171
  22. ↑ Dudenverlag: New Objectivity . School lexicon. Basic knowledge of school German
  23. ↑ So z. B. Erich Maria Remarque: Nothing new in the west , Kiepenheuer & Witsch publishing house, Cologne, 20th edition 1998, back cover
  24. ↑ Bayerische Staatsbibliothek: Remarque, Erich Maria (actually Erich Paul Remark) . German biography
  25. ↑ A statement by Rudolf Walter Leonhardt is typical of the kind of judgments to which the biography lexicon refers : “A comprehensive, precisely researched and fair biography of this Erich Paul Remark, who called himself Erich Maria Remarque, would also be highly desirable. This dandy who showed himself so proudly in the company of expensive cars and beautiful women. This prolific writer of trivial literature who left nothing out of the great topics of the time. ”(Preferably nothing new . Die Zeit . Edition 12/1993. March 19, 1993)
  26. ↑ Marcel Reich-Ranicki: Pop effects near death . The time . October 6, 1961
  27. ↑ A citizen of the world from Osnabrück . The mirror . Edition 8/1993. February 22, 1993. pp. 199f.
  28. ^ Jörg Friedrich Vollmer: Imaginary battlefields. War literature in the Weimar Republic. A sociological study of literature . Dissertation Free University of Berlin. 2003, p. 129
  29. ^ Walter Delabar: An era is visited. Two volumes in the “History of the German Book Trade in the 19th and 20th Centuries” deal with the Weimar Republic . literaturkritik.de . 19th September 2014
  30. ^ Walter Delabar: Review of "Thomas F. Schneider: Erich Maria Remarque's novel In the West Nothing New. Text, edition, development, distribution and reception (1928–1930) ” . German books 40 . 2010
  31. ^ Hubert Wetzel: Erich Maria Remarque in the First World War. Six weeks in hell . Süddeutsche Zeitung . March 25, 2014
  32. ↑ Franziska Hirsbrunner: «Nothing new in the west»: New edition brings surprising things to light . Swiss radio and television (SRF) . February 21, 2014
  33. ↑ Martina Stadler: Disillusionment and war disenchantment in Edlef Köppen's “Army Report”, Erich Maria Remarque's “Nothing New in the West” and Ludwig Renn's “War” . Thesis. Vienna January 30, 2013. p. 22
  34. ^ Wilhelm von Sternburg: "The word 'guilt' does not even appear" . Frankfurter Rundschau . December 25, 2012
  35. ↑ According to the German National Library, "... A VERY LIVELY VARIETY. THE THEATERMAN AND WRITER RUDOLF FRANK" - GUIDED TOUR AND LECTURE - Press release of October 14, 2010 ( Memento of December 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) include:
    Ernst Glaeser : Born 1902 - 1928
    Ludwig Renn : War - 1928
    Robert Graves : Good-bye to All That - 1929
    Ernest Hemingway : In Another Country - 1930
    Edlef Köppen : Army Report - 1930
    Stratis Myrivilis : Life in the Grave - 1930 . The novel was already published in 1924 as a feature section (with a different title) in the literary journal Καμπάνα [kambána] (German 1986).
    Siegfried Sassoon : The Memoirs of George Sherston (in partial volumes 1928 , 1930 and 1936 )
    Rudolf Frank : The skull of the Negro chief Makaua - 1931
  36. ↑ Nothing new in the West from Kindler's literary dictionary
  37. ↑ August Perk - Critical utterance paid for with life . New Osnabrück newspaper . January 18, 2008
  38. ↑ Erich Maria Remarque . www.augustperk.de
  39. ↑ Voice of the "lost generation" . Grafschafter news . September 27, 2014
  40. ↑ Citizens of the world against their will . The mirror . Issue 2/1952. January 9, 1952, p. 24
  41. ↑ Manuela Bernauer: "War is the father of all things". Depictions of war in Erich Maria Remarques Nothing new in the west, Ernst Jüngers In Stahlgewittern and Arnold Zweig's The Quarrel about Sergeant Grischa . Thesis. Vienna, March 2012, p. 13 f.
  42. ↑ Citizens of the world against their will . The mirror . Issue 2/1952. January 9, 1952, p. 26
  43. ↑ quoted from Jörg Friedrich Vollmer: Imaginäre Schlachtfelder. War literature in the Weimar Republic. A sociological study of literature. Dissertation Free University of Berlin. 2003. S. 156. –– Jörg Friedrich Vollmer warns against defining the genre of war-critical texts as follows: “The use of horror elements, which often make up the literary potential of war-critical texts, runs counter to their moralizing clarity, because an aesthetic of horror, which implies the occupation of war with fearfulness does not per se allow any conclusions to be drawn about an assessment of the war from a moral or political perspective; it can serve as a deterrent as well as an affirmation. So it happens that the texts cannot be clearly located politically, they slide in their ideological relation. "
  44. ↑ Citizens of the world against their will . The mirror . Issue 2/1952. January 9, 1952, p. 27
  45. ^ Hans Beller : The film 'All Quiet on the Western Front' and the production of enemy images in Hollywood . P. 15. (PDF; 166 kB)
  46. ^ Stephan Reinhardt: counter-reconnaissance on the podium. Two biographies about Ernst Jünger . Deutschlandfunk . October 31, 2007
  47. ↑ Ales Urválek: Conservatism in Germany. On the history of a controversial term . Brno 2003, p. 269f.
  48. ^ Jörg Friedrich Vollmer Imaginary battlefields. War literature in the Weimar Republic. A sociological study of literature . Dissertation Free University of Berlin. 2003, p. 127
  49. ↑ Remarque's deficits in this regard are shown by Martin Stoss in his article The front is marching! The Remarque tragedy in March 1929 plausible. The text first appeared in the magazine Die Tat ; it is reprinted in the appendix of the Schneider edition of the novel (pp. 338–344)
  50. ↑ Aygül Cizmecioglu: antipodes of the war . German wave . August 9, 2014
  51. ↑ Citizens of the world against their will . The mirror . Issue 2/1952. January 9, 1952, p. 27
  52. ↑ Armin Kerker: Mixed Double - Nothing new in the West and so on. A missed Remarque biography . The time . November 18, 1977
  53. ↑ Lutz Hagestedt: Lived by millions, read by millions. Erich Maria Remarque would have turned 100 on June 22nd . 1998
  54. ^ Jörg Friedrich Vollmer: Imaginary battlefields. War literature in the Weimar Republic. A sociological study of literature . Dissertation Free University of Berlin. 2003, p. 161, footnote 517
  55. ^ Deutsches Filminstitut: Nothing new in the west
  56. ↑ Schauspielhaus Bochum: Nothing new in the west based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque ( Memento of the original from March 29, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.schauspielhausbochum.de
  57. ^ Drama Staatstheater Braunschweig Nothing new in the west | 15+ based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque in a stage version by Nicolai Sykosch. Material folder ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / Staatstheater-braunschweig.de
  58. ↑ Schlosstheater Celle: Nothing new in the west based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque in a play development by Michael Klammer ( memento of the original from February 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.schlosstheater-celle.de
  59. ↑ Young Theater Göttingen: Nothing new in the West. Adaptation of the novel after Erich Maria Remarque. Stage version by Nico Dietrich and Tobias Sosinka ( Memento of the original from January 11, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.junges-theater.de
  60. ^ Thalia Theater: FRONT - Nothing new in the west. Polyphony based on Erich Maria Remarque, Henri Barbusse and contemporary documents. A coproduction with NTGent
  61. ↑ Staatsschauspiel Hannover: Nothing new in the west from Erich Maria Remarque
  62. ^ Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe: Nothing new in the west. Classroom piece based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque
  63. ↑ Cactus Young Theater Münster: Nothing new in the west based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.pumpenhaus.de
  64. ↑ The First World War in the theater. Survival . taz . 3rd November 2014
  65. ↑ The Horror of War as a graphic novel . NDR culture . April 10, 2014
  66. ↑ “Nothing New in the West” becomes a graphic novel . NDR culture . April 29, 2014
  67. ↑ Calendar sheet July 9 in: Nordbayerischer Kurier from July 9, 2015, p. 2