November 10, 1928
The first installment of All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque’s acclaimed novel of World War I, appears in the German magazine Vossische Zeitung, marking him as an eloquent spokesperson for a generation that had been, in his own words, “destroyed by war, even though it might have escaped its shells.” Remarque would go on to publish nine more novels, all dealing with the horror and futility of war and the struggle to understand its purpose. His last novel, The Night in Lisbon, condemned World War II as Adolf Hitler’s attempt to perpetrate the extermination of Jews and other “nonpeople” on behalf of the “master race.” His German citizenship was revoked in 1938.
