Erich Maria Remarque 'was born on 22 June 1898 in a working-class family in the German city of Osnabrück, the son of Peter Franz Remark (b. 14 June 1867, Kaiserswerth) and Anna Maria Remark, née Stallknecht (b. 21 November 1871, Katernberg). At the age of 16 he made his first attempts at writing: essays, poems, and the beginnings of a novel that was finished later and published in 1920 as The Dream Room (Die Traumbude).

At 18, Remarque was conscripted into the army. On 12 June 1917, he was transferred to the Western Front, 2nd Company, Reserves, Field Depot of the 2nd Guards Reserve Division at Hem-Lenglet. On 26 June he was posted to the 15th Reserve Infantry Regiment, 2nd Company of Trench Battalion Bethe, and was stationed between Torhout and Houthulst. On 31 July he was wounded by shrapnel in the left leg, right arm and neck, and was repatriated to an army hospital in Germany where he spent the rest of the war.

In 1924, he started to write his last name as Remarque, which had been the family name until his grandfather changed it to Remark in the 19th century. He had already been using the middle name 'Maria' since November 1922. He worked at a number of different jobs, including librarian, businessman, teacher, journalist and editor. His first paid writing job was as a technical writer for the Continental Rubber Company, a German tire manufacturer. His first marriage was to the actress Ilse Jutta Zambona in 1925. Their marriage was stormy and unfaithful on both sides. After a divorce, they remarried each other in 1938.

In 1927 Remarque made a second literary start with the novel Station at the Horizon (Station am Horizont), which was serialized in the sports journal "Sport im Bild" for which Remarque was working. It was published in book form only in 1998. His best known work, All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues) was written in a few months in 1927, but Remarque was not immediately able to find a publisher. The novel, published in 1929, described the experiences of German soldiers during World War I. A number of similar works followed; in simple, emotive language they described wartime and the postwar years.

In 1931, after finishing The Road Back (Der Weg zurück) Remarque left Germany. He bought a villa in Porto Ronco in Switzerland and lived both there and in France until 1939, when he left Europe for the United States of America with his wife. They became naturalized citizens of the United States in 1947.

In 1933, the Nazis banned and publicly burned Remarque's works and produced propaganda claiming that he was a descendant of French Jews and that his real last name was Kramer, a Jewish-sounding name, and his original name spelled backwards. This is still stated in some biographies despite the complete lack of evidence. The Nazis also claimed, despite contrary evidence, that he had never seen active service during World War I. In 1943 the Nazis arrested his sister Elfriede Scholz, who had stayed behind in Germany with her husband and two children. After a short trial in the "Volksgerichtshof" (Hitler's extra-constitutional "People's Court") she was found guilty of "undermining morale" for stating that she considered the war lost. Court President Roland Freisler declared, "Ihr Bruder ist uns leider entwischt...Sie aber werden uns nicht entwischen." ("Your brother has unfortunately escaped us...you, however, will not escape us"). Elfriede Scholz was decapitated by guillotine on 16 December 1943.

Remarque's next novel, Three Comrades (Drei Kameraden) spans the years of the Weimar Republic, from the hyperinflation of 1923 to the end of the decade. Remarque's fourth novel, Flotsam (in German titled Liebe deinen Nächsten, or Love Thy Neighbour), first appeared in a serial version in English translation in Collier's magazine in 1939, and Remarque spent another year revising the text for its book publication in 1941, both in English and German. His next novel Arch of Triumph, first published in 1945 in English translation, and published in German as Arc de Triomphe in 1946, was another instant best-seller and reached worldwide sales of nearly five million.

In 1948 Remarque returned to Switzerland, where he spent the rest of his life. There was a gap of seven years...a long silence for Remarque...between Arch of Triumph and his next work, The Spark of Life (Der Funke Leben), which appeared both in German and in English in 1952. While he was writing The Spark of Life Remarque was also working on a novel, Zeit zu leben und Zeit zu sterben (Time to Live and Time to Die). It was published first in English translation in 1954 with the not-quite-literal title A Time to Love and a Time to Die. In 1958, Douglas Sirk directed the film A Time to Love and a Time to Die in Germany, based on Remarque's novel. Remarque made a cameo appearance in the film in the role of the professor.

In 1955 Remarque wrote the screenplay for an Austrian movie, The Last Act (Der letzte Akt), about Hitler's final days in the bunker of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, which was based on the book Ten Days to Die (1950) by Michael Musmanno. In 1956 Remarque wrote a drama for the stage, Full Circle (Die letzte Station), which played successfully in both Germany and on Broadway. An English translation was published in 1974. Heaven Has No Favorites was serialized (as Borrowed Life) in 1959 before appearing as a book in 1961 and was made into the 1977 movie Bobby Deerfield. The Night in Lisbon (Die Nacht von Lissabon), published in 1962 is the last work Remarque finished. The novel sold some 900,000 copies in Germany and was a modest best-seller abroad as well.

Remarque married the Hollywood actress Paulette Goddard in 1958 and they remained married until his death in a hospital at Locarno on 25 September 1970 at the age of 72. He was interred in the Ronco cemetery in Ronco, Ticino, Switzerland, after a Catholic funeral. Goddard is also interred there. Goddard left a bequest of $20 million to New York University to fund an institute for European studies, which is named after Remarque. The first Director of The Remarque Institute was Professor Tony Judt. The Erich Maria Remarque Papers are housed in the Fales Library at NYU.

Note: the dates of English publications are those of the first publications in a book form

Novels

• (1920) Die Traumbude. Ein Künstlerroman; English translation: The Dream Room
• (written 1924, published 1998) Gam
• (1928) Station am Horizont; English translation: Station at the Horizon
• (1929) Im Westen nichts Neues; English translation: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)
• (1931) Der Weg zurück; English translation: The Road Back (1931)
• (1936) Drei Kameraden; English translation: Three Comrades (1937)
• (1939) Liebe deinen Nächsten; English translation: Flotsam (1941)
• (1945) Arc de Triomphe; English translation: Arch of Triumph (1945)
• (1952) Der Funke Leben; English translation: The Spark of Life (1952)
• (1954) Zeit zu leben und Zeit zu sterben; English translation: A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1954)
• (1956) Der schwarze Obelisk; English translation: The Black Obelisk (1957)
• (1961) Der Himmel kennt keine Günstlinge (serialized as Geborgtes Leben); English translation: Heaven Has No Favorites (1961)
• (1962) Die Nacht von Lissabon; English translation: The Night in Lisbon (1964)
• (1970) Das gelobte Land; English translation: The Promised Land
• (1971) Schatten im Paradies; English translation: Shadows in Paradise (1972)

Other works

• (1931) Der Feind; English translation: The Enemy (1930—1931); short stories
• (1955) Der letzte Akt; English translation: The Last Act; screenplay
• (1956) Die letzte Station; English translation: Full Circle (1974); play
• (1988) Die Heimkehr des Enoch J. Jones; English translation: The Return of Enoch J. Jones; play
• (1994) Ein militanter Pazifist; English translation: A Militant Pacifist; interviews and essays