``THE TRUTH ABOUT THE WAR FINALLY'': Critics' expectations of war literature during the Weimar Republic: the reception of Erich Maria Remarque's Im Westen nichts Neues [All Quiet on the Western Front], 1928-1930

Abstract

This article examines the reception of Im Westen nichts Neues [All Quiet on the Western Front], from its release in November 1928 to December 1930. Erich Maria Remarque's ``novel'', which had been reworked and de-politicized by the author himself before being released as a documentary without ``tendency'', provided a new perspective on the war-the non-literary perspective of an ordinary soldier. Ullstein, the publishers, shaped the reception of the text and took it out of the literary discourse as a novel and integrated it into the Weimar discourse of war literature. The resulting controversy, especially on the text's ``truth'' in giving an authentic representation of the war, mirrored and demonstrated the expectations which the critics had of war literature in general and which they used to evaluate this work. But the discussion of Im Westen nichts Neues also makes clear that the given criteria of war literature depend on the context, not the text itself. The truth of representation depends on those ``true'' descriptions of war which have been produced and established beforehand.