Erich Maria Remarque is one of the best known and most widely read authors of German literature in the twentieth century. He was born on June 22, 1898, in Osnabrück and he died on September 25, 1970, in Locarno, Switzerland. Remarque's biography is essentially marked and his writing fundamentally influenced by German history of the twentieth century: Childhood and youth in imperial Osnabrück, World War I, the Weimar Republic, and most of all his exile in Switzerland and the United States. With the novel All Quiet On the Western Front, first published in 1929, Remarque attained world-wide recognition continuing today. Examples of his other novels also internationally published are: The Road Back (1931), Three Comrades (1936, 38), Arch of Triumph (1945), The Black Obelisk (1956), and Night in Lisbon (1962). Remarque's novels have been translated in more than fifty languages; globally the total edition comes up to several million copies. Also, most of Remarque's novels were filmed - often shortly after the publication of the book. Many of the films have become classics in film history: Arch of Triumph (1948), A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958), and especially All Quiet On the Western Front (1930), a film seen by most people throughout the world as the epitome of an anti-war film.