Author | Erich Maria Remarque |
---|---|
Original title | Drei Kameraden |
Translator | A. W. Wheen |
Cover artist | Paul Wenck |
Language | Danish |
Genre | War novel |
Publisher | Little, Brown and Company (US) Hutchinson (UK) |
Publication date | December 1936 (Danish transl.) |
Published in English | 1937 |
Three Comrades (German: Drei Kameraden) is a 1936 novel by the German author Erich Maria Remarque. It is written in first person by the main character Robert Lohkamp, whose somewhat disillusioned outlook on life is due to his horrifying experiences in the trenches of the First World War's French-German front. He shares these experiences with Otto Köster and Gottfried Lenz, his two comrades with whom he runs an auto-repair shop in what may be late-1920s Hamburg. Remarque wrote the novel in exile and it was first published in the Danish [1] translation; the English translation followed soon, being serialised in Good Housekeeping from January to March 1937, and in the book form later in the year. The first German language edition was published in 1938 by Exilliteratur publisher Querido in Amsterdam, but the novel was published in Germany only in 1951. [2]
Hamburg is crowded by a growing number of jobless and marked by increasing violence between left and right. The novel starts in the seedy milieu of bars where prostitutes mingle with the hopeless flotsam that the war left behind. While Robert and his friends manage to make a living dealing cars and driving an old taxi, economic survival in the city is getting harder by the day. It is in this setting that Robert meets Patrice Hollmann, a mysterious, beautiful, young woman with an upper-middle-class background. Their love affair intensifies as he introduces her to his life of bars and races and Robert's nihilistic attitude slowly begins to change as he realizes how much he needs Pat.
The story takes an abrupt turn as Pat suffers a near-fatal lung hemorrhage during a summer holiday at the sea. Upon their return, Robert and Pat move in with each other, but she is scheduled to leave for a Swiss mountain sanatorium come winter. It is this temporal limitation of their happiness which makes their remaining time together so precious.
After Pat has left for Switzerland, the political situation in the city becomes heated, and Lenz, one of the comrades, is killed by a militant, not mentioned in the book by the actual name but supposed to be a Nazi. On top of this, Otto and Robert face bankruptcy and have to sell their workshop. In the midst of this misfortune, a telegram arrives informing them of Pat's worsening state of health. The two remaining comrades don't hesitate and drive the thousand kilometers to the sanatorium in the Alps to see her.
Reunited, Robert and an increasingly moribund Pat celebrate their remaining weeks before her inevitable death amid the snow-covered summits of Switzerland. It is in the last part of the book that this love story finds closure and leaves the main character, a nihilist who has found love, forever changed.
The novel was adapted in America as Three Comrades , a 1938 film starring Franchot Tone, Robert Taylor, Robert Young and Margaret Sullavan.
Flowers from the Victors (1999), directed by Aleksander Surin, also was based on the novel but set in Russia in the 1990s.
All Quiet on the Western Front is a semi-autobiographical novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I. The book describes the German soldiers' extreme physical and mental trauma during the war as well as the detachment from civilian life felt by many upon returning home from the war. It is billed by some as "the greatest war novel of all time".
Erich Maria Remarque was a German-born novelist. His landmark novel All Quiet on the Western Front (1928), based on his experience in the Imperial German Army during World War I, was an international bestseller which created a new literary genre of veterans writing about conflict. The book was adapted to film several times. Remarque's anti-war themes led to his condemnation by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels as "unpatriotic". He was able to use his literary success and fame to relocate to Switzerland as a refugee, and to the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen.
Emil Erich Kästner was a German writer, poet, screenwriter and satirist, known primarily for his humorous, socially astute poems and for children's books including Emil and the Detectives and Lisa and Lottie. He received the international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1960 for his autobiography Als ich ein kleiner Junge war. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in six separate years.
Three Comrades is a 1938 American drama film directed by Frank Borzage and produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz for MGM. The screenplay is by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edward E. Paramore Jr., and was adapted from the novel Three Comrades by Erich Maria Remarque.
The Road Back, also translated as The Way Back, is a novel by German author Erich Maria Remarque, commonly regarded as a sequel to his 1929 novel All Quiet on the Western Front. It was first serialized in the German newspaper Vossische Zeitung between December 1930 and January 1931, and published in book form in April 1931.
Siegfried Lenz was a German writer of novels, short stories and essays, as well as dramas for radio and the theatre. In 2000 he received the Goethe Prize on the 250th Anniversary of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's birth. He won the 2010 International Nonino Prize in Italy.
Carl Zuckmayer was a German writer and playwright. His older brother was the pedagogue, composer, conductor, and pianist Eduard Zuckmayer.
The Night in Lisbon is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque published in 1962. It revolves around the plight of two German refugees in the opening months of World War II. One of the refugees relates their story during the course of a single night in Lisbon in 1942. The story he recounts is mainly a romantic one, and also contains a lot of action with arrests, escapes and near-misses. The novel is realistic, Remarque was himself a German refugee, and provides insight into refugee life in Europe during the early days of the war. The book completed what was known as Remarque's "emigre trilogy" along with Flotsam and Arch of Triumph. It was Remarque's last completed work.
Arch of Triumph is a 1945 novel by Erich Maria Remarque about stateless refugees in Paris before World War II. Written during his exile in the United States (1939–1948), it was his second worldwide bestseller, after All Quiet on the Western Front.
Richard Plant was a gay Jewish emigre from Nazi Germany, first to Switzerland and then to the U.S., who became a professor at the City College of New York, where he taught German language and literature from 1947 to 1973. He authored an opera scenario as well a number of fictional and non-fictional works, notably The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals (1986).
Arthur Wesley Wheen, was an Australian soldier, translator and museum librarian. He is best known for translating the works of Erich Maria Remarque into English, beginning with the classic war novel All Quiet on the Western Front in 1929.
Heaven Has No Favorites is a novel by the German writer Erich Maria Remarque. This novel is a story about passion and love, set in 1948 with a background of automobile racing. Inspired by racing driver Alfonso de Portago.
Erich Adolf Dunskus was a German film actor. He appeared in 170 films between 1927 and 1966. He was born in Pillkallen, East Prussia and died in Hagen, Germany.
Hans Richter was a German film actor. He appeared in more than 130 films between 1931 and 1984, mostly in supporting roles. He was born in Brandenburg, Germany and died in Heppenheim, Germany.
The Temple is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Stephen Spender, sometimes labelled a bildungsroman because of its explorations of youth and first love. It was written after Spender spent his summer holiday in Germany in 1929 and recounts his experiences there. It was not completed until the early 1930s. Due to its frank depictions of homosexuality, The Temple was not published in Britain until 1988, twenty-one years after the decriminalisation of homosexuality.
Events in the year 1931 in Germany.
Karin Hardt Meta Therese was a German actress.
Felix Römer is a German historian who specialises in the history of World War II. He has conducted pioneering research into the implementation of the Commissar Order by combat formations of the Wehrmacht and the attitudes of German soldiers based on the surreptitiously recorded conversations of prisoners of war held in Fort Hunt, Virginia, United States.
Peter Blachstein was a German journalist who became a politician. During the middle 1930s he spent time in the Hohnstein Concentration Camp, but he was released and participated in the Spanish Civil War on the anti-fascist side. The rest of the Nazi years he spent outside Germany, mostly in Norway and Sweden. Following the restoration of diplomatic relations between West Germany and Yugoslavia, in 1968 he became West Germany's ambassador in Belgrade.
Paul Wenck (1892–1964) was a German and American painter, graphic artist and illustrator, particularly of book dust jackets.