Ok, here we are.
For those who lost track - this is the continustion of "Please welcome my fellow Eyries".

Everyone else - where were we?



************************************************************

Never put a sock in a toaster!
E. Izzard

You were going to tell us what happens in the sequel to Emil & the Detectives (he said hopefully).



- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

Is there a sequel?
That book was quite good!

Barbie - yes, Egner's 'Androids From Milk' is kind of science fiction/fantasy-ish, although he's promoted it as "Kafka rewritten by Monty Python". It's certainly odd. It was recommended to me by a friend who has a tendency to read odd things like this.



-----------------------------------------------
"Whisky-wa-wa," I breathed - she was dressed as Biffo the Bear.

Teacher -

Just a quick 'thank you' for reminding me of some scenes I had forgotten. I knew I had seen Phelps somewhere before.

Who could forget the final scene? Comrades in the army of the dead beckon to the newly deceased soldier who tried to grasp a butterfly. (Or perhaps I have forgotten the details and mixed them up with the book?)

JRR Tolkien was one of the many disillusioned about war by being in it. One result was 'The Fall of Gondolin', which despite his many rewrites of practically every part of his mythos, remained untouched from (I think) 1919 onwards.

I don't know anything about Tolkien, I'm afraid, and I don't know the sequel to Emil und die Detektive.

But, although I have neither read the book nor seen the film, I know that "Im Westen nichts Neues" was written by Erich Maria Remarque. And why? Because it was the favourite question of my oh-so-competent history teacher (A-level!!!!), who thought that Karl and Wilhelm Liebknecht were one and the same person. Until I set him right. *shocked*



************************************************************

Never put a sock in a toaster!
E. Izzard

That's Karl Liebknecht, as in the Spartakists, right? But I haven't heard of Wilhelm Liebknecht, I'm afraid.



..........................................................................................

That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)

Sarah

That's his father... Founded the Socialist Party. Together with others. near 80 years before Karl died VERY YOUNG... *lol*



************************************************************

Never put a sock in a toaster!
E. Izzard

Knew the name but was ashamed to say I wasn't sure I could spell it. Not the most German sounding name to a casual English observer. Book is at home, I'm at work.

He was born as Paul Erich Remark, but changed his name later-on. I don't know why exactly he did so, but maybe he just wanted to get rid of a German sounding name.



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.

(N. Chomsky 1957)

Who knows? Not a bad idea, actually, back then...



************************************************************

Never put a sock in a toaster!
E. Izzard

Not if you actually were German, living in Germany, surely? I mean Battenbergs and Saxe-Coburg-Gothas, yes, but I can't imagine anyone in the fatherland being so ashamed at losing the Great War that they change their name*. Especially not to something French.

* - well, OK, maybe if the name was Hohenzollern.



- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

Thanks V V, I had no idea - though a bloke changing his name to Maria is more credible than being given it at birth, I suppose. Maybe it had some association with his mother?

You've got me reading it again. My copy has 60 year old soldiers thumbprints and everything. Printed April 1930.

True - Remarque changed his name and exactly BECAUSE he wanted to get rid of the German sound. French sounded much more metropolitan, I guess. It also expressed a certain opposition. Don't forget, we ar are talking about the 20s here, not about after 1933. Germany contained all sorts of people then who had all sorts of views on Germany. It wasn't even clear then what sort of state Germany should be, a Soviet republic, a Western democracy, a monarchy or a Faschist state.
By the way - 'Maria' as a name for a boy is not unusual in Catholic areas of Germany as in Rainer Maria Rilke. It only has to be the second name :o)
There were others who changed their names like Remarque, e.g. John Heartfield, who was born Helmut Herzfeld and was one of the fiercest critics of Hitler. His satirical collages were superb but unfortunately did not prevent what followed.

Was 'Im Westen Nicht Neues' perceived as having a political position, other than anti-war, in Germany? It occurs to me that there may be stuff in it that is lost on the English. I have no reason from the text to suppose so, but am making the most of my opportunity to ask 'teacher' and the Eyries. The clear affinity shown by English WW2 soldiers is a testimony to the books' quality.

I wonder if it took EMR 11 years to write the book, to face writing it, or to find a market for it? Begging the pardon of our US friends, Vietnam veterans were apparently not always appreciated; how were German soldiers of WW1 considered in Germany? Did people want to talk, or forget, or what?

I note that the book was printed in England only two months after it was in Germany. That seems quite remarkable to me.

Also, at this moment, I am stumped to think of an English equivalent book. There are the war poets, of course, especially Wilfred Owen; but prose? How nice to be asking Germans about English literature!

Well, at the moment I just can think of English war poets, such Owens or Sassoon, etc., but I don't recall any novel. It's been quite some time since I read the book, but I think that the anti-war attitude within the book was a big issue in the 30ies As far as I know it was censored under the ns-regime and also burned.
Being anti-war was considered as dangerous political opposition, as the ns-regime wanted the people to believe in a victory and be motivated to fight for it. An anti-war novel, which showed that it's neither dulce nor decorum to die would have just destroyed the effort they put into influencing the people.
When you look at books, songs and especially movies in this time (they produced 1500 movies from 1933 til 1945) you'll get the impression what images of war they wanted to promote, so no wonder that he was censored. I don't know anything about the reception of the book when it was first published, though. (Btw., there is an even more effective (in my opinion) anti-war French novel, La Debacle by Emile Zola. It's set in the German-French war 1871/72. Sorry for this digression, but i can't resist recommending books when there's the slightest opportunity. )



Post Edited (07-25-03 22:41)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.

(N. Chomsky 1957)

Thanks V V, I rather thought that would be the effect. So the book had a narrow period in which it was open to the German public - 1929 to 1933?

In which case it may well have been better known in England than Germany by 1939???

'Goodbye to all that' by Robert Graves comes across as fairly anti-war, I think. It definitely doesn't praise it.



_ _ _ _ _

If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.

There are four catastrophes in the text I sent, you'll soon see what I'm talking about.

The furry ones?

You're a first edition groupie too, aren't you? Weird...



_ _ _ _ _

If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.