June 22, 1898 Erich Maria Remarque
On June 22, 1898 Erich Maria Remarque, the man Joseph Goebbels declared as unpatriotic, was born in Osnabrück, Germany.
His book All Quiet on the Western Front was among the first books burned in 1933 by Nazis and his works banned for being “harmful and undesirable literature”
I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are just poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony—. Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?
All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque, p 244, 1929 G.P. Putnam’s Sons
https://archive.org/details/bwb_KU-438-630/page/244/mode/2up
Sadly I could find no German stamps devoted to either Remarque or his seminal novel. All Quiet on the Western Front, on the other hand Niger issued a fine multi stamp set devoted to the author’s 125th anniversary.
125th Anniversary of the Birth of Erich Maria Remarque
Issued by Niger in 2023
Son of a book binder, Remarque was born in Osnabrück into a family with distant French ancestors among its lineage. He pursued studies in Munich to become a teacher but had to abandon them due to his conscription into the army at eighteen years old. The experience of war and his firsthand exposure to its brutality left a profound mark on him; these experiences, combined with the subsequent political and social upheavals, later provided the essential material for his novel writing.
After 1918, within the unstable society of the Weimar Republic, Remarque pursued a wide range of occupations: he worked as an instructor, a businessman, a car driver, and head of publicity at a rubber factory. Ultimately, however, he settled in journalism, particularly sports journalism, becoming a contributor to a magazine.Sport en images (Sport in the ImageThe publisher A. Scherl, owner of a chain of nationalist newspapers, rejected the manuscript of his debut novel. The rival publishing house Ullstein, specializing in popular fiction and liberal newspapers, hesitated but ultimately accepted it—a work that would immediately become a bestseller.
https://www.universalis.fr/encyclopedie/erich-maria-remarque/
Erich Maria Remarque fled Germany for Switzerland in 1933. He was stripped of his German citizenship by the NAZI government in 1938 and he never regained it. When asked why he didn’t apply to regain his status, Remarque simply stated he had never surrendered it and felt he should not have to apply for something he already had.
He eventually moved to the US, and gained citizenship in 1947. He spent the rest of his life living in the US and Switzerland, never returning to Germany.
https://www.kimfay.net/erich-maria-remarque/ has a decent, brief bio on Erich Maria Remarque.
More bits of interesting history in stamp form: