A native of Rhineland, born Erich Paul Remark. He is a descendant of a
refugee from Revolutionary France. He changed his name to Erich Maria
Remarque when he wrote his first major novel, All Quiet on the Western
Front. Maria was the name of his late mother, and "Remarque" was the
original spelling used by his French ancestors. Some biographies still
wrongly state that Remarque's original name was Kramer and he spelled
his real name backward. This is largely based on a pre-World War II
Nazi propaganda claiming that Remarque really descended from a family
of French Jews named Kramer.