“ ALL QUIET.”

Hokitika Guardian, 14 June 1930, Page 7

“ ALL QUIET.”

BERLIN LAW SUIT

REMARQUE NO MYTH

A lawsuit of some interest, both to authors and publishers, and also to the puolic, recently began in Berlin, says the “Daily Mail”. Eric Maria Remarque, the author of “AH Quiet on the Western Front,” will appear as a witness before the Berlin court in a case against his publishers, the great firm of Ullsteins. Ullsteins are being sued by Dr. Fritz Meyer, an old friend of Remarque, who introduced him to the publishers and submitted the manuscript of “All Quiet” to them.

In the preliminary public hearing, before three judges of the Berlin Lnndgericht, Dr. Max, Strauss, tlio well-known German lawyer, who represents Dr. Meyev, summaris’d the reasons why his client is suing Lbsteins for an agent’s fee on account of services rendered to Ullsteins. Dr. Meyer met Dr. Franz Ullstein, then still a leading member of the firm, in a railway carriage in 1927. Dr Ullstein told Dr Meyer (who bad been in the publishing trade himthat he was looking for a war book. Dr. Meyer then took the manuscript of “All Quiet” to Ullsteins, By way of compensation for this service Ullsteins pnid Dr. Meyer the sum of tOOO marks (£2000), but as the net profits on the German edition alone are now estimated at 1,500,000 marks. Dr. Meyer thinks that his services should be rewarded more substantially.

The case is unprecendented because Dr Meyer had no formal arrangements •hntever with Ullsteins, and it was ex nec-ted that the case would perhaps be "•■■missed at the first hearing, but this has not happened. The verdict will be of considerable interest, for it may involve a legal definition of “agent’s services.”

The fact that Remarque himself is going to give evidence will, incidental-

v. show that he exists. This is being doubted. There has been a strong reactionary campaign against “All )uiet” in Germany. Ex-officers’ clubs \nd societies in particular have done all they can to discredit the book part ly by attaching the book itself and nartly by floating the legend that tlier. s no such person as Remarque, and that whoever wrote the book was never at the front.

The truth is that Remarque exists that lie was at the front, as a common soldier, and that lie wrote“AU Quiet.” He is, by the way, finishing a second book at the present moment. The efforts to discredit “All Quiet” have, as a matter of fact, failed. The book is one of tho three or four books which now, just ns when first published, are considered both by the read big public as well as by a large number of critics fincluding some of the most fastidious) as the best of the German war books,