“ALL QUIET”

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 218, 11 June 1930, Page 9

“ALL QUIET”

BERLIN LAWSUIT REMARQUE NO MYTH A lawsuit of some interest, both, to authors and publishers, and also to the public, recently began in Berlin, says the “Daily Mail.” Eric Maria Reinarque, the author of “All 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 bld friend of Remarque, who Introduced him to the publishers, and submitted the manuscript of “AU Quiet” to them. In the preliminary public hearing, before three Judges of , the Berlin Landgericht, Dr. Max Strauss, . the wellknown German lawyer, who represents Dr. Meyer, summarised the reasons why his client is suing Ullsteins for an agent’s fee on account of services rendered to UUsteins. Dr. Meyer met Dr. Franz Ullstein, then still a leading member of the firm, in a railway carriage in 1927. • Dr. UUstein told Dr. Meyer (who had been in the publishing trade himself) that 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 paid Dr. Meyer the sum of 4000 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 unprecedented because Dr. Meyer had no formal’arrangement whatever with UUsteins, and it was expected that the case would perhaps be dismissed at the first hearing, but this has not happened. The verdict wiU 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, incidentally, show that he exists. This is being doubted. There has been a strong reactionary campaign against “All Quiet” in Germany. Ex*-officers’ clubs and societies In particular have done all they can to discredit the book, partly by attacking the book itself and partly by floating th’e legend that there is no such person as Remarque, and that whoever wrote the book was never at the front

The truth is that Remarque exists, that he was at the front, as a common soldier, and that he wrote “All 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 the three or four books which now. just as when first published, are considered both by the reading public as well as by a large number of critics (including some of the most fastidious) as the best of the German war books.