Erich Maria Remarque religion or worldview Catholicism
Early life
Remarque was born on 22 June 1898, as Erich Paul Remark, to Peter Franz Remark and Anna Maria (née Stallknecht), a working-class Roman Catholic family in Osnabrück. He was never close with his father, a bookbinder, but he was close with his mother and he began using the middle name Maria after World War I in her honor. Remarque was the third of four children of Peter and Anna. His siblings were his older sister Erna, older brother Theodor Arthur (who died at the age of five or six), and younger sister Elfriede.The spelling of his last name was changed to Remarque when he published All Quiet on the Western Front in honor of his French ancestors and in order to dissociate himself from his earlier novel The Dream Room (Die Traumbude). His grandfather had changed the spelling from Remarque to Remark in the 19th century. Research by Remarque's childhood and lifelong friend Hanns-Gerd Rabe proved that Remarque had French ancestors –  his great-grandfather Johann Adam Remarque, who was born in 1789, came from a French family in Aachen. This is contrary to the falsehood –  perpetuated by Nazi propaganda –  that his real last name was Kramer ("Remark" spelled backwards) and that he was Jewish.
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