Erich Maria Remarque(1898-1970)

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.

The death of one is a tragedy, the death of a million is just a statistic.