Life became less oppressive for Remarque in his last two decades. In 1954, he published A Time to Love and a Time to Die, dedicated to his close friend, and later his wife, Paulette Goddard Remarque. This novel achieved popular success as a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Its focus, the effect of Gestapo tactics on civilians, bares the scars inflicted by Germans who chose complicity with the Nazis as a means of coping. The abridged German version of this novel incurred controversy because the editors excised the full horrors of Remarque’s incisive view of the Nazi perversion of the national soul. In 1955, Remarque scripted Michael Musmanno’s Ten Days to Die under the title The Last Act, which was filmed by an Austrian company to depict Hitler’s final days. An effective vehicle, it starred Oskar Werner and earned appreciative comment at the Edinburgh Film Festival. A second Remarque book-to-film, The Black Obelisk, quickly followed in 1956, and its setting returned to hometown scenes following World War I. It contains more ribaldry and humor than Remarque generally incorporated in his writing. That same year, The Last Station, Remarque’s only play, was performed under the title Berlin 1945 at Berlin’s Renaissance Theatre during a cultural festival. A reenactment of the Russian takeover of Berlin, the play pitted two conquering armies against the greater good of democracy and free speech, one of Remarque’s more heartfelt issues. It would be revived in America two decades later.
An American citizen since 1947, Remarque sought an amicable divorce from Jeanne in Juarez, Mexico, in 1957. On February 25, 1958, he married actress Paulette Goddard. A trim, vibrant, virile man, Remarque enjoyed peace and contentment in his final marriage, which appeared to be a match of true love. A reader of Malraux, Proust, Flaubert, Balzac, Stendhal, Poe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Rilke, London, Wilder, and Zen philosophy, he also devoted himself to book discussions, long walks, and collecting Iranian rugs and Chinese bronze figurines, which his wife later sold to relieve the burden of guarding his costly treasures.
