Making do with minor jobs, including playing the organ at the Michaelis Chapel (a mental institution), selling fabric, writing art reviews for Die Schönheit, and carving tombstones for Vogt Brothers, Remarque moved to Hannover in October 1922 to work for Continental Rubber as a test driver and as an editor and writer of humor and verse for the in-house magazine, Echo Continental. Part of his responsibilities included travel throughout Europe as far south as Turkey. During this era, Remarque evolved his pseudonym, replacing his middle name, Paul, with Maria. Partly to distance himself from his sophomoric first novel, The Dream-Den, published in 1920, he adopted the spelling of his last name used by his great-grandfather, Johannes Adam Remarque. Three years later he published a poem, "To a Woman." In 1925, Remarque got his first break in writing as reporter and assistant editor for Sport im Bild (Sports in Pictures). His snobbish, stilted stories, including instructions for mixing cocktails, caused German critics to view these early writings as proof that Remarque was not serious about his art. Eager for social prominence, Remarque paid Baron von Buchwald to adopt him so that he might add a noble lineage, crest, and calling card to his résumé.
That same year, on October 14, Remarque married twenty-four-year-old dancer and actress Jutta Ilse Ingeborg Ellen "Jeanne" Zambona, an attractive, fashionable woman of Italian-Danish descent. Drawn to local social events, he developed a reputation for an upscale lifestyle. In 1927, he serialized a trivial car lover's novel, Station on the Horizon, in the company magazine.
