Premier of the film “All Quiet on the Western Front”

© filmspiegel.de Scene with Lew Ayres as Paul Bäumer (left)

The film version of one of Germany’s most famous anti-war novels, “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970), premiers on 20 April 1930 in Los Angeles. The film can be seen for the first time in Germany on 4 December in Berlin, but public protests by the NSDAP accompany the showings there. Several days afterward the “Chief Film Inspection Office of Berlin,” at the request of several state governments, will forbid further showings of the work in Germany. The justification: Because of its one-sided depiction directed against Germany, the film places an unreasonable psychological burden on the public.