Thomas Hüetlin – Marlene Dietrich and Erich Maria Remarque: Please not bourgeois

“When Remarque then set off at the end of March 1939, as a savior and protector, as a ‘angel who watches the black sword over you,’ he asked briefly by telegram whether he had to bring a tailcoat, unfortunately he was eaten by moths. “No frack, just love” was the answer, and the delighted remarque so that he really seemed to believe that the thing with him and Marlene might still find a happy ending. “

In September 1937, the then star of German literature, Erich Maria Remarque, met the Hollywood star Marlene Dietrich as part of Venice’s Film Festival, which he previously only knew fleetingly. He had become a millionaire through his anti -war novels “Nothing new” and “The way back” during the Great Depression, but an acute writer’s block is plagued.

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Both books were banned by the Nazis in 1933 and burned publicly. Remarque withdraws to Switzerland, in 1938 he was revoked German citizenship. He gets a pass from Panama and can travel with it. Dietrich finally went to the USA in the mid-1930s and became a US citizen. But she is a world star on the descending branch. The role offers are increasingly absent.

The former foreign correspondent Thomas Hüetlin, who published books on Bayern Munich and Udo Lindenberg, among other things, and was decorated with the Egon-Erwin-Kisch-Prize, for example, considers what followed “one of the wildest love affairs of the 20th century”. This is pure marketing. Both world stars wanted to decorate themselves with this connection, pret up in their external presentation.

Her love relationship was damn to fail from the start. The origin could hardly be more different: Dietrich came from a wealthy Berlin family of Imperial Hofuhrmacher, got the Prussian-Protestant canon of values in early (from the mother). Her father, an understated policeman, died of syphilis. Remarque’s father was a bookbinder and guttempler, alcohol and nicotine were considered the devil’s tools. “You lived dry. What meant as much as: freeze between damp walls until the apartment was dry enough for families of better bourgeoisie. «

What Remarque and Dietrich connected was the project to protect the appearance to the outside world. Friends of the common foot people were both decisive. What counted were glamor, shampus and long punches. Seeing and being seen: everything was bourgeois under her stand.

And they were similar: baking house. They dragged contaminated sites around with them. At Marlene it was her husband Rudi Sieber, the Czech father of her daughter Maria, from whom she never let herself divorce; He also had to take care of everything (she called him “dad”). She had affairs with men like women and invited the recognition battery, while Rudi (he called her “mom”) meticulously filed the wine letters of her ex-lovers hunted into the desert. The Dietrich was the light, the rest of the moths.

Remarque, who was actually called Erich Paul Remark, had adopted for 500 marks before he became famous to decorate himself with a nobility title: “Freiherr von Buchwald”. He had the habit of hanging up men’s names to his love affairs. He called his ex -wife Jutta Zambona Peter, his agent Brigitte Neuner, with whom he cheated on her, “my brave Heinrich”. He was a perfectionist, had a writer’s box 24/7, a full wine cellar, wanted to please everyone, was a procrastinator, had anxiety disorders. He didn’t believe in himself. That differed from Marlene: the Dietrich only believed in itself. It was narcissistic, dominant – the lovely writer without excessive self -esteem was a feast.

After a year of fasting, of which half a year separated, they mostly slept in separate suites. Dietrich was practically broke and Remarque was a “changing medical record”. She expected him to write a role on her body, but he did not do that, indulged in a dignified doing nothing at Lake Maggiore.

Luxury paralyzes, something else had to be made: “affairs, that was the pastime of aristocracy, entertainment of the better kind.” In addition, Remarque takes care of his wife Jutta, whom he had secretly married so that she was not shown to Germany. Marlene is terminated by the Paramount, is considered a “cash poison” and has the tax authorities on the neck due to tax evasion. She only lives from her affairs, her control rage leads her more and more into the off. “Human Nitro” is called Remarque.

After all: Remarque writes again. As always with the good old pencil. He notes: “Aryan assholes are also racial disgrace.” The day before the fictitious attack by the German Wehrmacht on his own radio broadcaster Gleiwitz in Upper Silesia, in which dead concentration camp prisoners were placed as alleged German victims, so that Germany has a pretext in Poland, Remarque takes the luxury steamer into the new world. But what happens afterwards is not “one of the wildest love affairs of the 20th century”, but rather “play the song from relationship death”. Remarques wife Jutta is still coming afterwards. Marlene lets her stuck and ensures her deportation to Mexico.

Shortly after the turn of the year, the supposed relationship of the “glamor system” has been done. Marlene later became the “Sweetheart of the Allied Forces”, makes a career as a singer, reinvented herself (as a revenge angel). Remarque marries the ex -wife of Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard (from “modern times”). To do this, he is divorced by Jutta for the second time. And Goddard has all the letters of the Dietrich burned to Remarque.

Remarque begins to collect art. In 1944 he only put the egomania of Dietrich in his refugee novel “Arc de Triomphe” (she would have called robust pragmatism). He died in Locarno in 1970. Goddard has the white roses on his grave of Marlene Dietrich.

Dietrich died in 1992 and hermitically died as an alcoholic in a Parisian luxury hotel, the rent apparently paid the French state. Her statement on the fall of the Berlin Wall: “Whether you come from the east or from the West, I hate them all.” Remarque also remained true to his bourgeois in his fight against everything: “Terrible when the food makes you so rigid.”

Thomas Hüetlin: “You only live your life once”. Marlene Dietrich and Erich Maria Remarque – the history of a limitless passion. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 352 pages, born, 24 €.