LETTER: Required reading

From Mr R. K. Wohllebe

Sir: One gets used to anti-German digs in the British press. A case in point is the report about the sale of the manuscript of Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front ("Epic manuscript sold for pounds 276,000", 2 December). You claim that Remarque remained persona non grata in Germany for 50 years after his book was publicly burned by the Nazis in 1933. Not so. Remarque died in 1970, and his novel was required reading at my school in Germany during the early Fifties (the film version was shown at school as well).

Also, why do you not let your readers know who was the buyer? It was, in fact, purchased jointly by the state government of lower Saxony and the Savings Bank of Osnabruck, Remarque's home town, to go on exhibition there in the local museum.

Yours faithfully,

R. K. Wohllebe

Teddington, Middlesex

3 December