The co-founder of the European Film Fund Paul Kohner had numerous European emigrants under contract at his agency. He was aware that the prospects for success in the American film industry for a German writer with experience in film were greater than for a director, for example, whose style had been influenced by his work in Germany. Erich Maria Remarque had already proved that he could write for film. His anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) had been filmed in the USA by Lewis Milestone a year after its release. The Nazis interrupted the film’s premiére in Berlin and publicly burned the book in May 1933. Remarque’s novel Drei Kameraden, which he wrote while in exile in Switzerland, was also filmed in the USA in 1938 titled Three Comrades.

In view of this, when Remarque was expatriated from Germany, Kohner congratulated him with an offer to represent the author’s interests in dealings with US film companies. The author, who lived in the USA from 1939 and had worked as a script writer also became involved in Kohner’s European Film Fund, writing letters asking for support and also giving donations himself.