A. W. Wheen was the son of a Methodist minister from rural New South Wales. At the end of his high school education in 1914 he received his leaving certificate with honours in English and History, and enrolled in Arts at Sydney University to study Latin, English, History and Philosophy. In December 1915 Wheen went to Egypt as a volunteer with the Australian Imperial Force. Over the next three years he was in action at the Somme and Ypres, reaching the rank of lieutenant, and was awarded the Military Medal and two bars for his bravery. His wartime experience had a profound effect on him. After the war, he returned to Australia and enrolled in architecture at the University of Sydney where he became the University's Rhodes Scholar in 1919. He spent four years at Oxford University, then became a librarian at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London where he worked until his retirement in 1962.
In 1929 Wheen translated Erich Maria Remarque's novel Im Westen nichts Neues into English.The title All Quiet on the Western Front was chosen by his publishers G. P. Putnam's Sons. During the early 1930s he also translated other novels by Remarque (and some by other German authors), including The Way Back (sometimes called The Road Back, the sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front). The collaboration with Remarque led to a friendship between author and translator, as an article on Wheen by his great nephew Ian Campbell on the website of The University of Sydney reveals: 'Remarque, exiled in a remote corner of Switzerland after the book was banned by the Nazis, shared his thoughts in a lengthy correspondence with his Australian translator. Both had fought on the Western front, both were wounded ... and left disturbed by the horrors of war. Both turned to the arts for solace. Finally, in the years after the war, both men left their respective homelands for good'.
Campbell's article also reveals that Wheen feared for the safety of his Remarque papers in wartime London and sent them to his young daughter in Australia in 1940. Wheen's widow bequeathed the papers to the National Library after his death in London in 1971.
Source: Ian Campbell, 'War Correspondents', The University of Sydney Gazette, April (2003), http://www.usyd.edu.au/about/publication/gazette/april03/features/pub/war.shtml
Sighted: 12/03/2008
