Published in 1930, "Front Summary" became one of the landmark novels about the First World War along with the works of E.M. Remarque "On the Western Front without Change," R. Aldington "Death of a Hero" and E. Hemingway "Farewell to Arms! "Participant of the First World War, who went to the front as a volunteer from the third year of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University, Edlef Köppen created a "montage novel," where the original documents are quotes from the appeals of Emperor Wilhelm II, decrees of censorship bodies, newspaper reports - organically woven into the plot, and the prototype of the protagonist Adolf Reisiger is the author himself. "Front summary" has become one of tens of thousands of books, publicly burned in Germany in 1933, and was not published in Germany until 1976, and in the GDR until 1981. At the beginning of the century, the novel again attracted attention, was repeatedly reprinted and translated into several languages.