Dreamers

A refreshingly brisk and lively study of a largely forgotten moment in twentieth century history. The book moves at breakneck speed to recount 10 days of political idealism, chaos, and dissolution. Extremely energetic and informative.

Dreamers is a fantastic slice of little-known history. Weidermann is both a gifted journalist and a literary writer. He is skilled at researching a specific moment and pulling in all kinds of interesting facts. At the same time, he writes in such an engaging style, not the dry, reportage style one often finds in journalistic writing.

Dreamers really pulls you in with the details. For instance, I knew Rainer Maria Rilke was a quiet, mind-in-the-stars poet revered throughout Germany, but I didn’t know he was obsessed with Russia. If you read Dreamers, you get to know him even better than the small bit I’ve included here.

Weidermann skillfully balances humor (I loved the scene when revolution is in the air and all some Bavarians can think of is beer and sausage) with the excitement and terrorizing feeling of revolution. Weidermann is also a gifted storyteller, as he uses so many details to make the historical figures fully- fleshed, memorable characters and keeps the story moving at a brisk pace.

He presents the “protagonist” Kurt Eisner as fully human. Weidermann gets into the nuances to show why a pale-faced, sweaty intellectual is charismatic enough to be beloved and skilled enough to be a great writer, but not visually arresting enough to be considered a great public speaker (again, subtle difference between orator and public speaker). I highly recommend this book.

Dreamers: When the Writers Took Power, Germany 1918 by Volker Weidermann is a narrative history of the often overlooked Bavarian Revolution of 1918. This reads almost like a novel which makes it both an enjoyable read and one that presents the people and ideas as well as the events and outcomes.

Well researched, the information is conveyed to the reader almost casually. Rather than simply quote letters or essays or memoirs, the thoughts from those texts are incorporated into the action so that we experience what is happening at the same time we are learning about what any one of them might have been thinking or expecting.

I was caught up in the narrative itself as much as I was interested in learning about the events. When I say it felt like reading a novel, I mean that in a good way. It was like reliving the events rather than just reading about what happened.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

A world of Possibilities.

Germany in the immediate aftermath of WWI was a country in flux. Inspired by the still-fresh Russian revolution and the fall of the Hohenzollern monarchy, all manner of dreamers, schemers and revolutionaries – from the drily pragmatic to the wild-eyed and utopian – hoped to transform society into their own versions of the earthly paradise.
In Bavaria the intellectuals made the first move in November 1918, deposing the Wittelsbach dynasty and establishing the People's State of Bavaria under the charismatic theatre critic and theorist Kurt Eisner. This experiment lasted barely three months, Eisner being assassinated by a monarchist army officer in February 1919. After this the even shorter-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic squabbled on before being crushed by the combined forces of the army and the right-wing freikorps.
Weidermann does a good job of detailing the inevitable in-fighting and jockeying for position and influence that follow any revolution, making it clear that – as is often the case – while cosmopolitan cities like Munich might adapt to new social paradigms, a deeply conservative rural hinterland (Very conservative in Catholic Bavaria) can often be the fatal stumbling-block to revolution.
Perhaps most interesting, and almost lost in the overall clamour of revolutionary Munich, is the mention of the role a certain army corporal may or may not have played in the events – and where the allegiances of this young man might have lain at the start of his political career. Four years later, this same corporal, by then the head of a small, ultra-revolutionary movement of his own, failed in his own attempt to seize power in Munich. We know the rest.

Thanks to Steerforth Press and NetGalley for this ARC

The pen is not only mightier than the sword, it hits with a BANG! And the words of the people can change a nation. A most impressive and informative book.

4/5 Stars

Dreamers is a good book with a really interesting story. However, the primary issue I found was that you really needed to know a lot of history going on otherwise it was hard to follow along with the story. The pros - it's an incredibly well-written account of a little-known bit of history and reads less like a history book and more like a novel. I would definitely suggest this as an addition to anyone studying WWI or early 1900's Bavaria!



Thank you to NetGalley and Pushkin Press for providing me with an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

The author takes the popular history approach with the focus on people and narrative. The content is the short-lived and not well known socialist revolution in Bavaria in 1918. The main actors are the dreamer -Kurt Eisner-, his companions, and several intellectuals, artists, and reactionaries. Through a mix of journal entries, newspaper clippings, and excerpts from speeches the reader gains insight into how these people seem to function. The reader also gets a taste of the many utopian ideas of these ‘dreamers’ to improve mankind and society.
This enlivens the sheer factual history accounts as it includes feelings and thoughts.
Hence, this book brings details of the revolutionary events and general climate in Bavaria.
It is fast-paced and lucidly written, showing the different strands of thoughts while the revolutionary and its counter-forces create momentum.
A very good and interesting read for anyone interested in Weimar Germany.

Dreamers is a book about a not so well known part of European history and talk about Munich in 1918 and 1919. It is a well-written book, with a lot of information, which will take you in a middle of the post-war country, in middle of a revolution, where people are tired of fighting and want to make things right. It is an intriguing story of big ideas and dreams.
I enjoyed the style the book was written - although taken from various sources, it reads almost like a novel, rather than a book full of facts.

Written in such an engaging way that it could have been entirely fictional, this book describes and analyses a fascinating aspect of events in WWI. The writing style is extremely impressive - sharp, descriptive and immersive. I suspect this made the book more appealing to me than the plot alone would have done.

With thanks to NetGalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review. This is actually closer to 3.5 than anything else. I started reading this just after the incident in America. It reads halfway between a fairytale and a style of narrative journalism that goes some way to explaining how things can get very strange very quickly. It begins with the bloodless revolution of Bavaria after WW1 and shows (in their own words in some cases) the political mess that came of it. Sometimes we hear directly from the writers - like a documentary. This is the kind of history we should be being taught.

Well written informative a book that drew me in.A book I will be recommending historical eye opening a very interesting read.#netgalley #pushkinpress.