The Third Reich of Dreams
Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968. First American edition. 8vo, 177 pp, bound in black cloth with titles stamped in green foil. Illustrated dust jacket. With a foreward by Bruno Bettelheim.
Beradt began collecting dreams of her fellow German’s in 1933, after being forbidden to publish by the Nazis, and continued to gather them for the next six years. She hid the manuscripts inside the bindings of books in her personal library, with pseudonyms used for famous figures such as Hitler.
This book, which describes 75 of the 300 dreams she collected, was not published until 1966 in Germany, with this English translation following two years later. It has never been reprinted, not because of lack of interest but rather because Beradt's heirs, who own the copyright, cannot be found.
The dreams are compiled into different categories such as “Those who act," “Disguised Wishes” and “Undisguised wishes." One of the most compelling and troubling dreams which she recorded was the dreams of people as they dreamt that dreaming itself was forbidden. “These dreams—these diaries of the night—were conceived independently of their authors’ conscious will....They were, so to speak, dictated to them by dictatorship.” - Charlotte Beradt.
The book received renewed attention after a 2019 article by Mireille Juchau in the New Yorker, which pointed out the disturbing parallels between the dreams of that time and the dreams we hear recited around us on the subway and from friends.
Fine in a very good dust jacket with some creasing and light rubbing to extremities, and a closed tear at head of spine. Item #30291
Price: $750.00