Pola Negri looks out of her window in Berlin. She sees people being dragged to the street, chased, pushed into trucks. She picks up the phone and calls the police. But that's the breeze. "Reichskristallnacht," the Germans would have called it, tells Negri from the off. "That's when I knew it was time to pack my bags."

It's moments like these when the documentary series "War of Dreams 1918-1939" - from Monday on Arte, later on the ARD - makes one wince. Not only because the partly disinterested, partly overburdened police think so much of the experiences of the "Frontal21" journalists in Dresden or the scenes in Chemnitz since the end of August. Also, because the air is blowing with departure, "never again", "different in the future".

The Pole Pola Negri, who once returned to Berlin from Hollywood to film, then fled to France, is one of 13 characters whose years we follow in eight parts - on the basis of historical diaries: loud European lives, torn by hope, compromise, willpower , existential decisions.

100 years after the end of World War II. And seldom did a series seem more appropriate to remind us: 1918, similar to later in 1945, found us happy. Happy to be out of the state of war, to cautiously allow dreams again. And above all: determined to prevent a renewed Europe-wide slaughter. Oh well.

Believe in something better

That unites the 13 protagonists: the belief in something better. For some it is communism, for others socialism, "world revolution", anarchy, democracy or, later, National Socialism. Most in their twenties, at an age when they consciously experienced the four years of the war; and in which it urges to design a life, a world.

The figures impress, their facets stifle every pathos. Be it the Swedish women's rights activist and journalist Elise Ottesen (Rebecka Hemse), who works for female workers; the Russian child soldier Marina Yurlova (Natalia Witmer), who finds happiness in the USA; the English noble daughter Unity Mitford (Charlotte Merriam), a leader groupie antichambrating for Hitler in Britain; the Vietnamese Nguyen Ai Quoc (Alexandre Nguyen), who trains with the Communists in Moscow - and later when Ho Chi Minh will write colonial history of resistance; the Catholic Rudolf Höß (Joel Basman), who wants to overcome the national disgrace: as a concentration camp commander in Auschwitz.

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History Series on Arte: Awakening of a Continent

A moral commentary is waived. This works more concisely than in the previous project "1914. Diaries of the First World War", also designed, written and directed by Jan Peter (together with Frédéric Goupil). Because as a narrator, only the protagonists themselves appear - in the familiar immediacy of diaries.

Out of the archival air

The intimate, dense atmosphere created in combination with archive footage is evident in the first few minutes. As Obermaat Hans Beimler (Jan Krauter) in 1918 in his hammock at sea from nightmares hochschreckt. A scene from the war, the ship burns, sinks, he drifts in the water, with other sailors. He has never seen palm trees, he tells in the Off - black and white scene with palm trees -, have never danced the night - casually swinging couples on the dance floor - he wanted to experience all this. And we experience with him: sailor uprising, DKP founding, Spanish Civil War. Thus, the documentary drama brings in sepia frozen figures out of the stale archive air out to light.

The Storylines Interlocking Private and World Politics are the pound of the series. At the same time, the preface is symptomatic of the whole project: in public-law kitsch splinters catapult apart, projected on the protagonists. For as strong as the individual stories are, their combination is more like a pork salad.

But all this is nothing against the whiplash of shaking his head in the face of the ARD idea (as in the 1914 series), pushing the eight Arte-hours as three 90-minutes into the night program. No chance against the game show "The Best Deal". Pretty bitter, if you take it seriously, how tense right-wing the situation is not just three weeks.

Yes, it is the old lyre, but: Who produces such a powerful European history with so much broad-based fanfare, with radio specials, exhibitions, theatrical version, book and project page, but you should give her the chance to be seen. Not only from the Arte audience. One will probably still be allowed to dream.

"War of Dreams 1918-1939", 11, 12 and 13 September, 8:15 pm, Arte; 17, 18 and 24 September, 22:45, ARD