Wolfram Lotz, a German playwright and poet, spent five years collecting thousands of dream accounts from online forums across Europe, spanning over 25 languages from English to Swiss Romansh. The result is his book Dreams in Europe, which features edited short stories, some just a paragraph long. Lotz found that European dreams are surprisingly prosaic, often lacking imagination and ending in anticlimaxes.
Common Narrative Structures
Lotz observed a recurring pattern: dreams start with an adventure or daring journey, which is then interrupted, sidetracked, or fizzles out. For example, one dream involves a woman chased by murderers who ends up watching TV with them and cracking hazelnuts. Another features a man who gets to advise French President Emmanuel Macron on social policy but instead discusses haircuts and dog training.
“All these collected dreams have an understated melancholy or sadness,” Lotz said, noting that there isn’t much transcendence in the European mentality: “God is dead, and the present lies mutely in front of us.”
Political and Cultural Influences
While major events like Brexit, Trump, and COVID-19 rarely appear directly, the Russian invasion of Ukraine surfaces frequently in dreams from Ukrainian and Russian forums. Many European dreams are set in the United States, featuring encounters with Hollywood stars or anxieties about US geopolitical shifts. One dreamer cried upon discovering a map where US states had drifted apart, which Lotz compared to learning about parents’ divorce.
“Dreams aren’t just froth. They know something,” Lotz said, suggesting that dreams reflect changing European attitudes toward the US.
Exceptions and Meaning
Some dreams incorporate political figures like Boris Johnson and Angela Merkel, but Lotz emphasizes that his role is not to interpret the dreams. The book suggests that meaning can lie in the absence of meaning. Examples include a dream about a bird living in someone’s anus or app icons falling off an iPad screen.
Lotz aims to explore Europe beyond political discourse: “When the media talks about Europe, it rattles through a series of discursive chains... but it barely touches on the reality of what Europe feels like.”
