The great dream of a fairer world: the life story of an extraordinary woman

An alternative to capitalism is possible, a world without war, poverty, and exploitation: this is what the young Jewish woman Hertha Gordon, later Walcher, believes when she joins the socialists in the 1910s and plunges into the struggle. She experiences up close the grand dream of revolution, but also the failure and painful end of illusions. The story of her century-long life is a panorama of an era. Regina Scheer compellingly narrates the life of an extraordinary woman during turbulent times, marked by existential conflicts among like-minded individuals in the Weimar Republic, as the Nazis ominously gain strength, and by resistance, flight, and exile, as well as the hope of building a different Germany after the war.

She is involved in preparations for a revolution in Germany and witnesses the relentless factional struggles of the socialist parties in the Weimar Republic, living underground after the Nazis seize power and helping to create structures for the resistance before she must go into exile under life-threatening circumstances. Initially, she flees to Paris, and in 1941, at the last minute, to New York. She heads the foreign office of the SAP, a party that aims to unite social democrats and communists. After years of emigration, she returns to Germany with soon-disappointed expectations of helping to build a socialist society. Her companions include countless now-forgotten individuals, as well as Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin, Wilhelm Pieck, Bertolt Brecht, and the young Willy Brandt. She also encounters Lenin and Stalin in her youth in Moscow. Regina Scheer has known Hertha Walcher (1894–1990) since childhood and has had conversations with her for many years. She offers an extraordinary, very personal glimpse into the life of an impressive woman.