Hotel Lux

Coordinates: 55°45′47″N 37°36′31″E / 55.76306°N 37.60861°E / 55.76306; 37.60861

Hotel Lux (Люксъ) was a hotel in Moscow that, during the early years of the Soviet Union, housed many leading exiled Communists. During the Nazi era, exiles from all over Europe went there, particularly from Germany. A number of them became leading figures in German politics in the postwar era. Initial reports of the hotel were very good, although its problem with rats was mentioned as early as 1921. Communists from more than 50 countries came for congresses and for training or to work. By the 1930s, Joseph Stalin had come to regard the international character of the hotel with suspicion and its occupants as potential spies. His purges created an atmosphere of fear among the occupants, who were faced with mistrust, denunciations, and nightly arrests. The purges at the hotel peaked between 1936 and 1938. Germans who fled Hitler for safety in the Soviet Union found themselves interrogated, arrested, tortured, and sent to forced labor camps. Most of the 178 leading German communists who were killed in Stalin's purges were residents of Hotel Lux.

Hotel Lux (film)

Hotel Lux is a 2011 German period film directed by Leander Haußmann. The tragicomedy begins in Nazi Germany and moves to the Soviet Union. Featuring the main character Hans Zeisig, an apolitical comedian, the picture involves him with numerous historical facts and figures of this era.

Plot

In 1933, as Adolf Hitler and the Nazis come to power in Germany, actor and comedian Hans Zeisig (Michael Herbig) and his partner, Siggi Meyer (Jürgen Vogel), have a successful comedy act at a Berlin cabaret doing impersonations of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. Meyer is politically active in the Communist Party and through him, Zeisig meets the attractive Dutch Resistance fighter, Frida (Thekla Reuten). Zeisig is apolitical; he's dreaming about a career in Hollywood. He finds the growing political tension an unpleasant nuisance, but Meyer is endangered by the Nazis' power grab. He arrives one day at the theater with a black eye from an attack and says he is going to go underground. Another performer, a Nazi supporter who caricatures a Jewish man, makes a wisecrack about Meyer's black eye. They get into a backstage brawl, fully made up and in costume—the Nazi as a Jew and the Communist as Hitler. The fight careens its way from the dressing room to the stage, with "Hitler" on top of the "Jew". The audience, larded with uniformed Nazis, initially assumes it to be part of the show and cheers. When the melee ends, the show goes on, but Meyer flees.