Hotel Lux
Encyclopedia
Hotel Lux 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.
's residence. Located at Tverskaya Street
36, it had four stories and housed the Filippov Café. The hotel was taken over by the Bolshevik
s after the October Revolution
and came to be used by the Communist International (Comintern) as lodging for communist revolutionaries from other countries. Guests were lodged according to hierarchy, more important individuals received better rooms. Some rooms were also used for meetings.
In June and July 1921, 600 delegates who came to the Third World Congress of the Communist International from 52 countries were housed at Hotel Lux. With the sudden influx of so many international revolutionaries, the hotel began to be known as the "headquarters of the world revolution". Germany alone sent 41 delegates. The Hamburg Uprising
was discussed at the hotel, both before and after the events. After the Comintern was founded, many of the Party's leading functionaries lived at the hotel, including Ernst Reuter
and the hotel became the best known of the Comintern's buildings, although its offices were elsewhere.
seized power with the Machtergreifung
and soon began to arrest and imprison his political opponents, arresting communists and socialists by the thousands. German communists began to flee to the Soviet Union and the Hotel Lux began to fill with German exiles.
In addition to party functionaries, there were advisors, translators and writers who came with their families. Employees were brought to the Comintern Central Committee
's offices by bus. The hotel became overcrowded and conditions were difficult. The hotel was continually plagued by rats; the earliest reports of them were in 1921. There was hot water only twice a week, forcing people to shower in groups, as many as four people at a time. Communal kitchens for the use of residents cooked food next to boiling pots of diapers being sterilized. In spite of the conditions, initially, there was comraderie among the residents. Children played in the halls and attended a German-language school, the Karl Liebknecht School
, set up for the children of exiles.
began a campaign of political repression and persecution to cleanse the Party of "enemies of the people". Stalin viewed the foreign occupants of Hotel Lux as potential spies, or as a Moscow newspaper assumed of Germans (and Japanese) in 1937, they were working actively on behalf of their own country. By 1936, his Great Purge
began to include the hotel's residents. The hotel then gained a second name, that of "the golden cage of the Comintern" because many would like to have left, but could not while being investigated. Between 1936 and 1938, many residents of the hotel were arrested and interrogated by the NKVD
(People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs). Suspicion and betrayal created an atmosphere of fear. Arrests came in the middle of the night, so that some residents slept in their clothes, others paced the floor, or played games of concentration to mask the stress.
An investigation or arrest was prompted more by the atmosphere of terror than by charges of wrongdoing, which were often baseless. Walter Laqueur later wrote of the period, "There was no rhyme or reason as to who was arrested and who was not, the security organs were given a plan to fulfill, a certain number of people were to be arrested in a certain region, and from this stage on it was more or less a matter of accident at whose door the NKVD (the secret police) emissaries would knock in the early hours of the morning." The procedure was for the NKVD to knock, the accused was told to pack a small suitcase with a few things, get dressed and wait outside the door to be picked up and taken away. Then the NKVD returned to collect the accused and seal the door. One night, the NKVD knocked on the Langs' door and Franz Lang was told to get ready. Dutifully waiting outside his door to be picked up, the security police returned. "What are you doing standing around out here?", asked the NKVD. Lang replied that he'd been ordered to do so. "What's your room number?", asked the security officer. "Number 13." "We're only taking away the even numbers tonight!" Astonished, Lang went back to bed. Nor did the NKVD ever knock on his door again.
In the morning, the doors of those arrested were sealed; the wives and children had to move to other quarters and were ostracized as "enemies of the state". The children of parents under investigation were placed in orphanages, where some died from illness and others rejected both their parents and their own German identity. Some of the adults arrested were sent to a gulag
or were executed. Those who came back were regarded with suspicion, as was the case with Herbert Wehner
, who was taken away and returned twice. Such people were assumed to have betrayed others under torture or to save themselves. In Wehner's case, that was what happened.
By 1938, in order to get upstairs in the hotel, a propusk was needed, a document that said one was authorized to get past the armed guard, standing in front of the elegant Art Nouveau
elevator. Even high-level members of the Comintern could not get past the guard without a propusk.
The atmosphere affected the children. Rolf Schälike, who was a child at Hotel Lux, later wrote, "I grew up in Moscow, in the center of power, and state and non-state criminality, Gorky Street, Hotel Lux. It was the years 1938–1946. Around us too, there was juvenile violence. We played 'partisan
and German fascists' in our Hotel Lux, and one kid in our group was hanged—for fun. He couldn't be revived again. There were frequent battles with iron bands with the kids from the neighboring building."
Of the 1400 leading German communists, a total of 178 were killed in Stalin's purges, nearly all of them residents of Hotel Lux. By comparison, the Nazis killed 222 of those 1400 leading German communists. Within the top leadership itself, there were 59 Politburo
members between 1918 and 1945, six of whom were killed by Nazis and seven by the Stalinist purges. The saying among the German communists was, "What the Gestapo
left of the Communist Party of Germany
, the NKWD picked up." When Leon Trotsky
was killed in August 1940, the purges at Hotel Lux stopped, bringing a brief respite to the exiles.
began, Nazi Germany's assault on the Soviet Union. In 1941, the hotel was evacuated. The first residents returned in February 1942. At the end of World War II
, the Ulbricht Group
left Hotel Lux for the airport to return to Germany on April 30, 1945 to become the new leaders of the German Democratic Republic
. The purpose of the trip and whether or not the assignment was temporary or a permanent return to Germany was not known to the whole group until they arrived in Berlin. The youngest of the group was 24-year old Wolfgang Leonhard
.
The last political residents left the hotel in 1954, either willingly or by eviction, and the hotel returned to normal, operating under the name "Hotel Zentralnaya".
The building, still called Hotel Zentralnaya, was bought by the holding company
Unikor in 2007. Unikor and its majority shareholder, Boris Ivanishvili
bought the hotel to renovate it and re-open it as a luxury hotel. The street name has been restored to Tverskaya; the building remains number 10. There were mostly offices in the building at the time of its sale.
In East Germany in the 1950s and 1960s, the SED
commissioned memoirs (Erinnerungsberichte) from former exiles who had lived there. These were carefully written official reports that sanitized and supported the official version of events. Franziska Reubens, who lived there with her husband and children, wrote in guarded language, "It is not easy to write about the memories from that time, to write about them honestly." Other people turned away from the Communist Party, some as a result of their exile in the Soviet Union, and wrote more bluntly and critically about the hotel, such as Ruth von Mayenburg
, who in one passage, used cannibalism
as a metaphor to describe the period. In 1978, von Mayenburg published the first history ever written about Hotel Lux.
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
that, during the early years of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, 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
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
had come to regard the international character of the hotel with suspicion and its occupants as potential spies. His purges
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
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.
Early history
Originally named Hotel Franzija, the hotel was built as a luxury hotel in 1911 by the son of Ivan Filippov, a well-known Moscow baker, whose baked goods were delivered widely, even to the tsarTsar
Tsar is a title used to designate certain European Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism...
's residence. Located at Tverskaya Street
Tverskaya Street
Tverskaya Street , known as Gorky Street between 1935 and 1990, is the main and probably best-known radial street of Moscow, Russia. The street runs from the central Manege Square north-west in the direction of Saint Petersburg and terminated at the Garden Ring, giving its name to Tverskoy District...
36, it had four stories and housed the Filippov Café. The hotel was taken over by the Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
s after the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
and came to be used by the Communist International (Comintern) as lodging for communist revolutionaries from other countries. Guests were lodged according to hierarchy, more important individuals received better rooms. Some rooms were also used for meetings.
In June and July 1921, 600 delegates who came to the Third World Congress of the Communist International from 52 countries were housed at Hotel Lux. With the sudden influx of so many international revolutionaries, the hotel began to be known as the "headquarters of the world revolution". Germany alone sent 41 delegates. The Hamburg Uprising
Hamburg Uprising
The Hamburg Uprising was an insurrection during the Weimar Republic in Germany. It was begun on October 23, 1923 by the one of the most militant sections of the Hamburg district Communist Party , the KP Wasserkante. From a military point of view, the attempt was futile and it was over within 24...
was discussed at the hotel, both before and after the events. After the Comintern was founded, many of the Party's leading functionaries lived at the hotel, including Ernst Reuter
Ernst Reuter
Ernst Rudolf Johannes Reuter was the German mayor of West Berlin from 1948 to 1953, during the time of the Cold War.- Early years :...
and the hotel became the best known of the Comintern's buildings, although its offices were elsewhere.
1933 through World War II
In 1933, two stories were added, giving the hotel 300 rooms. The address, meanwhile, was changed to Gorky Street 10. 1933 was also the year Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
seized power with the Machtergreifung
Machtergreifung
Machtergreifung is a German word meaning "seizure of power". It is normally used specifically to refer to the Nazi takeover of power in the democratic Weimar Republic on 30 January 1933, the day Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany, turning it into the Nazi German dictatorship.-Term:The...
and soon began to arrest and imprison his political opponents, arresting communists and socialists by the thousands. German communists began to flee to the Soviet Union and the Hotel Lux began to fill with German exiles.
In addition to party functionaries, there were advisors, translators and writers who came with their families. Employees were brought to the Comintern Central Committee
Central Committee
Central Committee was the common designation of a standing administrative body of communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, whether ruling or non-ruling in the twentieth century and of the surviving, mostly Trotskyist, states in the early twenty first. In such party organizations the...
's offices by bus. The hotel became overcrowded and conditions were difficult. The hotel was continually plagued by rats; the earliest reports of them were in 1921. There was hot water only twice a week, forcing people to shower in groups, as many as four people at a time. Communal kitchens for the use of residents cooked food next to boiling pots of diapers being sterilized. In spite of the conditions, initially, there was comraderie among the residents. Children played in the halls and attended a German-language school, the Karl Liebknecht School
Karl Liebknecht School
The Karl Liebknecht School , named after Karl Liebknecht, was a German-language elementary school in Moscow. It was established for the children of German refugees to the Soviet Union. It opened in 1924 and was closed in 1939...
, set up for the children of exiles.
Stalin's purges
In 1934, after the murder of Sergei Kirov, Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
began a campaign of political repression and persecution to cleanse the Party of "enemies of the people". Stalin viewed the foreign occupants of Hotel Lux as potential spies, or as a Moscow newspaper assumed of Germans (and Japanese) in 1937, they were working actively on behalf of their own country. By 1936, his Great Purge
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
began to include the hotel's residents. The hotel then gained a second name, that of "the golden cage of the Comintern" because many would like to have left, but could not while being investigated. Between 1936 and 1938, many residents of the hotel were arrested and interrogated by the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
(People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs). Suspicion and betrayal created an atmosphere of fear. Arrests came in the middle of the night, so that some residents slept in their clothes, others paced the floor, or played games of concentration to mask the stress.
An investigation or arrest was prompted more by the atmosphere of terror than by charges of wrongdoing, which were often baseless. Walter Laqueur later wrote of the period, "There was no rhyme or reason as to who was arrested and who was not, the security organs were given a plan to fulfill, a certain number of people were to be arrested in a certain region, and from this stage on it was more or less a matter of accident at whose door the NKVD (the secret police) emissaries would knock in the early hours of the morning." The procedure was for the NKVD to knock, the accused was told to pack a small suitcase with a few things, get dressed and wait outside the door to be picked up and taken away. Then the NKVD returned to collect the accused and seal the door. One night, the NKVD knocked on the Langs' door and Franz Lang was told to get ready. Dutifully waiting outside his door to be picked up, the security police returned. "What are you doing standing around out here?", asked the NKVD. Lang replied that he'd been ordered to do so. "What's your room number?", asked the security officer. "Number 13." "We're only taking away the even numbers tonight!" Astonished, Lang went back to bed. Nor did the NKVD ever knock on his door again.
In the morning, the doors of those arrested were sealed; the wives and children had to move to other quarters and were ostracized as "enemies of the state". The children of parents under investigation were placed in orphanages, where some died from illness and others rejected both their parents and their own German identity. Some of the adults arrested were sent to a gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
or were executed. Those who came back were regarded with suspicion, as was the case with Herbert Wehner
Herbert Wehner
Herbert Richard Wehner was a German politician. A former member of the Communist Party, he joined the Social Democrats after World War II...
, who was taken away and returned twice. Such people were assumed to have betrayed others under torture or to save themselves. In Wehner's case, that was what happened.
By 1938, in order to get upstairs in the hotel, a propusk was needed, a document that said one was authorized to get past the armed guard, standing in front of the elegant Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
elevator. Even high-level members of the Comintern could not get past the guard without a propusk.
The atmosphere affected the children. Rolf Schälike, who was a child at Hotel Lux, later wrote, "I grew up in Moscow, in the center of power, and state and non-state criminality, Gorky Street, Hotel Lux. It was the years 1938–1946. Around us too, there was juvenile violence. We played 'partisan
Soviet partisans
The Soviet partisans were members of a resistance movement which fought a guerrilla war against the Axis occupation of the Soviet Union during World War II....
and German fascists' in our Hotel Lux, and one kid in our group was hanged—for fun. He couldn't be revived again. There were frequent battles with iron bands with the kids from the neighboring building."
Of the 1400 leading German communists, a total of 178 were killed in Stalin's purges, nearly all of them residents of Hotel Lux. By comparison, the Nazis killed 222 of those 1400 leading German communists. Within the top leadership itself, there were 59 Politburo
Politburo
Politburo , literally "Political Bureau [of the Central Committee]," is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.-Marxist-Leninist states:...
members between 1918 and 1945, six of whom were killed by Nazis and seven by the Stalinist purges. The saying among the German communists was, "What the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
left of the Communist Party of Germany
Communist Party of Germany
The Communist Party of Germany was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period until it was banned in 1956...
, the NKWD picked up." When Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
was killed in August 1940, the purges at Hotel Lux stopped, bringing a brief respite to the exiles.
Evacuation and return
Ten months later, in June 1941, Operation BarbarossaOperation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
began, Nazi Germany's assault on the Soviet Union. In 1941, the hotel was evacuated. The first residents returned in February 1942. At the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the Ulbricht Group
Ulbricht group
The Ulbricht Group, led by Walter Ulbricht, was a group of exiled German communists who flew from the Soviet Union back to Germany on April 30, 1945...
left Hotel Lux for the airport to return to Germany on April 30, 1945 to become the new leaders of the German Democratic Republic
German Democratic Republic
The German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...
. The purpose of the trip and whether or not the assignment was temporary or a permanent return to Germany was not known to the whole group until they arrived in Berlin. The youngest of the group was 24-year old Wolfgang Leonhard
Wolfgang Leonhard
Wolfgang Leonhard is a German political author, historian, and expert on Communism. He is the only living member of the Ulbricht Group.-Early years:...
.
The last political residents left the hotel in 1954, either willingly or by eviction, and the hotel returned to normal, operating under the name "Hotel Zentralnaya".
Post-Soviet era
After the collapse of communism, the hotel housed offices, small travel agencies, liquidation companies and other small businesses on the lower floors, the upper floors remained hotel rooms.The building, still called Hotel Zentralnaya, was bought by the holding company
Holding company
A holding company is a company or firm that owns other companies' outstanding stock. It usually refers to a company which does not produce goods or services itself; rather, its purpose is to own shares of other companies. Holding companies allow the reduction of risk for the owners and can allow...
Unikor in 2007. Unikor and its majority shareholder, Boris Ivanishvili
Boris Ivanishvili
Boris Ivanishvili is a Georgian oligarch with a net worth reported to be 5.5 billion dollars.- Biographical details :...
bought the hotel to renovate it and re-open it as a luxury hotel. The street name has been restored to Tverskaya; the building remains number 10. There were mostly offices in the building at the time of its sale.
Legacy
Numerous guests and residents of Hotel Lux have written about the hotel, initially in reports and articles, later in books and memoirs. Early reports from before the purges were often positive, though mentions of rats appear from the beginning. Accommodations were described in favorable terms and the atmosphere as full of comraderie.In East Germany in the 1950s and 1960s, the SED
Sed
sed is a Unix utility that parses text and implements a programming language which can apply transformations to such text. It reads input line by line , applying the operation which has been specified via the command line , and then outputs the line. It was developed from 1973 to 1974 as a Unix...
commissioned memoirs (Erinnerungsberichte) from former exiles who had lived there. These were carefully written official reports that sanitized and supported the official version of events. Franziska Reubens, who lived there with her husband and children, wrote in guarded language, "It is not easy to write about the memories from that time, to write about them honestly." Other people turned away from the Communist Party, some as a result of their exile in the Soviet Union, and wrote more bluntly and critically about the hotel, such as Ruth von Mayenburg
Ruth von Mayenburg
Ruth von Mayenburg was an Austrian journalist, writer and translator. In her earlier years, she was politically active in the Communist Party of Austria...
, who in one passage, used cannibalism
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
as a metaphor to describe the period. In 1978, von Mayenburg published the first history ever written about Hotel Lux.
Notable residents from 1921–1954
- Johannes R. BecherJohannes R. BecherJohannes Robert Becher was a German politician, novelist, and poet.-Early life:Johannes R. Becher was the son of Judge Heinrich Becher. In 1910 he tried to commit suicide with a friend; only Becher survived. From 1911 he studied medicine and philosophy in Munich and Jena...
- Bolesław Bierut
- Willi BredelWilli BredelWilli Bredel was a German writer and president of the Akademie der Künste. Born in Hamburg, he was a pioneer of socialist realist literature....
- Georgi DimitrovGeorgi DimitrovGeorgi Dimitrov Mikhaylov , also known as Georgi Mikhaylovich Dimitrov , was a Bulgarian Communist politician...
- Hugo EberleinHugo EberleinHugo Eberlein was a German Communist politician. He took part of the founding congress of the Communist Party of Germany , and then in the First Congress of the Comintern , where he held important posts until 1928, the result of his involvement with the Conciliator faction...
- Zhou EnlaiZhou EnlaiZhou Enlai was the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, serving from October 1949 until his death in January 1976...
- Ernst Fischer
- Ruth FischerRuth FischerRuth Fischer was a German Communist, a co-founder of the Austrian Communist Party in 1918. According to secret information declassified in 2010, she was a key agent of the American intelligence service known as "The Pond."-Life and work:Born in Leipzig, Ruth Fischer was the daughter of the...
, was expelled from the Communist Party of GermanyCommunist Party of GermanyThe Communist Party of Germany was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period until it was banned in 1956...
and held under house arrestHouse arrestIn justice and law, house arrest is a measure by which a person is confined by the authorities to his or her residence. Travel is usually restricted, if allowed at all...
for 10 months - Klement GottwaldKlement GottwaldKlement Gottwald was a Czechoslovakian Communist politician, longtime leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia , prime minister and president of Czechoslovakia.-Early life:...
- Antonio GramsciAntonio GramsciAntonio Gramsci was an Italian writer, politician, political philosopher, and linguist. He was a founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime...
- Antonio GraziadeiAntonio GraziadeiCount Antonio Graziadei was an Italian academic and politician. One of the co-founders of the Italian Communist Party, he was Professor of Political Economy at the Universities of Cagliari and Parma and a member of the Italian Parliament from 1910 to 1926. In 1928 he went on a self imposed exile...
- Julius Hay
- Jules Humbert-DrozJules Humbert-DrozJules Humbert-Droz was a Swiss Communist and a founding member of the Communist Party of Switzerland. He held high Comintern office through the 1920s and also acted as Comintern emissary to several west European countries. Prior to his becoming a Communist, Humbert-Droz was a pastor...
- Aino Kuusinen
- Otto Ville KuusinenOtto Ville KuusinenOtto Wilhelm Kuusinen was a Finnish-born Soviet politician, literary historian, and poet, who, after the defeat of the Reds in the Finnish Civil War, fled to the Soviet Union, where he worked until his death.- Early life :Kuusinen was born to the family of village tailor Wilhelm Juhonpoika...
- Wolfgang LeonhardWolfgang LeonhardWolfgang Leonhard is a German political author, historian, and expert on Communism. He is the only living member of the Ulbricht Group.-Early years:...
- Lotte Kühn, 1935
- Ruth von MayenburgRuth von MayenburgRuth von Mayenburg was an Austrian journalist, writer and translator. In her earlier years, she was politically active in the Communist Party of Austria...
, Communist Party of AustriaCommunist Party of AustriaThe Communist Party of Austria is a communist party based in Austria. Established in 1918, it was banned between 1933 and 1945 under both the Austrofascist regime, and German control of Austria during World War II... - Ho Chi MinhHo Chi MinhHồ Chí Minh , born Nguyễn Sinh Cung and also known as Nguyễn Ái Quốc, was a Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leader who was prime minister and president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam...
- Imre NagyImre NagyImre Nagy was a Hungarian communist politician who was appointed Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the People's Republic of Hungary on two occasions...
- Margarete Buber-NeumannMargarete Buber-NeumannMargarete Buber-Neumann , was a leading member of the Communist Party of Germany during the years of the Weimar Republic. She survived imprisonment during World War II in both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany...
, returned to Germany in 1940 under the Nazi-Soviet Pact - Heinz Neumann, executed in 1937 in the Great PurgeGreat PurgeThe Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
- Wilhelm PieckWilhelm PieckFriedrich Wilhelm Reinhold Pieck was a German politician and a Communist. In 1949, he became the first President of the German Democratic Republic, an office abolished upon his death. He was succeeded by Walter Ulbricht, who served as Chairman of the Council of States.-Biography:Pieck was born to...
- Theodor Plivier
- Karl RetzlawKarl RetzlawKarl Retzlaw was a German politician, representative of the Social Democratic Party, Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany and Communist Party of Germany....
- Ernst ReuterErnst ReuterErnst Rudolf Johannes Reuter was the German mayor of West Berlin from 1948 to 1953, during the time of the Cold War.- Early years :...
- Rudolf SlánskýRudolf SlánskýRudolf Slánský was a Czech Communist politician. Holding the post of the party's General Secretary after World War II, he was one of the leading creators and organizers of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia...
- Richard SorgeRichard SorgeRichard Sorge was a German communist and spy who worked for the Soviet Union. He has gained great fame among espionage enthusiasts for his intelligence gathering during World War II. He worked as a journalist in both Germany and Japan, where he was imprisoned for spying and eventually hanged....
- Ernst ThälmannErnst ThälmannErnst Thälmann was the leader of the Communist Party of Germany during much of the Weimar Republic. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1933 and held in solitary confinement for eleven years, before being shot in Buchenwald on Adolf Hitler's orders in 1944...
- Josip Broz TitoJosip Broz TitoMarshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...
- Palmiro TogliattiPalmiro TogliattiPalmiro Togliatti was an Italian politician and leader of the Italian Communist Party from 1927 until his death.-Early life:...
- Walter UlbrichtWalter UlbrichtWalter Ulbricht was a German communist politician. As First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1950 to 1971 , he played a leading role in the creation of the Weimar-era Communist Party of Germany and later in the early development and...
, 1935 - Gustav von WangenheimGustav von WangenheimGustav von Wangenheim was a German actor, screenwriter and director.- Life :Wangenheim was born Ingo Clemens Gustav Adolf Freiherr von Wangenheim in Wiesbaden, Hesse, to parents Eduard Clemens Freiherr von Wangenheim and Minna Mengers...
- Herbert WehnerHerbert WehnerHerbert Richard Wehner was a German politician. A former member of the Communist Party, he joined the Social Democrats after World War II...
, 1937 to early 1941 - Erich WeinertErich WeinertErich Bernhard Gustav Weinert was a German Communist writer and a member of the Communist Party of Germany .-Biography:...
- Markus WolfMarkus WolfMarkus Johannes "Mischa" Wolf was head of the General Intelligence Administration , the foreign intelligence division of East Germany's Ministry for State Security . He was the MfS's number two for 34 years, which spanned most of the Cold War...
- Clara ZetkinClara ZetkinClara Zetkin was a German Marxist theorist, activist, and fighter for women's rights. In 1910, she organized the first International Women's Day....
- Hedda ZinnerHedda ZinnerHedda Zinner, or Hedda Erpenbeck-Zinner was a German political writer.-Biography:Born in Lemberg, Zinner began working as an actress but her interest in the workers' movement led her to move to Berlin and, in 1929, join the Communist Party. She became a journalist for left-wing journals...
Film
- Herbert Wehner – Die unerzählte Geschichte (2) Hotel Lux, Heinrich Breloer, documentary. Germany (1993)
- Hotel LuxHotel Lux (film)Hotel Lux is a period film directed by Leander Haußmann and released in 2011. It is a mixture of comedy, drama and farce that begins in Nazi Germany and moves to the Soviet Union...
, written and directed by Leander HaußmannLeander HaußmannLeander Haußmann is a German theatre and film director.The son of actor Ezard Haußmann and costume designer Doris Haußmann, he attended the Ernst Busch theatre school in Berlin....
. With Michael Herbig. Germany (2011)
Sources
- Bert Hoppe, Zimmerservice für die Revolution. Ein Besuch im Moskauer Hotel Lux, das bald zugrunde saniert wird Süddeutsche ZeitungSüddeutsche ZeitungThe Süddeutsche Zeitung , published in Munich, is the largest German national subscription daily newspaper.-Profile:The title literally translates as "South German Newspaper". It is read throughout Germany by 1.1 million readers daily and boasts a relatively high circulation abroad...
, (October 26, 2007) - Ruth von Mayenburg, Hotel Lux. Mit DimitroffGeorgi DimitrovGeorgi Dimitrov Mikhaylov , also known as Georgi Mikhaylovich Dimitrov , was a Bulgarian Communist politician...
, Ernst Fischer, Ho Tschi MinhHo Chi MinhHồ Chí Minh , born Nguyễn Sinh Cung and also known as Nguyễn Ái Quốc, was a Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leader who was prime minister and president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam...
, PieckWilhelm PieckFriedrich Wilhelm Reinhold Pieck was a German politician and a Communist. In 1949, he became the first President of the German Democratic Republic, an office abolished upon his death. He was succeeded by Walter Ulbricht, who served as Chairman of the Council of States.-Biography:Pieck was born to...
, RakosiMátyás RákosiMátyás Rákosi was a Hungarian communist politician. He was born as Mátyás Rosenfeld, in present-day Serbia...
, SlanskyRudolf SlánskýRudolf Slánský was a Czech Communist politician. Holding the post of the party's General Secretary after World War II, he was one of the leading creators and organizers of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia...
, Dr. SorgeRichard SorgeRichard Sorge was a German communist and spy who worked for the Soviet Union. He has gained great fame among espionage enthusiasts for his intelligence gathering during World War II. He worked as a journalist in both Germany and Japan, where he was imprisoned for spying and eventually hanged....
, TitoJosip Broz TitoMarshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...
, TogliattiPalmiro TogliattiPalmiro Togliatti was an Italian politician and leader of the Italian Communist Party from 1927 until his death.-Early life:...
, Tschou En-laiZhou EnlaiZhou Enlai was the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, serving from October 1949 until his death in January 1976...
, UlbrichtWalter UlbrichtWalter Ulbricht was a German communist politician. As First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1950 to 1971 , he played a leading role in the creation of the Weimar-era Communist Party of Germany and later in the early development and...
und WehnerHerbert WehnerHerbert Richard Wehner was a German politician. A former member of the Communist Party, he joined the Social Democrats after World War II...
im Moskauer Quartier der Kommunistischen Internationale. Bertelsmann Verlag. Munich (1978) - Ruth von Mayenburg, Hotel Lux. Das Absteigequartier der Weltrevolution. 1979. ISBN 3492113559 Piper Verlag GmbH (1991)
- Ruth von Mayenburg, Hotel Lux – die Menschenfalle. Elisabeth Sandmann Verlag GmbH (2011) ISBN 3938045604
- Reinhard Müller, Herbert Wehner – Moskau 1937 Hamburger Edition, 2004, ISBN 3-930908-82-4
- Reinhard Müller, Menschenfalle Moskau. Exil und stalinistische Verfolgung. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg (2001) ISBN 3-930908-71-9
- Waltraut Schälike, Ich wollte keine Deutsche sein. Berlin-Wedding – Hotel Lux Dietz Verlag (2006)
- Arkadi Vaksberg, Hôtel Lux. Les Partis frères au service de l'Internationale communiste. Fayard (1993) ISBN 2213031517
- Hermann Weber, Hotel Lux – Die deutsche kommunistische Emigration in Moskau (PDF) Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung No. 443 (October 2006). Retrieved November 12, 2011
- Herbert Wehner: Zeugnis – Persönliche Notizen 1929–1942. Bastei-Lübbe (1982) ISBN 3-404-65064-6
External links
- Visit to Hotel Lux (Video) Soviet Memories.