Lugosi's first film appearance was in the movie "Az ezredes" ("The Colonel", 1917). When appearing in Hungarian silent films, he used the stage name Arisztid Olt. Lugosi made 12 films in Hungary between 1917 and 1918 before leaving for Germany. Following the collapse of Béla Kun's Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, leftists and trade unionists became vulnerable. Lugosi was proscribed from acting due to his participation in the formation of an actors' union. Exiled in Weimar-era Germany, he began appearing in a small number of well-received films, among them adaptations of the Karl May novels "On the Brink of Paradise" ("Auf den Trümmern des Paradieses", 1920) and "Caravan of Death" ("Die Todeskarawane", also 1920) with Dora Gerson (Gerson, who was Jewish, died in Auschwitz).