In September 1915 the First International Socialist Conference of antiwar Marxists met in the Hotel-Pension Beau Séjour in the Swiss village of Zimmerwald. Ninety years later, Ralf Beck, owner of the Gasthaus Löwen in the same picturesque village, announced plans to commemorate the event by offering his customers delicacies such as a ‘Trotsky plat du jour’ and a ‘Lenin dessert’. His announcement was doubly ironic.

As Leon Trotsky, one of the participants of the 1915 conference, recalled, a few days after the 38 delegates dispersed, ‘the hitherto unknown name of Zimmerwald was echoed throughout the world. This had a staggering effect on the hotel proprietor – the valiant Swiss told [Robert] Grimm [the conference's organizer] that he looked for a great increase in the value of his property and accordingly was ready to subscribe a certain sum to the funds of the [proposed] Third International. I suspect, however, that he soon changed his mind.’ Indeed he did. After the war and the Russian Revolution, his visitors were mostly frugal European Marxists and Soviet officials bent on making a Leninist shrine out of his hotel. To the staunchly anti-communist villagers, this was not a welcome development. In 1971 most of the Beau Séjour was torn down, the rest was turned into a private residence, and village resistance prevented the erection of any form of plaque or monument to mark the event.