Pola Negri fled the film's press premiere in heavy rain to avoid being caught in a crossfire in street battles between between German strikers and government troops. She wrote in her memoirs, "The streets [of Berlin] were completely deserted. The only sound was the gunfire directly overhead, which crashed through the air with a deafening din. In order not to be hit by a stray bullet, I walked in short steps with my back pressed against the walls of the buildings. By the time I arrived [at the subway station], I was ringing wet." The next day, November 9, 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II was deposed as ruler of Germany. The First World War ended two days thereafter.
On November 8, 1918, the UFA film studio held a special preview for the Berlin press. This occurred amid street battles between Spartacist strikers and government soldiers. Pola Negri later recalled the chaos: "The studio orchestra played selections from 'Carmen' to get us in the mood. We sat down in the projection room, and the film began. I heard a faint sound in the distance . . . gunfire." As the gunfire became louder, director Ernst Lubitsch urged the audience to remain calm and to finish viewing the film. By nightfall the strikers and the troops were engaged in close-quarters battle and all streets were closed.
The film underwent a 4K restoration in 2018 by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation through the L'Immagine Ritrovata labs from an incomplete black & white copy in the East German State Film Archives combined with another incomplete black & white copy from the 1970s to create a complete version with colorization based on nitrate copy fragments.