For the 1923/24 season Otto moved to Hamburg where he worked a season at the recently opened and already widely admired Kammerspiele Theatre under the direction of its young founder-director Erich Ziegel. The period was one of intensified economic hardship, accompanied by a peaking of the post-war hyperinflation. In October 1923 the economic collapse triggered the Hamburg Uprising. The northern port cities had a long tradition of left-wing political militancy, and Otto came into contact with the labour movement at this time, which left him with a deep commitment to many of the ideals of the Communist Party which had been founded in Berlin during 1918/19. Sources differ as to whether it was in 1923, 1924 or 1927 that Hans Otto actually became a member of the party, but it is clear that from his time in Hamburg, if not earlier, he was a supporter.