Nivea

1929–1934

Official typographer to the city council

From 1929 to 1934 he is the official typographer to Hanover town council; by the late 1920s he is a well-known typographer (his best-known work is the catalogue for the Dammerstock estate in Karlsruhe) and a member of the Deutscher Werkbund. In 1934 he loses his contract with the council.

1935

His works are confiscated from museums and ridiculed

In 1935, under the Nazis, examples of his work in German museums are confiscated and publicly ridiculed.

late 1936

Photographs of the Merzbau at MoMA

Photographs of the Merzbau, reproduced in 1933–34 in the journal of the Paris-based group abstraction-création, are exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

August 1936

The Gestapo arrests his friends the Spengemanns

In August 1936 the Gestapo arrests his close friends Christof and Luise Spengemann and their son Walter; the situation has clearly become perilous.

1937

Merz pictures in the ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition

That same year his Merz pictures are included in the Nazi-organised ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition in Munich, making his return impossible.

2 January 1937

Flees Germany for Norway

Wanted by the Gestapo for an ‘interview’, he leaves for Norway to join his son Ernst, who had left Germany on 26 December 1936; his wife Helma stays in Hanover to manage their four properties.