The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin offered the National Socialists a unique opportunity to present the regime in a positive light internationally. The Art Olympiad, which remained an integral part of the major event until 1948, was also used for propaganda purposes. A high point of the international protests against the Berlin Summer Olympics was intended to be the People's Olympiad (Spanish: Olimpiada Popular) in Barcelona. It was thwarted by General Franco's coup.

In 1935, Heinrich Mann, writing from exile, incisively exposed the delusion of the murderous Nazi regime that it was a thousand-year Reich, declaring: “The eternity that Hitler’s Reich ascribes to itself is not the same as it deserves. It deserves a museum to preserve its atrocities […] The drawings and paintings of Karl Schwesig are worthy of adorning the museum. They should teach viewers to weep with shame.”

As part of preparations for an exhibition on the beginnings of documenta, two artworks from the collection of the Citizens' Foundation for Persecuted Arts were examined using art-historical techniques at the Institute for Restoration and Conservation Science (CICS) of the Cologne University of Applied Sciences. One of these paintings is "Desolate Street" by Felix Nussbaum, which was previously dated to 1928.