Unlike the situation for many older German Jews with established careers, the professional and personal hopes and dreams of many young German Jews were shaken, if not shattered, already within months of the Nazis' coming to power in 1933. The factors that would increasingly convince younger Jews in particular that they could not remain in Germany usually involved professional and economic roadblocks, which multiplied steadily from the spring of 1933 onward. Outspoken anti-Nazis, both Jews and non-Jews, often encountered physical intimidation and violence at the hands of Nazi activists already in 1933, if not in the Great Depression years before Hitler was appointed chancellor. Young anti-Nazi Jewish activists, who found themselves particularly targeted, often fled Nazi Germany early on, but they were the exception among German Jews. Jews of all ages throughout Germany felt the impact of the Nazis' coming to power, yet many naturally took a wait-and-see approach. Nazi rule varied from place to place and even person to person, certainly at least until 1935, when the Nuremberg Laws placed concrete restrictions on all Jews and on interactions between Jews and so-called Aryans.

Both the political situation in Nazi Germany and Alex Steinberg's imminent death in the spring of 1933 compelled the youngest Steinberg child, Marianne, to return closer to home to study at the University of Düsseldorf instead of going off to Innsbruck as she had planned.