On 10 March 1933 Hindemith wrote to his publisher, Willy Strecker: "After everything that I see going on in the music and theatre business here, I think all the theatre positions will soon be occupied by strapping Nazi boys. Next spring, after overcoming the initial difficulties, the prospects for an opera by Penzoldt and myself should be very good.”

Hindemith was wrong. In April 1933 Schott Publishers informed him that half of his works had been classed as “culturally bolshevist” and – unofficially – banned from performance. Hindemith held out despite frequent harassment and derogatory articles, always hoping that the Nazi regime would be short-lived. Saddled with the performance ban, he transferred performances with his Jewish trio colleagues Szymon Goldberg and Emanuel Feuermann to neighbouring countries. The withdrawal from public life was followed by a period of reflection on the problem of the interlocking of art and politics. In his opera Mathis der Maler, to which he wrote the text himself, he reflected political events (book burnings), but the subject of the opera is actually the high degree of responsibility of the artist towards his fellow men and art. All personal and contemporary elements recede into the background behind these moral-ethical ideas.

Hindemith and his publishers waited, in the hope of one day being able to have the opera performed in Germany, but found themselves involved in the labyrinth of various power interests of individual Nazi organisations.

Hindemith summarised portions of the opera into a three-part symphony. On 12 March 1934 this Mathis-Symphony was performed in Berlin with sensational success by the Berlin Philharmonic under Wilhelm Furtwängler. In his innocence, Hindemith now believed that a positive clarification of his position in the “Third Reich” could be brought about. In November 1934 Furtwängler published an article in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung entitled “The Hindemith Case," in which he vehemently spoke out for Hindemith, claiming political freedom for art. Joseph Goebbels promptly reacted at the annual assembly of the Reich Chamber of Culture on 6 December 1934 at the Berlin Sports Palace. Without directly naming Hindemith, he branded him as an “atonal noise-maker” and proclaimed: “For National Socialism is not only the political and social conscience, but also the cultural conscious of the nation.” Hindemith was suspended from his post as teacher of composition at the Berlin Music Academy for an indefinite period of time. In order to escape the increasing slanders, Hindemith accepted an offer from the Turkish government to build up musical life in Turkey according to the European model. He travelled to Turkey four times between 1935 and 1937, beginning with the organisation of Turkish musical life. He was increasingly on the lookout for possibilities of working abroad.

The official ban on performing Hindemith’s music in Germany was announced in October 1936 after a performance of the 1935 Violin Sonata in E by the pianist Walter Gieseking and the violinist Georg Kulenkampff. Hindemith’s decision to leave Germany was now only a question of time.

On 22 March 1937, the day of his departure on his first trip to America, Hindemith handed in his resignation to the Music Academy. In September 1938 the Hindemiths moved to Switzerland, where they bought a small mountain house in the village of Bluche ob Sierre, in the upper Rhône valley.

After the Second World War broke out, the Hindemiths were increasingly concerned about their safety in Switzerland. Warned by friends, Hindemith left Europe in February 1940 in order to accept teaching offers in the USA at universities and colleges. His wife Gertrud followed him in September 1940.