In 1931 or 1932 Strempel's controversial Painting "Blessed are the Poor in Spirit" ("Selig sind die geistig Armen") was removed by exhibition organisers from the annual Berlin Arts exhibition. Then the NSDAP (German Nazi Party) took power, in January 1933, and lost little time in implementing their one-party state strategy. As far as the German Communist Party was concerned this involved expropriating the party assets on 26 May 1933 and embarking on a systematic campaign of arresting or (less frequently) murdering Communist Party members. Strempel was not arrested, but in the middle of 1933 he decided to join the thousands of German communist party members who emigrated to Paris, where he had already lived for two years in 1929-1931 while studying at the École des Beaux-Arts.
