During the time when Meyer was acting director, a number of prominent scientists worked at the institute, including George de Hevesy, Victor Francis Hess and Friedrich Paneth. With the Anschluss Österreichs in 1938, the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, Meyer as a Jew had to leave office. He requested retirement before he was forced out of the institute. He stayed in his house in the countryside of Austria and, because of the intervention of several people, was left unharmed for the rest of the war. His older brother Hans Leopold Meyer, a professor of chemistry, was less protected and was killed in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942. After the war, Meyer was rehabilitated and allowed to return to his Institute as director. Meyer died in Bad Ischl in 1949 and is buried in the Bad Ischl Friedhof.