Fussenegger joined the Austrian – still at this stage formally separate from its German counterpart – in May 1933. Membership was still illegal in Austria. In May 1934 she participated in a demonstration in Innsbruck at which, it was reported, she had joined in singing of the Horst-Wessel song and gave a Hitler salute. She was charged, convicted and fined. According to one source she was also banned from further study at any Austrian university. In February 1935 she was still a member of another Austrian National Socialist student group, but later that year, in or before November, she relocated to Germany. In March 1938, following an invasion from the north that met with little practical resistance, Austria was incorporated into an German state, albeit under very different circumstances from those that most nineteenth century proponents of such a "solution" would have anticipated. Gertrud Fussenegger, who by now was probably living in Munich, "rejoined" the ruling National Socialist party: her membership number was 6,229,747, which is consistent with her having joined the party in 1938. For the avoidance of doubt, she also wrote a "hymn" eulogising Adolf Hitler. In 1938 the first newspaper to publish her poem "Stimme der Ostmark" (""Voice of the Ostmark"") was the Völkischer Beobachter ("Popular Observer"), the mass-circulation daily newspaper of the NSDAP.