Gurlitt's music was banned by the Nazis when they assumed power, but his presence in Berlin was tolerated as he undertook to bring his music in line with the aesthetics of the Third Reich. His mother Annarella tried to satisfy the Nazis of his non-Jewish heritage by certifying first that his Jewish paternal grandmother had converted to Protestantism and second that Gurlitt was not the son of Fritz Gurlitt, but of Willi Waldecker, the man Annarella married not long after Fritz died in 1893. Manfred Gurlitt was accepted as a member of the Nazi party on 1 May 1933. He was ejected from the party by court order on 3 May 1937. The court declared that Gurlitt was a "Jew of Mixed Race of the 2nd Order". German authorities frustrated his attempts to secure a teaching position in Japan for months, until he managed win readmission to the Reichsmusikkammer (State Music Institute) and proposed a trip abroad for "study, observation, and documentary" activities. He emigrated in April 1939 and arrived in Yokohama, Japan, with his third wife on 23 May. Japan was then an ally of Germany, both soon to become parties to the Axis Pact in September 1940.