Till 1939, when she moved house, Elisabeth Hattemer was living at an address in the Hermann Street ("Hermannstraße 43") which also accommodated the secretariat, the Children's Welfare office of the Darmstadt branch of the , and its children's day-care center. Shortly before the outbreak of war the Nazi authorities, who always nurtured suspicions of any community involvement by "proxies" for the Roman Catholic Church, closed down the day-care center. A few years later, the failed assassination attempt against Hitler in July 1944 failed in its primary objective, but was highly effective in unnerving the government, which promptly dusted down a long list of people who had been politically active as non-Nazis before 1933. It turned out that many names on the list belonged to people who had fled abroad or died. Nevertheless, on the night of 22/23 August mass arrests took place across Germany. Elisabeth Hattemer's name was on the list and an attempt was made to arrest her. However, possibly aware of what was about to happen, she had taken the opportunity to move to live with her son in nearby Viernheim, which was sufficient to preserve her from arrest. After the war ended, in 1945, she continued to support her son with his youth work, and renewed her involvement with the .