Degenerate art
In Berlin, Käthe Schuftan and her younger sister Lotte were involved in underground activities of the SAP. In November 1933, she was detained and tortured by the SA at the former Volkshaus (People's House) in Berlin-Charlottenburg, and all the pictures in her flat were destroyed. In proceedings against 24 SAP members in late 1934, the Volksgerichtshof sentenced her to two years in prison (minus the time she had been on remand) for planning high treason, i.e. an overthrow of the government by violence. In 1937, Margot Riess described Käthe's works as expressing a "primarily tragic, accusing attitude towards the world, with all its stark misery, agony and hardship". In December 1933, some of her works had been included in a Breslau exhibition of what the Nazis considered "Degenerate art"; three of her watercolours and a drawing were confiscated from Breslau museums in September 1937. She left Berlin shortly before the outbreak of World War II.