At the end of February the Reichstag fire was instantly blamed on the Communists, and in March 1933 those identified as Communists began to be arrested. During 1933 Margarete Wittkowski emigrated to Switzerland, where she enrolled at Basel University and worked on her doctorate dissertation. She passed the oral element of her doctoral exam, for which she was supervised by Edgar Salin [de] and Herman Schmalenbach, in February 1934, for work concerning the relationships between the big banks in Berlin and German industry.[1] Some sources indicate that she received her doctorate in 1934.[2]