There is a view that Kahnweiler's sensibility was such that his gallery, and the way he styled and developed it, was as much a Cubist gallery as were the paintings by Picasso and the other Cubist painters. The gallery had a clear aesthetic position, uncompromising integrity, financial stability and creative development. During the years 1907-1914 his gallery was a central cradle for Cubism, not only to display the works, but where one also met the artists. Concurrently, the primary means for avant-garde painters and sculptors to show their works to a wider audience remained the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d'Automne. Kahnweiler forbade his 'gallery Cubists' from exhibiting at these major Salons, and by so doing, actually removed them from public view. From the viewpoint of the general public, Cubism came to be more associated with the 'Salon Cubists', such as Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Fernand Léger, Robert Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier, Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 not only ruptured the Cubist experiments in art, but also forced Kahnweiler to live in exile in Switzerland; due to his German citizenship, he was considered an alien under French law. Many German nationals living in France had their possessions sequestered by the French state, and as a result, Kahnweiler's collection was confiscated in 1914 and sold by the government in a series of auctions at the Hôtel Drouot between 1921 and 1923. During the years of exile (until 1920), Kahnweiler studied and wrote works such as the "Der Weg Zum Kubismus" and "Confessions esthétiques". Writing becoming a passion he continued over his lifetime, and he authored hundreds of books and major articles. The second period of enforced writing came during a period of internal exile caused by the events of World War II. As a Jew, the Nazis forced him to flee Paris. He remained in France, in hiding. "Under the clouds from the gas chambers," as he put it in his seminal work on Juan Gris. Kahnweiler was very prolific as an author, but never produced a full autobiography. There was, however, a series of interviews first aired on French television, then published and translated as a book under the title "Mes galleries et mes peintres" ("my galleries and my painters".