With his Interregnum portfolio, three years after his permanent emigration to the US in early 1933, the painter and illustrator George Grosz published his last works that were directly connected to his political works in the Weimar Republic. In the portfolio, Grosz included drawings made between 1928 and 1935. With the title Interregnum, the painter indicated that he understood the interwar period as precisely that: a transition to the next, catastrophic war.

In the portfolio, Grosz collected works that characterised the time. Christus mit der Gasmaske, which he had published in 1927 under the title Maul halten und weiter dienen [Shut up and keep serving the cause], garnered him and his publisher Wieland Herzfelde blasphemy charges.

On sheets 4 and 62 of Interregnum, Grosz portrays himself as a wanderer through a desolate, marshy landscape. Sheet 5, The voice of reason (Die Stimme der Vernunft), can also be regarded as a self-portrait: The artist battles with blunt weapons against the dominating force of National Socialism. Grosz dedicated several sheets in the portfolio to the arrest and murder of Erich Mühsam. Grosz strikingly depicts the arrest of Mühsam on sheet 45 A writer is he? (Schriftsteller, was?).

The portfolio was a flop; critics thought the work lacked the punch of Grosz' works from his Berlin period and his style of drawing did not appeal to the American public.