At 26, Konrad Merz had already worked many jobs since the death of his father forced him to fend for himself. He worked as a helper, an apprentice, a salesman, an agent and an extra at the Berlin State Opera before he finished his education at night school and entered university.  

With the ascension of the Nazis to power, Konrad Merz saw his academic education ended just as it was getting started when he was ex-matriculated for reasons of race. After escaping to Holland in 1934 he was forced to start over again. He took a job at a farm in Ilpendam in northern Holland working in the cow stalls, fields and gardens. In his first autobiographic novel Ein Mensch fällt aus Deutschland (A German Gone Missing) published in 1936, he described in detail the demanding physical labor he had to perform without complaint despite a wounded leg. “Whether we bleed in exile or in our own country, every drop is seed. It will be seed. That, we believe. We are dung. Only dung. But we are that!”

After a few months, Merz was able to leave the farm. He moved to Amsterdam, his first book was published and he wrote for several newspapers. However, after Holland was occupied by German troops, he ignored deportation orders, went into hiding and returned to Ilpendam. The widow of the gardener at the farm was willing to hide him in her attic. Konrad Merz spent most of the next three years hidden there in a linen cupboard.