In June 1935, Alfred Neumeyer was excluded from the Reich Literature Chamber because of his Jewish ancestry. The Nazis had already tried to frustrate his promising initial success as an author. As a university lecturer in art history, Neumeyer saw no other way but to leave Berlin and go into exile in California.

On Christmas Eve 1945, ten years after this critical turning point for him and his family, he dedicated to his wife a poem he titled Magie. Neumeyer wrote it in German, their common language, despite both of them having lived a long time in the United States. He describes in the poem’s 16 lines the magical atmosphere of a moonlit night, the interplay of light and space, made visible with the “berry red on the bush” and other vegetation.

Neumeyer did not publish a great number of poems. In 1925 an anthology of his poems was published by Lambert Schneider entitled Ausrast und Wanderschaft. In the anthology the author sorted his poems under the headings landscapes, people and masters. In the latter section, Neumeyer’s closeness to the visual arts and their history is always clear, such as in the poems on Hans von Marées or Paula Modersohn. In his American exile from 1935 onwards, he worked and was thus regarded mainly as an art historian. Magie, the poem dedicated to his wife, shows that he continued writing poetry in private.