The beginning of the Nazi regime in 1933 raised the immediate possibility that Jewish students might be banned from receiving degrees. Kitzinger accordingly completed his dissertation, a brief but influential study of Roman painting in the 7th and 8th centuries, with exceptional speed, and defended it in the fall of 1934.
In 1933, when the Nazi regime began, there was a chance that Jewish students might be denied their degrees. Kitzinger thus finished his dissertation, a concise yet significant examination of Roman painting from the 7th to the 8th centuries, at an accelerated pace, and presented it in the fall of 1934.