In 1933, shortly after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service was passed, which resulted in resignations and emigrations of many Jewish physicists, one of them was James Franck, who was director of the Second Physics Institute at the University of Göttingen. In 1935, an ordinance related to the Civil Services act, the Law on the Retirement and Transfer of Professors as a Result of the Reorganization of the German System of Higher Education, was used to forcibly transfer Joos to Göttingen to fill Frank's position as ordinarius professor and director of the Second Physics Institute.