On the political front Przywara preached against the Nazis, viewing the Nazi regime as a "distortion of the Christian imperium of the past." For example, in 1933 on the eve of the seizure of power, he argued in a significant public lecture in Berlin that Christianity and Nazism, with their competing understandings of "Reich," are ultimately incompatible. In 1934, in the spirit of the Barmen declaration, he published an article in which he repudiated the notion of a "people’s church" or "Volkskirche", writing that Christians belong ultimately not to any particular people, German or otherwise, but to Christ. In 1935, during a public lecture in Munich, he was interrupted, jeered, and egged by the Hitler Youth for challenging their understanding of "heroism." From that point on it appears that the Gestapo began to keep tabs on Przywara, leading to an anxious condition from which he never fully recovered. Przywara's anxieties turned out to be well founded. From December 1935 to March 1936, the Gestapo suppressed his editorial office in the Veterinärstrasse; it continued to be under surveillance until it was shut down permanently in 1941.