Richard Dehmel's artistic legacy, creating a "Dehmel Foundation" and a "Dehmel Association", which received support from leading fellow citizens including the mayor, Werner von Melle. Weimar years Ida Dehmel's long widowhood began three weeks after her fiftieth birthday. With financial backing from the "Dehmel Foundation" and "Dehmel Association" she now worked intensively on collating and editing her late husband's unpublished work, publishing a two volume compilation of a selection of his letters in 1926. That year she entered into a deal with the municipality and Hamburg University Library which involved selling Richard's literary archive to them, while for the time being retaining possession of the papers at what was by now known as the "Dehmel House", where she could readily access them. Despite the many difficulties she experienced with the authorities after 1933, arrangements concerning her late husband's papers survived till 1939 when, with the outbreak of war, they were physically transferred to the library buildings for security reasons. By 1920 much of the home that Ida and Richard had created resembled a well curated museum of contemporary art, in which Ida Dehmel staged a succession of events, arranged according to a range of social, artistic and charitable objectives. There were costume displays, flower festivals, temporary bazaars and exhibitions. She was able to apply and build on the skills and aptitudes she had developed as an arts backer and hostess back in Berlin during the 1890s. Her particular focus was on women's clubs and arts associations. This was the context in which in 1926 she set up the League of female artists associations of all genres ("Gemeinschaft Deutscher und Oesterreichischer Künstlerinnenvereine aller Kunstgattungen" / now known as "GEDOK"). By 1933 the organisation, which she led, had grown to 7,000 members. 1933 would be the year in which 5,000 of those members resigned, however. Nazi years In January 1933 the Nazis took power and lost little time in transforming Germany into a one-party dictatorship. The party's popular support was built on the traditional populist themes of hope and hatred. The principal focus of their hatred was split between the Communists and the Jews. Ida Dehmel was no communist, but she was Jewish. On 20 April 1933 Nazi paramilitaries broke into the meeting room at the Hamburger Hof (hotel) where Dehmel was presiding over the monthly GEDOK meeting: they demanded her resignation. Three weeks later, because of her Jewish provenance, she did