On 29th July, Faßbender marries his wife Anna. One day after, they travel to Florence. In the annual report of the Villa Romana from 1936, Faßbender describes how difficult that year is for them. There is hardly any furniture when they arrive and the tile stoves do not work. The villa itself is not vacant yet, so they first live in the concierge's flat under the roof. Faßbender: "We soon knew the town as well as our Cologne. We spent as little money as possible. We often had some economic weeks with the patent remedy bean soup because painting materials were so expensive. The Credito Italiano told us very soon that our cash had almost finished. What should we do? Sell paintings? But nobody bought paintings. Nobody bought drawings. Nobody bought nothing. (…) The studio was cold in February. The old and worn-out tile stoves did not do their job. Misery. When the hands had turned blue, I curled up in bed. And when they were coloured again, I continued painting in my studio with the terrazzo floor. It did not have anything to do with the lifestyle of somebody who lives in a Villa".

In that time, he has a skull full sorrow about how to paint, as they do not have the money for the materials. Nobody wants to buy the paintings. And, retrospectively, he writes: Maybe I actually had been too young? Seewald had given me some good advice how to act. But stubborn as I was, I forgot them temporarily. He spends much time in the park Boboli, at the river Ema or he visits the Monte Morello and writes down notes: "It did not go well with my art. Everywhere, landscapes imposed". In April of 1930, the Faßbenders already return to Cologne. Due to the financial crisis and the consequent stagnation in art trade and exhibitions, their financial situation even deteriorates.

After his return Seewald provides him with a free studio in Amalienschlösschen that he has to leave the following year already because of the Nazis. In 1932, Faßbender writes: "Herr Hitler is shouting out his brown stuff from the pub at the exhibition centre". Then, he rents a studio apartment in Seyengasse in Cologne.

In the same year, Faßbender meets the poet Eugen Gottlob Winkler who commits suicide in 1936 for political reasons. Winkler dedicates him his essay "Über die Erkundung der Linie" (about the exploration of the line). In Faßbender's art, an increasing reduction of means appears now, as in the monotype "Portrait of Anna Faßbender" of 1932, about which Eugen Gottlob Winkler writes in his diary in 1934: "the simple defeat of such large surfaces, the great design with such little graphic effort".

Hann Trier remembers the studio in Seyengasse on a night with friends of the "Faßbender circle" on 3rd December 1938: In the studio hall, there was an approx. 1,20 m high bookshelf on one of the long walls, overloaded with old books and works with illustrations. From the drawers next to it, hundreds of photos poured out, which Faßbender had kept for some reason. (…) Sometimes, somebody liked one of the photos without stating what was good about it. (…). The term "precise" was of high priority in the judgement, by which a photographer may think of a good exposure or another one of the image section. But for Faßbender, it was the gradient of black, white and grey nuances. (…) Through the opposite window, one could see the façade of the Rhenus navigation company on which we sometimes projected skeletons and other scary things with an epidiascope in order to scare passengers. That night, the epidiascope was neatly removed as was the easel and it was standing in a corner.

An artist circle formed in the studio in Seyengasse. By then, they are still making jokes about Hitler and the Nazis, like with a twice exposed photo that shows the friends with a Hitler moustache. The artists were convinced that they could escape from politics and consider art an immune place. In 1935, Faßbenders works are exhibited in the print room of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum. The paper works, which he sends in 1936 to the exhibition of the German artist association, do not return. Modern art is considered degenerate and as a cultural document of Bolshevism and Jewish subversion.

On 6th June 1937, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels orders to confiscate numerous works of the modern department of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, among them works by Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, Paul Gaugin, Vincent Van Gogh, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Oskar Kokoschka and Otto Dix. Those works are shown in the Degenerate Art exhibition as symbols for cultural decay. On the flyer of the exhibition, which teenagers were not allowed to see, was written: "Tortured canvas, mental rot, morbid dreamers, lunatics, bunglers". (Catalogue: "Resistance and Persecution in Cologne 1933-1945")

To earn his living, Fassbender accepts several functional graphic design jobs, including works for the medical faculty of the University of Cologne in the 1930s, for which he draws anatomical designs and disease patterns. He wrote down in 1958: "I would not have believed it, but even from doing that I got inspired for my artistic work".

1941-1946

During the war, Faßbender loses all his works, his library and parts of the studio furniture due to a fire (1941) and to a flooding in the cellar of the studio in Seyengasse (1942).

Hann Trier writes about that: "Soon after the war had broken out, I was separated from Faßbender because I was called up. Then, the unimaginable happened and he, the notorious civilian, became a soldier, too. He had to guard French prisoners of war. As he fraternized with them, some of them took advantage of his trust and escaped. He narrowly escaped court martial. (...) After that, he fell into British captivity while I had to serve in Pomerania. We did not meet again until spring 1946 in Bornheim near Bonn. (...) It was there and in Alfter where the Donnerstag-Gesellschaft started to act".

In June 1941, Faßbender is called up by the Wehrmacht (unified armed forces during the Nazi regime). He is stationed as a rifleman in the Ruhr region. In 1943, he is ordered to go to France, where he reads the philosophical essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe about the meaning of the absurd which Albert Camus wrote in 1942. For Camus, the human finds himself in an absurd situation. The absurdity lies in the tension between the absurdity of the world on the one hand and the longing of the human for a purpose and meaningful action on the other hand. According to Camus, there are three successive stages of dealing with the absurd: acknowledging it, accepting it and ultimately revolting against it. Only by revolting against the absurd, the "absurd human being" can find freedom. In this, he resembles the mythological figure of Sisyphus and the constant absurdity of his actions. Camus: "It is the secret joy of Sisyphus. His fate belongs to him, his rock is his business. And further: the absurd human says yes, and the effort does not stop anymore. (...) Fighting against summits may fill a human's heart. We have to imagine Sisyphus as a happy person".

Faßbender is that impressed by the text that he sends it to his friend Hann Trier in 1944. He produces several works and calls them "Sisyphus" and "The Rock".

In November 1944, Faßbender is captured by the English. There, it is noticed that his right eye lens has dimmed, but they do not operate on him. When his right eye is going blind, he is repatriated because of his illness in 1946 and goes to Bornheim, where Anna Faßbender already found shelter in 1944. The apartment and the studio in Cologne have been destroyed by the bombs.

Interrupted Modernism

The A-Werk (A-work) is a word Faßbender created in his time in Alfter, which he perceived as asylum of the bombs, and it stands therefore for Alfter, asylum, as well as perhaps exemplarily for "Anfang und Neubeginn" (beginning and restart). When they meet, the artists discuss about art, but also about literature and philosophy. Eduard Trier wrote down in his diary in 1948: In the foothills, people talked about the French existentialists, and additionally about Heidegger's "Being and Time". Heidegger and Ortega y Gasset were discussed in the philosophic workshop of Meunier. Faßbender and Trier often participated. As there are no transport facilities, they have to walk over from Bornheim. Schnitzler wrote in his diary, which was found in the property of Eduard Trier: It was a one hour walk from Faßbender's home to the castle of Alfter. When the Donnerstag-Gesellschaft was supposed to be founded as an association, Faßbender and the other artists were sceptical at first. But as the Thursday's heads, as he says, are burnt children either, he participates too, and writes down: Alfter was now pirate domicile.

On the Day of Abstract Art on 20th July 1947, Faßbender makes the introductory lecture before the opening of the exhibition. The artist, who in 1947 was already 43 years old, speaks about the illustrating power of the artist, which always aspires to make the methods of the contradictory visible, the introverted world of the own ego and the extroverted of the outside world. Particularly the exploration of the inner world would be reserved to his time and to abstract painting. He points out that the pictures shown have more inside than what can be seen at first glance. But the power of the active eye has brought that what has already been seen into new contexts. (...) Finally, the once finished work is, therefore, not only itself, but also the carrier of a formal or coloured principle, which itself initiates the birth of a chain of new works. It was not necessary that the imagination of the viewer matched with image titles or his own imagination.

For the performance of "The Flies" on 15th February 1948, Faßbender, Hann Trier and Hubert Berke make 60 glass etchings, which are projected with an epidiascope to the wall behind the actors. Hann Trier remembers in an interview from 1989: The small glass plates had the format 8,1 x 10 cm and the motifs were scratched into the glass which had been blackened with smut or ink. The motifs that was most often used were flies that symbolized the curse of Orestes. Occasionally, they projected a big head of Hitler whose right eye showed Stalin. For the lecture, that is performed twice that day, Faßbender, Berke and Trier offer a portfolio with woodcuts in an edition of 200 for purchase. An important work from that year is the monotype "Elektras Tanz" (Electra's Dance). The demonic figure of Electra is resolved into geometric shapes. Due to the currency reform that occurred in the same year the Donnerstag-Gesellschaft breaks up and the members move back to the cities.