By 1 April of that year, all persons and institutions involved in the arts were required to register, with the former being demanded to submit an Aryan certificate and the latter being compelled to align their regulations with those of the chamber.

Initially headed by Tobie Goedewaagen, the Nederlandsche Kultuurkamer was briefly led by Hermannus Reydon in February 1943 before Sebastiaan de Ranitz took office.

It had the legislated power to close shops, impose fines on artists who continued to work in public without registering, and ban books, music broadcasts, and visual arts.

Four days later, after the city of Rotterdam was heavily damaged in a series of bombings, the government capitulated to the Nazi regime and Germany assumed control.

[10] Nonetheless, resistance among artists was high, with a 1942 open letter initiated by the sculptor Gerrit van der Veen receiving hundreds of signatures.

[11] Goedewaagen led the Nederlandsche Kultuurkamer from its inception through 28 January 1943, when he was dismissed from the NSB for failure to report to a disciplinary committee after a conflict with Anton Mussert.

[14] By March the acting presidency had been taken by Sebastiaan de Ranitz,[15] a jurist who had headed the legal office at the Department of Public Information and the Arts.

[16] Reydon died of his wounds on 24 August of that year,[12][14] and de Ranitz remained the president of the organization until its dissolution;[17] the Parlementair Documentatie Centrum lists him as officially holding the role until May 1945, the month that the German regime capitulated.

This reverie, popularly known as Mad Tuesday, was premature;[19] the Allies' Operation Market Garden to secure bridges across the Meuse, Waal, and Rhine Rivers was unsuccessful, and only parts of the southern Netherlands were liberated by the end of the month.

[18] Sometime after Mad Tuesday, as many Nazis and collaborators fled the Netherlands for Germany,[19] de Ranitz left the national headquarters of the Nederlandsche Kultuurkamer for the Groningen regional office.

[21] Ultimately, however, the national headquarters at Van de Boschstraat 2 was destroyed on 3 March 1945, after the Royal Air Force bombed the nearby Bezuidenhout neighbourhood.

[22] Also in March 1945, the authorities in the liberated Netherlands announced that a special committee would be established under the Ministry of Education, Arts, and Science to assess the members of the Nederlandsche Kultuurkamer and their motivations.

[16][25] In scope, the Nederlandsche Kultuurkamer encompassed all areas related to the production, reproduction, processing, distribution, maintenance, marketing, and mediation of cultural property, except where exclusively commercial, administrative, or mechanical.

One member, De Telegraaf, published several pro-German articles during the war; consequently, after the liberation of the Netherlands in 1945, its publication was prohibited for thirty years, though this restriction was lifted in 1949.

[7] As Jewish artists were excluded, and in compliance with Nazi eugenic policies, potential candidates were required to submit an Aryan certificate to prove their racial purity.

The poet Adriaan Roland Holst, when urged to register, refused to complete his Aryan certificate and wrote that the institution's disapproval would be greatly appreciated.

[34] A colony at Oost Castle in Eijsden, led by Jopie and Teun Roosenburg, smuggled Jews out of the Netherlands while trading art for food.

When the Royal Harmonic of Maastricht refused to register with the chamber, arguing that it was "better to go down with honour than to continue to exist in doubt",[c] its assets – including its instruments and sheet music – were seized.