In Berlin, he started working as an art critic and journalist for magazines Illustrierte Neuen Welt and later Die Linkskurve, which was a publication formed by a group of left-wing intellectuals.

[2][1] Nolit began publishing works by Jack London, Maxim Gorky, Erich Maria Remarque, Heinrich Mann, Sinclair Lewis, John Steinbeck, and Isaac Babel.

In Berlin in the early 1930s he witnessed the rise of German National Socialism, and in 1933 he moved to Paris, where he founded an Institute for the Study of Fascism with Arthur Koestler and Manès Sperber.

[1] His knowledge of German language and the fact that he mostly published his articles using pseudonyms have saved his life during internment, although his brother Pavle was arrested and shot by occupying forces immediately in the aftermath of the invasion.

After World War II ended Bihalji-Merin returned to Belgrade and remained to live in the same apartment in the city centre for the rest of his life.

[3] In the decades after the war he published a number of books promoting Yugoslav cultural heritage, especially on the topics of naïve homegrown artists like Ivan Generalić, the medieval Bosnian stećak tombstones[1] as well as abstract painters such as Vangel Naumoski.

He also published plays, travel writing and a memoir of his time in the Spanish Civil War, titled Spain Between Death and Birth (Španija između smrti i rađanja).