The advent of Thomaskantor Ramin had come without much fanfare, and under the cloud of his venerable predecessor's abrupt withdrawal. Like Straube, Ramin had been allowed to retain his Conservatory responsibilities, and Mayor Freyberg had committed to advocate for his succession as CMI director once Straube decided to step back. Concerning the Gewandhaus Chorus, he would take over completely once Abendroth's contract expired in April 1943, thus reuniting what had been divided when Straube had given up the choir in 1933. For the moment he was allowed to retain leadership of the Berlin Philharmonic Chorus. Furthermore he had negotiated an extra thirty days of vacation for “artistic activity outside Leipzig and the implementation of ten concerts per year,” and he renewed permission for the Thomanerchor's annual tour. In ordinary times one might have imagined a bright future for a new cantor set up for success.

But these were no ordinary times. Although Ramin long had served St. Thomas as organist, the withered relationship with Straube had distanced him from the choir in recent years, yielding an atmosphere more charged with uncertainty and mistrust than had been the case at the last changing of the guard in 1918. This would have to be overcome. Then there was the new organist Heintze, called to military service in April 1940 to leave a critical post unoccupied. Ramin, as ever more energetic than strategic, evidently concluded that it was easier to do the job himself and sprang in to carry out cantor and organist duties in tandem. Further, the question of who should lead the Gewandhaus Chorus had ballooned into an intractable dilemma that turned on the personalities of Ramin and Abendroth in the first place, alongside the opposed intentions of the Gewandhaus and Chorus boards. Although Ramin was to assume these duties unequivocally after spring 1943, the fraught matter of shared power in the interim had arisen amid negotiations leading to his appointment as cantor.

There were even more pressing difficulties, namely in the form of intensifying efforts to secularize and thus politicize the Thomasschule, and by extension the Thomanerchor. Two distinct but interlocking avenues emerged toward this objective.