As promised, Straube was home by March 15. Observing him in proximity, Ramin confided to Raasted that he had “very much recuperated physically in Italy, but emotionally he is still completely broken. One notices nothing for a time, but then suddenly he completely breaks down.” Such encounters over spring 1924 must have disturbed those accustomed to the cantor's typically self-possessed demeanor. But Straube persisted. “Solace is still out of reach,” he told the publisher Anton Kippenberg. “Perhaps the only thing that can save me is work.” His old instincts were emerging again, prompting him to plunge back into the complex network of his commitments. Even while in the Tyrol, he had tried to distract himself with matters beyond family. To Hinrichsen he could not help but lament the ceding of the region to Italy when the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dissolved under the Treaty of St. Germain. “The political loss of the South Tyrol is great,” he had remarked, “because the German spirit's actual potential for influence has been pushed back to Innsbruck. There stands the last post of German essence.” In the years following, concerns over those “posts” would continue to color Straube's politics.

In the meantime he preferred to focus on work. Plans for the American tour had been dropped during Elisabet's final illness, but this had not left an appreciable vacuum in an imposing schedule. There were ceaseless rehearsals, concerts, and liturgies. There were preparations for the 1924 tour that would return the choir to Denmark. There was his ongoing work as adviser to publishing programs. And he had not abandoned his role as an editor. Like Schreck before him, Straube had been engaged by Breitkopf to edit a series of German choral pieces under the heading Ausgewählte Gesänge des Thomanerchores, including works by Schütz and other historical figures, but now also Arnold Mendelssohn. At latest by 1922 he was working on what he called “the second volume of the Alte Meister” for Peters, a project that would coalesce in 1929 as Alte Meister Neue Folge, a two-volume expansion and reconceptualization of the 1904 namesake collection. By early 1925 Hinrichsen was breathing down his neck to finish his comprehensive edition of the Bach organ works, the colossal task languishing in his inbox since 1907.