One of the first to flee Germany for political reasons after the National Socialists came to power was the architect Richard Paulick, who moved to Shanghai at the beginning of June 1933, at the invitation of his former fellow student Rudolf Hamburger, with whom he had studied under Hans Poelzig in Berlin. After 17 years in exile, he returned to East Berlin in 1950. During his time in Shanghai, Richard Paulick became an important contact person who, during the first phase of his exile, met with politically like-minded people, as well as with the German community. During the second phase, towards the end of the thirties until after the end of the war, he worked within the circle of Jewish emigrants. From the early 1940s until his return, he collaborated with Chinese colleagues on important urban planning issues in Shanghai.

In the beginning Paulick worked as an interior designer at The Modern Home, a company owned by his friend Rudolf Hamburger. In November 1933 his brother Rudolf, who had been trained at the Bauhaus in Dessau, also arrived in Shanghai. The brothers later founded their own companies with other partners: Modern Homes, at the end of 1936; Paulick & Paulick Architects & Engineers during the war; and Modern Textiles after the war.

In the mid-1930s, Richard Paulick met communist friends for discussions and training courses at the political magazine Voice of China. When American journalist Agnes Smedley moved from Shanghai to the USA in 1941, he took over her legendary library of banned political books. Secret meetings of communist refugees from Europe took place in his apartment during the war, with Alfred Dreifuß, Johannes König and Walter Czolleck, for example, taking part. They all returned to the GDR after the war. For the community of Jewish refugees, Paulick and his partners organised an exhibition of prints and originals by German painters in 1940, including those by Käthe Kollwitz, Max Pechstein, Max Liebermann, Max Slevogel and Lovis Corinth, which were shown in the Modern Homes shop.

Richard Paulick worked as a set designer for the Deutscher Theater Verein, which had been forced into line since the Nazis came to power, on at least eight productions up until 1939. Between 1940 and 1946 he designed at least seven sets for the Jewish theatre in exile and, from 1947 until his return, worked with the British Amateur Dramatic Club on at least five productions, though the number may actually have been ten.

From 1943 to 1949 Richard Paulick taught as a professor of interior design and urban planning at St. John’s University in Shanghai. Because of his expertise in urban planning, he was appointed after the war to the planning commission for urban planning in Greater Shanghai, which he also headed from 1948.

On 1 November 1945, a discussion group developed into the Gemeinschaft der demokratischen Deutschen (Association of Democratic Germans), which a short time later gave itself the English name Association of Refugees from Germany in Shanghai – China. The association supported the mainly Jewish refugees returning to Germany or emigrating to other countries. As a member of the board of directors, Richard Paulick supported the association’s aid organisation with “very substantial donations”, but also supported individuals. While 2,500 of the 7,000 people in the association wanted to return to Germany, by the end of 1948 only around 500 were able to do so. Of these, 244 went to the Western zones and 258 to the East.

While in exile in Shanghai, Paulick was associated with communist groups and with “normal” Germans, helped Jewish emigrants and supported their cultural activities, just as he collaborated with foreigners from other nations. In his professional work he trained China’s first urban planners and led the planning group for Greater Shanghai with its interdisciplinary strategies. In Shanghai, Paulick was a significant node in the network, connecting different milieus and using his positions to help others. After his return to the GDR in 1950, he was no longer able to engage in all these rich activities, because his stay in Shanghai was considered a “Western emigration” and therefore ideologically hostile.