Persecution of Jews under the Nazis was ramped up in stages. The Nuremburg laws - bans on intermarriage, restrictions on employment, denial of citizenship, bans on voting or holding public office, etc - were introduced in 1935. They created a very unpleasant climate, but wouldn’t have directly affected visitors to Germany, even Jewish visitors, except in very unusual circumstances. From the mid-30s the Jewish visitor would see things like “Jews Unwelcome” signs in public places, and would have been wise not to object to or complain about this. At the same time, there was little practical enforcement of these restrictions.
It wasn’t until after Kristallnacht, in 1938, that more swingeing measures came in, with Jews being officially banned from public schools, universities, theaters, cinemas, sports facilities, etc. These bans would have affected Jewish visitors to Germany (if, after Kristallnacht, there were any such). But they would not have been easily enforced; most foreign visitors, unlike Germans, did not carry identity cards or passports indicative of Jewish status. And of course visiting Jews, if identified as such, would have been as the same risk of street violence and thuggery as German Jews.
Do you know for a fact if visas even existed for ordinary people?
I cannot actually attest this, but what I have read was that before WWI, only diplomats and other VIPs had passports and ordinary people just crossed borders with no documentation. And between the wars, no passports were needed for travel anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. Then after WWII, this entire regime of passports for most travel and visas started being required. As recently as the 1990s only the most casual documentation (e.g. a driver’s licence, but my wife once witnessed someone use a credit card) was needed to cross between the US and Canada. Now everything is tightened up and you need a passport to cross. On the other hand, no ID is needed between most of the western EU countries (except UK) and it is even hard to find a border guard if you need one.
In 1933 and 1934 my parents (along with me at three years old), lived in Berlin and Hamburg. Dad was on a team building an oil refinery for the Germans.
I don’t remember too much about this time, but my neither one of my parents ever mentioned any problems or difficulties with any part of our stay - in fact they remembered it as a very pleasant experience.
Dad had been to Russia in 1929 on the same type of job, and came out of it with a burning hatred of the Communists which he never got over…
I’m surprised that any documentation was required. We used to go back and forth across the border routinely and all that was needed was to be polite to the guard when he asked you where you were born, i.e. he took your word for it.
Before the Great War, passports were not needed for travelling between most European countries, except Russia. However that changed radically; between the wars, passports were generally needed to cross European international borders. (There were conspicuous exceptions, e.g UK/Irish Free State, and I think Norway/Sweden/Denmark.) Frequently visas were also needed, though in most cases they were easily obtained on the spot.