Many reports about the people who helped or failed to help Robert and Martha when they were in exile in Switzerland, from the Anschluss in 1938 until Robert’s death in 1942, note that they were difficult to help for a few reasons: 1. Robert’s health and his extreme sensitivity to noise and disturbances of his work meant they required two rooms and quiet and calm, 2. They did not fit well into the two categories usually marked off to receive aid, i.e. politically engaged emigrants, who had vociferously and actively agitated against the Nazi regime, or Jews.
Now Musil, whose books were banned by the Nazis and who had given a speech about stupidity and brutality that was considered heroic and thrilling before the Anschluss, was certainly not liked by the Nazis, but he had not been as vocally critical as some others. But what about the second criterion? Martha was Jewish, but it seems that they thought it wiser to try to hide this fact from both the German Reich, with whom Musil was trying vainly to regain the rights to his books seized by the Kommissariat after the Anschluss, and the Swiss government in delicate negotiations to extend and maintain their permission to stay in Switzerland. A lawyer whom he consulted in Zurich had counseled him to avoid mention of his connections with or involvements in Left-wing organizations such as the writer’s organization he had been chair of in Vienna or its current iteration in France (he had been invited to stay by this organization with tied to noted Communists like Egon Kisch, at a villa near Nice, but turned the offer down. In part because of the expectation of chaos and disturbance to his writing regime, but also perhaps in response to the advice of the lawyer).
They apparently hoped that Martha’s years of living in Italy, and her repeated conversions (to marry Enrico Marcovaldi and then to divorce him), would confuse matters enough to hide her Jewishness. There is only one mention of her being Jewish that I have found in a letter from Robert attempting to get help from aid organizations. Perhaps revealing it would have helped them get the aid they sorely needed, but it seems that there was also the well-grounded fear that Swiss authorities who were sympathetic with the Nazis would take advantage of the information to deny them residency. Or, worse, that the Nazis would eventually disregard Swiss neutrality and invade.