Rose represented the Netherlands at the 1937 World Exposition in Paris and won a gold medal for the poster Amsterdam. (Fig.) In 1939, he designed the exhibition Der Zug for the Netherlands State Railways and in 1941, the trade fair stand for several food producers at the Utrecht Spring Fair. In 1941, he worked as a film architect on the UFA-produced film Rembrandt.

In 1942, as an émigré in the Netherlands, Rose was forcibly drafted into military service. After the war, he found himself in captivity as a prisoner of first the French, then the Americans. He first returned to Germany in 1948. After much deliberation, Hajo Rose finally moved to Dresden, taking up an invitation from the architect Mart Stam, formerly a visiting lecturer at the Bauhaus. In Dresden, Stam was working on reviving the Bauhaus idea, and with the designer Marianne Brandt, a small Bauhaus cell formed. Rose was able to resume his career in the GDR. From 1949 to 1953, he taught at Dresden University of Fine Arts, lecturing in advertising art and typography. Following the closure of his department in Dresden in 1953, Rose relocated to the Fachschule für angewandte Kunst Leipzig (School of Applied Art Leipzig) and taught there over the following five years. Because the school administration repeatedly criticised his Bauhaus-influenced teaching methods, he eventually left the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), thus providing grounds for his dismissal. As a result, he was banned from teaching in the GDR. Over the following years, Rose was active as a freelancer. His work was shown in numerous exhibitions, especially from the 1970s onwards. Hajo Rose died in Leipzig on 10 September 1989.

Hajo Rose and the Nieuwe Kunstschool Amsterdam