Adolf Noetzel was a commercial artist by profession, but his passion was painting. During a reading of "Letters from Rosa Luxemburg", the Noetzels met Anneliese and André Hoevel, with whom they joined forces to resist the Nazi regime after 1933.

Due to the incipient terror of the National Socialists and their critical assessment of current political developments, the Noetzels joined the KPD in the early 1930s. On March 4, 1933, the police searched Adolf Noetzel's office in the department store of the Jewish owner Adolf Blumenthal for communist leaflets and took him and other KPD members into "protective custody" at police headquarters. They forced their release through a joint hunger strike.

Shortly afterwards, however, Adolf Noetzel was deported to the Sonnenburg concentration camp, where he remained until November 13, 1933. His wife, Anneliese Hoevel and other female members of the KPD from Wiesbaden were transferred to the women's concentration camp in Moringen. After the so-called re-education stay, the returned Margarethe Noetzel and her husband were able to lead a "persecution-free" life for almost a year. However, Adolf Noetzel was not allowed to exhibit his paintings. Following the betrayal of an informer, he was arrested again on November 11, 1934. Eight days earlier, he had become the father of a daughter.

Despite further arrests in the following years, the Noetzel couple intensified their efforts against the regime, especially during the war. Eventually they were denounced by the Wiesbaden Gestapo informer Lutz Mohr. In 1941, Adolf Noetzel was sentenced to death for high treason, Margarethe Noetzel to six years in prison. Adolf Noetzel was found dead in his cell before his execution. His wife was only released at the end of the war and lived with their daughter in Wiesbaden.

In 1953, the daughter received her father's confiscated paintings back in France. Since the post-war period, Adolf Noetzel has been regarded as an important Wiesbaden painter.