Conclusion

Summary

In 1959, philosopher Karl Löwith offered these reflections on his experiences as a refugee and on his homecoming:

After an absence of eighteen years I returned to Germany in 1952 and found that, despite all that had happened in the meantime, the situation in the universities was remarkably unchanged. Only later did I realize how little the emigration to a foreign country, the experience with other ways of thought, the destiny of history itself could change the character of an adult or of a nation. To be sure, one learned something and could not view the remains of old Europe as if one had never left. But one did not become a different person, even though one did not simply stay the same; one became what one is and within the limits of what one can be.

To what extent does Löwith's assessment hold true for the refugees to whom this book is devoted and to the historical profession to which some of them returned?

The first thing to be said about this question is that it has no single answer. As many of the preceding essays have shown, the character and fate of the refugees, their experience in America, and their relationship to Germany were all extremely diverse. A man like Hans Rothfels, probably the best-established of the refugees before 1933, stayed in Germany as long as he could and returned as soon as possible. His address to the meeting of German historians in 1949, which is described in Winfried Schulze's essay, was an expression of continuity rather than conversion. Rothfels was, as Schulze put it, “at home again.” Few other refugees found it so easy to go home again.