The physical and political devastation of Germany in 1945 was compounded by a moral, spiritual, intellectual, and cultural devastation that, while particularly evident at war's end, had begun long before 1945. Germany's intellectual ruin was intensified by the loss of many of its major talents, who had left the country during the 1930s. The National Socialists' persecution of independent artists, writers, and scientists precipitated an intellectual exile that was unprecedented in human history. Germany lost thousands of its most talented and educated citizens, from writers like Bertolt Brecht and Anna Seghers to scientists like Albert Einstein. Peter Gay has rightly called the German exile “the greatest collection of transplanted intellect, talent, and scholarship the world has ever seen.”

How would Germans who had remained in Germany during the years of the Hitler dictatorship come to terms with the legacy and experiences of those who, unlike them, had fled Germany during the Nazi years — emigrants despised and vilified by the National Socialists, deprived of their German citizenship, and cut off from the linguistic and popular roots of their national culture? In the aftermath of the Nazi dictatorship, this was surely one of the most important questions facing the citizens of the defeated nation. Moreover, how was Germany to recover from such a tremendous loss of talent and intellect? Perhaps even more troubling, what was the real meaning of a much-used — and abused — phrase like “German culture” in a context defined by the absence of so many of Germany's most famous cultural figures from Germany itself?