History of Science and Technology Colloquium

During the 1930s a huge number of scholars and intellectuals have been forced to leave their countries of origin due to the takeover of the power by the Nazi party, first in Germany, later on in several other European countries. This well known migration, labelled as "Cultural Exodus", "The Muses Flee Hitler", etc., has been covered intensely over the last half century but no one did a comparison between these scholars who left ("émigrés") and those who didn’t ("homeguards", using a phrase of E.C. Hughes). Following Karl Mannheim’s concept of "generational units" the paper presents such a comparison, using biographical data of some 800 German and Austrian social scientists. The paper presents bivariate and multivariate analyses about social, religious and ethnic background, career developments at home and abroad and compares the reputation of the two groups.