In 1932 German intellectual life was the best in the world. The country had won a third of all Nobel Prizes since 1901. Then came Hitler, and soon Einstein was at Princeton, Hannah Arendt in New York, Bertolt Brecht in Hollywood, Walter Gropius at Harvard etc. Britain is still profiting from that same exodus: the writer Judith Kerr and architect Richard Rogers were refugees from fascism, as were Lucian Freud, Eric Hobsbawm, Ernst Gombrich and countless others before them. Today the dominance of English helps sustain the US and UK as the two intellectual superpowers. Eight of the world’s top 10 universities in the Shanghai rankings are American; two are Oxbridge.
1932年，德國知識界是全球首屈一指的。這個國家贏得了1901年以來三分之一的諾貝兒獎(Nobel Prize)。然後希特勒(Hitler)上臺，很快愛因斯坦(Einstein)前往普林斯頓(Princeton)，漢娜•鄂蘭(Hannah Arendt)到了紐約，貝兒托特•布萊希特(Bertolt Brecht)去了好萊塢，沃爾特•格羅皮烏斯(Walter Gropius)去了哈佛(Harvard)，不一而足。英國至今仍從這場大出走中受益：作家朱迪絲•克爾(Judith Kerr)和建築師理察•羅傑斯((Richard Rogers)都曾是逃離法西斯的難民，還有盧西恩•佛洛伊德(Lucian Freud)、艾瑞克•霍布斯鮑姆(Eric Hobsbawm)、恩斯特•貢布里希(Ernst Gombrich)以及他們之前的無數人。