ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the development of scientific research on exile and emigration during the Hitler era which corresponds with changing aspects of political culture in Germany. Three major steps can be differentiated: (1) The 1950s and 1960s can be described as the years of silence since exile and emigration were anathema. Following the upheaval of the “student movement” research started in the 1970s as a declared political project which concentrated both on the exile of politicians and of the prominent writers and artists. (2) Only in the 1980s and later professional research was established which was financed by national research organisations and concentrated mainly on the emigration of scientists and scholars, stressing their impact on the host countries and the international arena. (3) The period since 2000 is characterized both by methodological pluralism and by opening up new aspects of exile culture as demonstrated by the ongoing research on France as the “locus classicus” of exile.
