To date, the research agenda of emigration studies has been dominated by the study of professionally successful academic refugees and their intellectual contributions to their host countries. Following this trend, research on German-speaking émigré historians in the United States after 1933 has centered on well-known historians who published extensively and held prestigious academic positions. About fifteen refugee historians have become household names to members of the American and German historical professions. Hajo Holborn, Felix Gilbert, and Hans Rosenberg, to name but a few of the most notable refugee historians, have been celebrated with Festschriften, academic honors, media interviews, and serious analyses of their historical works.

Researchers' focus upon the famous refugees has in many cases allowed the literature on emigration to become a literature of celebration. Anthony Heilbut's Exiled in Paradise is exclusively concerned with the brilliant and colorful émigrés whose names are virtually synonymous with the 1933 wave of emigration; not surprisingly, pictures of Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and Bertolt Brecht grace the cover of his book. Lewis Coser, in his book Refugee Scholars in America. has short biographies of some fifty outstanding refugee scholars. Included are four of the best-known refugee historians: Hajo Holborn, Felix Gilbert, Hans Rosenberg, and Paul Oskar Kristeller. Coser also writes on two economic historians: Alexander Gerschenkron and Fritz Redlich.