I read the fascinating account of Princeton’s role in helping to bring refugees — particularly Jewish mathematicians — to this country during the 1930s. A few names of those neither Jewish nor mathematical do creep into the article, one example being that of Thomas Mann. I’m now wondering whether two men, neither Jewish nor mathematical, I think, who left an impression on me, also benefited from the work of the Committee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars. One was the great art historian Kurt Weitzmann, who left Germany in 1934 after refusing orders to join the Nazi Party, and another the medieval historian Theodor Ernst Mommsen, who left Germany in protest a year later. Weitzmann gave a wonderful course on medieval art that met at 7:40 in the morning, while Mommsen guided me, demandingly but gently, through a senior thesis on the rise of the Abbey of St.-Denis.

I still have the thesis — overwritten