Excuse me, my dear ladies and dear gentlemen, for expressing my emotion, which I did not anticipate and which has caught me by surprise. After an absence of twenty years, I am once again able to address a gathering of people who think about the same problems as I do, who are stimulated by the same passion as I am. I come from a country where, merely for saying aloud what he thought, a man could be deprived of the very meaning of his life, since for a man of science the meaning of his life is nothing else but his science . . .

Members of the Architects' Collaborative cling on to modern art outside their Harvard Graduate Center, 1949. Gropius' feet are closest to the ground. (Source: Andrew Saint, The Image of the Architect.)