alt Hacker NewsNevertheless, when it comes to top research, Germany has become a shadow of its former self. No way around it. This graph speaks volumes.
Prior to Nazism, Germans would collect as many science Nobel Prizes as the British, the French and the Americans together.
https://preview.redd.it/nobel-prizes-by-country-manually-upd...
While I agree with you that Germany doesn't have the intellectual prowess it once may have had, I don't think you can consider the Nobel prize a valid metric, personally. The Nobel prize has subverted itself many times over.
While German academia was rebuilding itself, American academia was chasing clout - one side effect being that the Nobel prize is more of a carnival attraction than an academic accomplishment.