From the Brittanica Book of the Year 1968, p376:
Another in a series of legislative measures designed to establish the separate statehood of East Germany was passed by the People’s Chamber on February 21. The new law created a separate citizenship, superseding the Reich and State Citizenship Law of 1913, which until then had remained valid for both East and West Germany.
The continuity of German law – from Empire to today’s modern German state, World War I, Weimar Republic, Nazism, World War II, complete collapse of society, the Cold War, German reunification – has both fascinated and astounded me. How is it that today’s Germany is the internationally recognized successor of the German Empire? How is it that laws enacted during WIlhelm II‘s reign remain valid?
My initial, naive assumption was that defeat in both World Wars led to new constitutions, new laws, everything back on the table. However, invalidating all laws would lead to complete chaos in the interregnum between government collapse, creation of something new, and re-establishment of the rule of law. So laws must be maintained, but I would have expected something as fundamental as citizenship to be reviewed, updated, replaced at some point.
From 1933 through the 1945, Nazi leadership plundered art, first from Jews within Germany and then throughout conquered Europe. In 1998, the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets is the first internationally-backed attempt at returning the art back to its rightful owners, such as the story Gustav Klimt‘s Portrait of Adele Block-Bauer I portrayed in the movie Woman In Gold. However, restitution is only for individuals: attempts to return art removed (plundered) from German museums is hindered (blocked) by a Nazi-era law still in effect, many re-discovered in Gurlitt’s apartment.
Many laws on the books in the United States were enacted decades, even centuries, ago under much different circumstances but which are still legally binding and can be used as precedence for whatever action. The major difference is the United States constitution, laws, rules and processes run in a straight line from the Founding Fathers. How some of those German laws remain in effect without attempts to rectify for the modern world still surprises me.
