> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://hyperallergic.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Weekend Words: Law
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/weekend-words-law/
- Published: 2013-11-24T15:00:10.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:34:14.000Z
- Description: In Germany, it was revealed this week, a 1938 law is still on the books that legalized the Nazi seizure of thousands of “degenerate” artworks.
- Author: Weekend Editors
- Tags: Opinion, Weekend, Weekend Words, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 06:59 (2012, 2013, part 2)

![law](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/11/law.jpg)

Bernaert van Orley, “Romulus Gives Laws to the Roman People” (1524), pen and wash, 345 x 545 mm (Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich) (image via Web Gallery of Art)

“What is the law?” asks Charles Laughton as Dr. Moreau in *Island of Lost Souls* (1932).

In Germany, it was [revealed](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/20/arts/design/enduring-nazi-law-impedes-recovery-of-art.html?hpw&rref=arts&ref=hyperallergic.com) this week, a 1938 law is still on the books that legalized the Nazi seizure of thousands of “degenerate” artworks, including the entire Modernist collection — 800 works in all — of the Kunsthalle Mannheim.

This law will make it difficult, if not impossible, for the paintings, drawings and prints recently discovered in the apartment of 80-year-old Cornelius Gurlitt, who inherited them from his from his father, a Nazi-era art dealer, to be returned to their rightful owners.

> “Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.”  
>  
> **—Jonathan Swift, *Critical Essay on the Faculties of the Mind***

> “The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.”  
>  
> **—Abraham Lincoln**

> “Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.”  
>  
> **—Lucius Annaeus Seneca**

> “Because just as good morals, if they are to be maintained, have need of the laws, so the laws, if they are to be observed, have need of good morals.”  
>  
> **—Niccolo Machiavelli**

> “Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.”  
>  
> **—Edmund Burke**

> “The law of thy mouth is dearer unto me: than thousands of gold and silver.”  
>  
> **—Psalms, 119**

> “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”  
>  
> **—Aleister Crowley**

> “Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.”  
>  
> **—Immanuel Kant**

> “Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.”  
>  
> **—Plato**

> “Prisons are built with stones of Law. Brothels with the bricks of religion.”  
>  
> **—William Blake**