The Duden dictionary defines Herrschaftswissen as knowledge that a person has acquired through their position or official duties and that is not accessible to others. It serves the exercise of power over others. The DWDS dictionary defines it as knowledge gained through individual experience, or kept from the public by restricted access, that someone can use to their own advantage. German Wikipedia adds that in its widest, colloquial sense the word is critical and comes close to cunning. It then means a lead in knowledge that someone uses to secure their position.
Official Secrecy, Weber’s View
In Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Economy and Society, Max Weber described how bureaucracy uses what it knows. Its officials have the advantage of professional knowledge. Diese Überlegenheit des berufsmäßig Wissenden sucht jede Bürokratie noch durch das Mittel der Geheimhaltung ihrer Kenntnisse und Absichten zu steigern. “Every bureaucracy seeks to increase this superiority of the professionally informed even further by keeping its knowledge and intentions secret.” Weber added that the concept of the Amtsgeheimnis, official secrecy, is bureaucracy’s own invention, and that a poorly informed and therefore powerless parliament naturally suits it better.
Knowledge Is Power, Power Is Knowledge
Wissen ist Macht, knowledge is power, goes back to Francis Bacon, who wrote in Latin in 1597: Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est. In Germany the phrase belongs to the labor movement. On 5 February 1872, Wilhelm Liebknecht, one of the founders of German Social Democracy, gave a lecture to the Dresden workers’ education association. Its title was Wissen ist Macht – Macht ist Wissen. In it he said: Das Wissen ist für die Herrschenden, die Unwissenheit für die Beherrschten. “Knowledge is for the rulers, ignorance for the ruled.” He called this the innermost nature of rule.
Liebknecht did not praise this order. He demanded that workers win political power and remove the barriers that kept them from knowledge.
Spiegel Readers Know More
For more than forty years, the news magazine Der Spiegel advertised itself with one sentence: Spiegel-Leser wissen mehr. “Spiegel readers know more.” In January 2015 the magazine replaced it with Keine Angst vor der Wahrheit, no fear of the truth.
The Brockhaus on the Shelf
In the German Empire, owning a Konversationslexikon, a general encyclopedia, carried high social status, and wide sections of the population wanted one. The Brockhaus was one of them. Its publisher, Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus, bought the rights to an existing encyclopedia at the Leipzig Book Fair in 1808. The last printed edition, the 21st, appeared in 30 volumes in 2005 and 2006. The complete set cost 2,820 euros. Sales of the printed Brockhaus ended on 30 June 2014.
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Wer wird Millionär? has run on German television since 3 September 1999, with Günther Jauch as host from the first show. The first contestant to win the top prize of one million marks, on 2 December 2000, was Eckhard Freise, a professor of medieval history. Public television has its own quiz shows. Wer weiß denn sowas?, “Who knows something like that?”, reached 4.64 million viewers on Das Erste in February 2018. In Gefragt – Gejagt, contestants play against professional quiz players called the hunters.
Rumpelstilzchen
German children learn the verse from the Grimm fairy tale Rumpelstilzchen, number 55 in their collection. The little man dances around a fire in the forest and sings: Ach, wie gut ist, dass niemand weiß, dass ich Rumpelstilzchen heiß! “Oh, how good that nobody knows that Rumpelstilzchen is my name!” His power over the queen lasts only as long as his name is his alone. A messenger overhears the verse in the forest, and the queen says the name. The little man cries out that the devil told her.
Knowing More Than Others
der Wissensvorsprung, der Informationsvorsprung — a lead in knowledge, a lead in information. The Duden example sentence reads: Die Leserinnen und Leser unserer Zeitung haben einen Wissensvorsprung gegenüber anderen. “The readers of our newspaper have a lead in knowledge over others.”
das Insiderwissen — insider knowledge, which only an insider can acquire
der Geheimtipp — a secret tip, passed on personally by someone in the know
eingeweiht sein — to be initiated, to be in on it
wissen, wo der Hammer hängt — to know where the hammer hangs, to know exactly how things work
Ich weiß was, was du nicht weißt. — I know something you don’t know. A children’s taunt.
Siegfried’s Weak Spot
In the Nibelungenlied, the medieval epic written around 1200, the hero Siegfried bathed in dragon’s blood and cannot be wounded, except for one spot on his back where a linden leaf lay. His enemy Hagen gets his wife Kriemhild to tell him where the spot is. He asks her to mark it on Siegfried’s clothing with a small cross, so that he can protect him in battle. With that knowledge Hagen kills Siegfried from behind with his own spear.
“Comrades, We Must Know Everything”
Genossen, wir müssen alles wissen! “Comrades, we must know everything!” That, according to the German Federal Archives, is what Erich Mielke, East Germany’s minister for state security, once ordered his staff. The Archives used the sentence as the title of a reader on everyday life in the GDR, published in 2014. The Stasi records it holds today run to more than 111 kilometers of files, plus more than 1.7 million photos, and cover all areas of public and private life.