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.