In late October, Elon Musk released a Wikipedia alternative, with pages written by his AI chatbot Grok. Unlike its nearly quarter-century-old namesake, Musk said Grokipedia would strip out the “woke” from Wikipedia, which he previously described as an “extension of legacy media propaganda.” But while Musk’s Grokipedia, in his eyes, is propaganda-free, it seems to have a proclivity toward right-wing hagiography.
Take Grokipedia’s entry on Adolf Hitler. Until earlier this month, the entry read, “Adolf Hitler was the Austrian-born Führer of Germany from 1933 to 1945.” That phrase has been edited to “Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and dictator,” but Grok still refers to Hitler by his honorific one clause later, writing that Hitler served as “Führer und Reichskanzler from August 1934 until his suicide in 1945.” NBC News also pointed out that the page on Hitler goes on for some 13,000 words before the first mention of the Holocaust.
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I mean the whole stupid Grokipedia thing is a shit show that will never take off, but Fuhrer is just “leader” in German. In it’s used context for Hitler it straight up means dictator and (iirc) only came into full on use after the plebiscite giving him full dictatorial power after Hindenburg’s death in 1934 (edit: He was already the Reich’s Chancellor and merged in Hindenburg’s powers with the vote to make himself full dictator / Fuhrer).
I’d welcome input from a German national - Is the word still used there?
Führer might only mean leader in Germany, but it’s rarely used outside of refering to Hitler nowadays.
Leader, in modern German, would be translated as “Anführer”, not “Führer” specifically because of the connotations. Also, using the term fuhrer in English, instead of translating as leader, clearly means it’s being used as a title, rather than a factual descriptor of what he was.
You can use Führer in context, but as it’s a title that was specifically created by and for Hitler, and never used before or since, it’s generally not used as a title for him, because people don’t want to give him the post mortem respect of addressing him by this title.
And for context, the entire German language Wikipedia entry of Hitler, calls Hitler Führer a total of 17 times. 8 of those are in direct quotes, 3 in indirect quotes, 2 of them are describing his official title “Führer und Reichsanzler” (outside of quotes only, to prevent double counting), 2 use the literal meaning of “leader” in the context of the party, NOT his title as dictator, 2 of them are talking about how he saw himself, and one is drawing a linguistic analogous link between “Führer” and “Geführten” (Leader and Followers).
Outside of quotes, there is not a single use of the term “Der Führer” as an actual honorific title (“The Führer”) for Hitler in the entire German language Wikipedia page (which is 30-40k words long).
German here: you can use “Führer” only with specific other context. There could be for example “Gruppenführer” -> the leader of a group. Or “Anführer” -> could be the elder of a tribe. If you clearly use it in a neutral context, no problem.
But if you use it just like that, it will immediately raise concern if you really meant to say it this way.
Führer is not just „leader“, it is tainted and using it as a substitute for Hitler in a factual text is super weird, like casually calling Jesus in his Wikipedia article „our lord and savior“ now and then.
Thank you for this comparison. That’s a fun one and one that’s made a little more ‘subtle’ in the US if only because of how common that language is among the populace in regions and how pervasive protestantism is in advertising/messaging.
Jesus would’ve hated America. I think according to the bible he lost his shit twice - both because of capitalism.
There was one other time, when he cursed a tree because he didn’t like its fruit, but yeah in general he disliked the nascent forms of capitalism and money people that he encountered.
Yeah I fully agree with this. I am thick in the middle of “Third Reich Trilogy” which gives an enormous amount of context to the word though.
If they changed it, it’s further evidence of scummy behaviour, but on its own it’s not a huge red flag for me with historical context.
Can’t recommend the books enough if you’re into that. The lad must have spent half his life in primary sources.
Leader would be “Anführer” these days. “Führer” was probably a perfectly neutral word before 1933. Now you just can’t use it anymore without alluding to that period. You can call your mountain guide “Bergführer”. All such derived terms are unaffected, but “Führer” is basically off limits for anything outside the Nazi Germany context.
From what I gather I don’t think the German people meant it like that (read: they weren’t supposed to). Of course he was the solitary head of state and everybody knew that his word was above any other’s, but addressing him as “my Leader” is much more about ideology than politics. The honorific would’ve probably been “my Chancellor” if it had been about his political authority. As “Führer” he was the figurative savior of the German people after the perceived injustices encapsulated in the WW1 armistice. And he did lead them back towards a sense of national pride that was completely shattered after 1918.
Being a political figure was just a means to an end for him. If he hadn’t been dismissed as a bad artist by a Jewish professor and if WW1 had taken a different course who knows what he would’ve ended up doing with his life. His weapon was his voice and that weapon was fueled by all these toxic convictions. If your hatred is aimed towards entire peoples and nations I guess your only shot at revenge is becoming a politician.
Is there another more ‘generic’ German term that would fit when talking about this period of time in retrospect? So you could have one line that says the German equivalent of ‘he was the leader in Germany during this time period, commonly referred to by the title Fuhrer’, and then no need to keep using “Fuhrer” anymore in the rest of the article.
Pretty sure its usually “Diktator” in that context.
Maybe Staatsoberhaupt. I would translate it as “leader”. But given how illegitimate his reign was, it is still a bit to soft.
Not German but moved to Germany. The word is still a normal word, it can be used, only in certain contexts not.
To me it is very very weird.
Especially in a comboword there is 0,0 issue: Reiseführer, Bergführer, etc. The no go zone seems very subtle to me, it’s more about pronunciation and context, not the word itself. Especially the word “Führerschein” is super weird to me when used in regular conversations. I automatically hear translated “license to be the Führer”, but it just means driver’s license and nothing else and no one finds it weird.
Exactly this. If you use it as part of a compound word or as a verb it’s totally fine. However “der Führer” (the Führer) is exclusively used to describe Hitler, and it usually has a negative or ironic vibe depending on who says it.
About the Führerschein… führen and fahren have the same etymological root… It is still used in “Führen eines Fahrzeugs” which simply means “driving a car” and that is where the term comes from.
At least in Austria it is also used outside of compound words. E.g. when talking about the Bergführer, you still mean the compound word, but the word “Führer” alone is still used in this context extensively. But of course it all depends on context.
Not weird for point of view of polish speaker - we use same word “prowadzić” for driving a car, running a company or just leading someone to some destination. From that perspective concept of leading a country and “leading” a car is perfectly intuitive
Führer means driver also. So literally Driver’s license.
Why would they use the honorary, German word Fuhrer in an English language wiki article though?
Exactly.
If you are describing hitler’s role in WW2? Yes, he was The German Fuhrer.
I would say that, honestly, I prefer the second version as it is more accurate to what he was. But any time you change something you have to ask “what does it mean that we are changing things?”
And since musk is, at best, someone who wishes he was as cool as the losers on LUE back in the day? This is very much not being done with a journalistic style guide in mind.
We also use “Dalai Lama”, for example. Changing it to “leader” would lose a lot in translation. There’s a very long list of more problematic things with Musk and this ego project than this particular wording choice.
I agree with the second half but disagree on the first. We do use Dalai Lama because thats what he’s known as across the world (at least fron my understanding) . We didn’t refer to Angela Merkel as Furher of Germany when she lead it so it seems weird to include this in the introductory summary of Hitler especially considering it’s an English article. I dont think you’re losing anything in translation in this example by calling him the “leader of Germany” at that time. Down below, in the verbose write-up, seems like the more appropriate place to use it.
I don’t think the Merkel comparison is accurate - no one called her Leader, we called her the Chancellor (Kanzler), because that’s the job title. “Chancellor” is a pretty specific word in English with a narrower meaning and clearer connotation than “leader”, which can be used in a huge variety of contexts. The problem is that English doesn’t have a 1:1 translation of Fuehrer as we do with Kanzler, and “leader” is too generic versus Chancellor, Prime Minister, President, etc. Maybe “Supreme Leader” would work, but I haven’t seen that used often enough for it to stick.
Hitler was literally the chancellor of Germany. That was his official title before he seized power and took total control and changed the title himself.
I know, but convention is to use a person’s final and highest title. Nobody refers to Julius Caesar as “quaestor”.
It’s a title he invented though, after taking control. Continuing to use it is honoring his memory in a way.
That’s true, but to reuse my comparison to Romans, we call Augustus “emperor” too despite the term “imperator” being co-opted from an earlier, different meaning. I can see both points of view here, I just don’t feel strongly enough to see it as a red flag. God knows there are lots of other, actual red flags.
It’s funny that they made a conservative Wikipedia (snowflake safe space much?) because those people don’t read shit.
As a german, the word is very seldom used, and everybody cringes on use of it alone. We even use the english word guide instead for situations where it fits.
Thanks so much. I thought that would be the case but I wondered around things like “team leader” or “band leader” or whatever.
My guess was that it was forever tainted so I appreciate the context.
Only his followers actually use(d) that title for him, everyone else when using that word about him, would say it’s the title his followers call(ed) him. Like how wikipedia is using it. Grok is just using it as his title, like a follower would.
You can think of it kind of like “dear leader” in north korea. Anyone calling him that outside of north korea is at least doing it sarcastically or using air quotes. This would be like if the news called him that with a sincere reverent tone.
It’s true and terrifying.
We have an extremely intelligent Nazi on his way to controlling a robot army.
You don‘t really call him just the Führer in academic works so anything that works like an encyclopedia shouldn‘t either. The title is charged with either mockery or admiration. It should have no place in this context, because it should at least try to be neutral if you ask me.
I’m in the thick of a 90 hour audiobook trilogy on the third Reich which is absolutely incredible (link) and Fuhrer is used liberally, partly to describe his ascent to absolute dictator as opposed to just Reich’s Chancellor.
I’m not defending shitopedia for one second! I’m just not sure it’s as outrageous as other shit that’s taking up our limited attention span at the moment is all.
Not a german national, but I’m learning it at school, and they say that if you go to a german-speaking region, it’s better to say “chef”, because “führer” is still connected to that guy
Yeah, go to Germany and call any leader “Führer” and see how well that goes. Uh, maybe not in Eastern Germany where they’ll probably like it.