Scientia potentia est A Sponti (Außerparlamentarische Opposition) version of the slogan is "Wissen ist Macht, nichts wissen, macht auch nichts", a pun about the previous motto along the line "Knowledge is power, but being ignorant doesn't bother anyway". Joschka Fischer and Daniel Cohn-Bendit belong to those Spontis that nevertheless held powerful positions, in Fischer's case with no more formal education than a taxi driver's licence. The German Bundeswehr Bataillon Elektronische Kampfführung 932, an electronic warfare unit based in Frankenberg (Eder), still uses the Latin version "Scientia potentia est" as its motto. Though its meaning varies from author to author, the phrase often implies
Est! Est!! Est!!! di Montefiascone involves a traveling Catholic bishop on his way to Rome who sends a servant ahead to find places with the best wine for the bishop to enjoy. Visiting villages throughout Italy, the servant would scrawl "Est" (Latin for "There is") on the door of the places he found to have good wine for the bishop's party to later visit. The legend has it that the servant was so impressed with the wine being served at a Montefiascone inn that he enthusiastically scrawled "Est! Est!! Est!!!" on the door. While that is the basic outline of the story, over the centuries