Word of the Month: Der Wichtigtuer

Word of the Month: Index

I'm reviving the word-of-the-month feature, which has been dormant for a while, to introduce a word that has been on my mind a lot these days.

Wichtig is an adjective meaning "important", and a tuer (derived from the verb tun—to do) is someone who does something or acts. A Wichtigtuer, then, is a person who "makes him- or herself important", i.e. seeks the limelight. The term is more specific than the English "attention-getter": A Wichtigtuer always participates in some public debate, whereas an attention-getter may simply dye a strand of hair baby-blue. That is, a Wichtigtuer is always an attention-getter, but not every attention-getter is a Wichtigtuer. Wichtigtuerin is the female form, and Wichtigtuerei is the noun, the thing a Wichtigtuer does.



The term often comes to my mind in connection with the current pandemic, where certain people take it upon themselves to criticize, for unconvincing reasons, the restrictions on public life recommended by epidemiologists. Note the emphasis on "unconvincing"—I do not deny the usefulness of a public, fact-based debate about the most effective response to the Covid19 virus. But I cannot take serious a self-proclaimed expert who claims that the pandemic is no more dangerous that the common flu—really? Do morgues overflow or are intensive care units in hospitals stretched to the limit on a regular basis during flu seasons? Why would anyone go public with such outlandish claims? To me, it's a Wichtigtuer, who cannot stand that others get all the attention.

Wichtigtuerei is also often at the core of the seemingly ever-increasing readiness of people to take offense (see my post on this topic). Take political cartoons as an example. Cartoonists exaggerate distinctive features of the persons they depict—Merkel's jowls, Obama's ears, Clinton's nose, Trump's corpulence—it's part of their job. This also means that when we can tell a person's ethnicity from his or her appearance in real life, we should also be able to tell it from their caricature. But when this happens, there will be, with predictable regularity, people accusing the cartoonist of racism on social media. I often feel that it's the only way for such people to feel self-important—they are Wichtigtuer (the plural is the same as the singular!).

Note that neither of these manifestations of Wichtigtuerei is harmless. People have died because they did not take the pandemic serious, and people have lost their jobs and careers have been destroyed by spurious accusations on social media.