GERMAN DEFENCE minister Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg, the country’s most popular politician, has rejected claims that his doctoral thesis was a work of “brazen plagiarism”.
The 39-year-old minister was confronted yesterday with claims that his 475-page dissertation contained at least 24 quotations from other texts that were not cited as such.
His thesis, "Constitution and Constitutional Treaties – Constitutional Steps of Development in the USA and the EU" – with more than 1,000 footnotes and a 50-page bibliography – was given top marks in 2006, summa cum laude, and published three years later.
Yesterday the Süddeutsche Zeitungnewspaper presented the claims of a Bremen law professor, who noticed the alleged plagiarism after what he called a "routine check" sparked by curiosity about the politician's thesis.
“The text duplications run through the entire work and through all sections,” Dr Andreas Fischer-Lescano told the newspaper.
The article presented, side by side, near verbatim extracts from the minister's thesis and other texts not mentioned in its bibliography, such as a 2003 Neue Zürcher Zeitungarticle and a 2004 lecture paper from the Liechtenstein Institute.
Elsewhere, the text appears to contain other texts cited in the bibliography but not clearly marked as quotations. Footnotes also appear to contain quoted material for which no source is given, the academic added.
Dr zu Guttenberg said the plagiarism claims were “abstruse” and described the text as “all my own work”. An ombudsman at the minister’s alma mater, Bayreuth University, is examining the claims. Zu Guttenberg’s thesis adviser, Peter Häberle, described the accusations as “unfounded”.
"There's no plagiarism in the thesis," he told the Bildtabloid. "I checked it very thoroughly."
Yesterday afternoon the Frankfurter Allgemeinenewspaper claimed the thesis introduction contained text lifted directly from an article it published in 1997.
Frankfurt jurist Felix Hanschmann, who has also analysed the thesis, told Die Welt: "This cannot be considered mere carelessness. This is comparable to other cases which were decided in court with the doctor title removed."
The claims come at an inopportune time for the young minister. After a stellar rise through the ranks, Dr zu Guttenberg has recently been dragged into two separate defence scandals: claims of abuse among the marines and the accidental killing a soldier in Afghanistan by a comrade.