Another German Minister with Doctoral Difficulties
BBC News recently reported on German minister Annette Schavan having her doctorate withdrawn following accusations of plagiarism. This comes barely two years after another minister was found to have plagiarised parts of his dissertation.
It’s a rather unhappy picture:
A German university has voted to strip Education Minister Annette Schavan of her doctorate after an investigation into plagiarism allegations.
The University of Duesseldorf’s philosophy faculty decided on Tuesday that she had carried out “a deliberate deception through plagiarism”.
The minister has denied the claims and said she will appeal.
An earlier plagiarism row brought an end to the political career of Germany’s defence minister in 2011.
Large parts of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg’s 2006 legal dissertations were found by Bayreuth University to have been copied and he stood down before it issued its damning verdict in May 2011.
Using the same words as Duesseldorf’s Heinrich Heine University, it concluded that he had “deliberately deceived”.
The New York Times offers an additional angle, commenting that the scandal reflects a distinctive German fascination with titles:
Coming after Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg was forced to step down as defense minister over plagiarism charges in 2011, Dr. Schavan’s déjà-vu scandal can only hurt Dr. Merkel ahead of September’s parliamentary election. But the two ministers are far from the only German officials to have recently had their postgraduate degrees revoked amid accusations of academic dishonesty, prompting national soul-searching about what the cases reveal about the German character.
Germans place a greater premium on doctorates than Americans do as marks of distinction and erudition. According to the Web site Research in Germany, about 25,000 Germans earn doctorates each year, the most in Europe and about twice the per capita rate of the United States.
Many Germans believe the scandals are rooted in their abiding respect, and even lust, for academic accolades, including the use of Prof. before Dr. and occasionally Dr. Dr. for those with two doctoral degrees. Prof. Dr. Volker Rieble, a law professor at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, calls this obsession “title arousal.”
“In other countries people aren’t as vain about their titles,” he said. “With this obsession for titles, of course, comes title envy.”
Title arousal and title envy do seem rather striking reasons for plagiarism but something very strange does seem to be happening in German politics. But also in Romania and Hungary where similar accusations have been levelled at ministers there too.
yea most German politicians simply suck. I have worked with great people that achieved a lot and the same comment I hear everytime when talking to these people is: our worst classmates in university (lazy, unreliable, …) are working for the German Government now.. What a shame.