When German chancellor Angela Merkel goes before the cameras to announce the departure of a cabinet minister, it’s usually a chilly, perfunctory affair.
She’s gone through the motions at least half a dozen times since taking office in 2005, but when Dr Merkel announced “with a heavy heart” the departure of federal education and research minister Annette Schavan on Saturday, few doubted her.
The German leader is not known for wearing her heart on her political sleeve, but Ms Schavan was probably the only friend Merkel had at the cabinet table.
Ms Schavan resigned after an investigation panel at her alma mater, the University of Düsseldorf, found her guilty of “intentional deception through plagiarism” in her 1980 doctoral thesis.
“As a doctoral candidate, throughout her entire dissertation, she systematically and deliberately presented intellectual efforts that were not her own,” said the university in a statement. An investigation found large sections of the dissertation, titled “Person and Conscience”, had been lifted without adequate attribution. As such, she was guilty of “intentional deception through plagiarism”. The 57-year-old minister said she did not accept the university’s decision and would take legal action to clear her name.
“I neither copied nor deceived,” she said at a press conference on Saturday. She decided to resign to prevent “damage” to the education ministry then thanked “dear Angela” for her kind words and friendship.
Political risk
Dr Merkel knew that a minister tarnished by claims of plagiarism, regardless of her energetic denials, was a political risk. This applied particularly to Ms Schavan who, though popular across party lines, devoted her energy in office to an “excellence initiative” to improve educational standards at German universities.
In the run-up to September’s general election, the German leader is anxious to avoid any political missteps, particularly as a run of state election defeats has left her government unable to pass any legislation through the upper house.
The longer Ms Schavan hung around, the greater the danger of political blowback on to the German leader. She has already seen two presidents depart under clouds, as well as ministers for labour and defence and now education.
Ms Schavan’s resignation, after a 10-month investigation, is the second plagiarism affair to force a political resignation from the Merkel administration.
In 2011 an anonymous internet co-operative found defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg had lifted almost half of his 475-page thesis without attribution. The aristocratic minister disappeared from public life with the nicknames “Baron cut-and-paste” and “zu Googleberg”.
Other public figures were caught out in subsequent analyses by the same internet co-operative. Their initial analysis of Ms Schavan’s thesis left the group divided, however, with some not sure there was enough evidence of conscious deception.
A breakaway group went public with its analysis saying the passages they found questionable – 92 in a 335-page work – were too numerous to be a coincidence.
