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| German Fascination With Degrees Claims Latest Victim: Education Minister | |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| BERLIN — For 32 years, the German education minister’s 351-page dissertation sat on a shelf at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf gathering dust while its author pursued a successful political career that carried her to the highest circles of German government. | BERLIN — For 32 years, the German education minister’s 351-page dissertation sat on a shelf at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf gathering dust while its author pursued a successful political career that carried her to the highest circles of German government. |
| The academic work was a time bomb, however, and it exploded last year when an anonymous blogger published a catalog of passages suspected of having been lifted from other publications without proper attribution. | |
| The university revoked the doctorate of the minister, Prof. Dr. Annette Schavan, on Tuesday (she retains the title pending appeal), and on Saturday she was forced to resign her cabinet post. It was the second time a minister had quit the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel over plagiarism in less than two years. | |
| In an emotional news conference, Dr. Schavan said that she would sue to win back the doctorate, but in the meantime she would resign for the greater good. “First the country, then the party and then yourself,” she said. | |
| Standing beside her, Ms. Merkel, her friend and confidante, said that she accepted Dr. Schavan’s resignation “only with a very heavy heart,” but that politically there was no alternative. | |
| 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 Ms. 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 flaws the cases reveal about the German character. | |
| Here in the homeland of schadenfreude, digging up academic deception by politicians has become an unlikely political blood sport. There is even a collaborative, wiki-style platform where people can anonymously inspect academic texts, known as VroniPlag. | Here in the homeland of schadenfreude, digging up academic deception by politicians has become an unlikely political blood sport. There is even a collaborative, wiki-style platform where people can anonymously inspect academic texts, known as VroniPlag. |
| On one level, the exposure of these cases reflects certain very Teutonic traits, including a rigid adherence to principle and a know-it-all streak. “I just think that many Germans have a police gene in their genetic makeup,” said Prof. Dr. Volker Rieble, a law professor at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. | |
| But many people attribute the underlying deceptions to an abiding lust and respect for academic accolades, including the use of Prof. before Dr. and occasionally Dr. Dr. for those with two doctoral degrees, which Dr. Rieble called “title arousal.” | But many people attribute the underlying deceptions to an abiding lust and respect for academic accolades, including the use of Prof. before Dr. and occasionally Dr. Dr. for those with two doctoral degrees, which Dr. Rieble called “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.” | “In other countries people aren’t as vain about their titles,” he said. “With this obsession for titles, of course, comes title envy.” |
| Germans place a greater premium on doctorates than Americans do as marks of distinction and erudition. A surprising number of doctors of nonmedical subjects like literature and sociology put “Dr.” on their mailboxes and telephone-directory listings. The Web site of the German Parliament, the Bundestag, shows that 125 of 622 people elected to the current Parliament (including Dr. Schavan and then-Dr. Guttenberg) had doctorates when sworn in. | |
| Ms. Merkel appointed Prof. Dr. Johanna Wanka, the state minister of science and culture in Lower Saxony, to take over Dr. Schavan’s position. Prof. Dr. Wanka got her doctorate in 1980, the same year as Dr. Schavan. | |
| The finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, is a doctor of law. The vice chancellor, Philipp Rösler, is an ophthalmologist and thus the only one who most Americans would call “doctor.” | |
| For the plagiarism scalp hunters, the abundance of titles provides what in military circles is known as a target-rich environment. The University of Heidelberg revoked the doctorate of Silvana Koch-Mehrin, former vice president of the European Parliament and a leading member of Germany’s Free Democratic Party, in 2011, and she is still fighting the charges in court. | |
| Another German member of the European Parliament, Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, saw his doctorate of philosophy revoked by the University of Bonn in 2011 after the VroniPlag Web site uncovered a number of dubious passages. Florian Graf, head of the Christian Democrats’ delegation in the Berlin city legislature, lost his Ph.D. last year after admitting to copying from other scholars’ works without giving them proper credit. | Another German member of the European Parliament, Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, saw his doctorate of philosophy revoked by the University of Bonn in 2011 after the VroniPlag Web site uncovered a number of dubious passages. Florian Graf, head of the Christian Democrats’ delegation in the Berlin city legislature, lost his Ph.D. last year after admitting to copying from other scholars’ works without giving them proper credit. |
| In many countries, busy professionals with little interest in tenure-track positions at universities do not tend to bother writing dissertations. In Germany, academic titles provide an ego boost that lures even businesspeople to pursue them. | |
| About 25,000 Germans earn doctorates each year, the most of anywhere in Europe, according to the Web site Research in Germany, co-sponsored by the Ministry of Education and the German Academic Exchange Service. | About 25,000 Germans earn doctorates each year, the most of anywhere in Europe, according to the Web site Research in Germany, co-sponsored by the Ministry of Education and the German Academic Exchange Service. |
| Prof. Dr. Debora Weber-Wulff, a plagiarism expert at the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin and an active participant in VroniPlag, suggested getting rid of superfluous doctoral titles outside of academia. “A doctor only has meaning at a university or in academia,” she told German television. “It has no business on political placards.” | Prof. Dr. Debora Weber-Wulff, a plagiarism expert at the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin and an active participant in VroniPlag, suggested getting rid of superfluous doctoral titles outside of academia. “A doctor only has meaning at a university or in academia,” she told German television. “It has no business on political placards.” |
| But she is originally from Pennsylvania. Here the attitudes are deeply ingrained, and few think habits will change anytime soon. “It is a proof that you can handle academic stuff and that you can keep on task for quite a while,” Dr. Peter Richter, a correspondent in New York for the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, said in an e-mail. | But she is originally from Pennsylvania. Here the attitudes are deeply ingrained, and few think habits will change anytime soon. “It is a proof that you can handle academic stuff and that you can keep on task for quite a while,” Dr. Peter Richter, a correspondent in New York for the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, said in an e-mail. |
| It can be a shock to Americans unfamiliar with the practice, as Dr. Richter has experienced in New York. “Here people instantly think that I’m a medicine man when they read my name,” he said. | It can be a shock to Americans unfamiliar with the practice, as Dr. Richter has experienced in New York. “Here people instantly think that I’m a medicine man when they read my name,” he said. |
| Even within Germany the practice differs by region, he said, with those in the conservative south insisting on titles more than those in northern cities like Hamburg. There are other divides, with many members of the counterculture generation of 1968 rejecting titles, though many have come to enjoy them as they have grown older. | Even within Germany the practice differs by region, he said, with those in the conservative south insisting on titles more than those in northern cities like Hamburg. There are other divides, with many members of the counterculture generation of 1968 rejecting titles, though many have come to enjoy them as they have grown older. |
| Dr. Schavan, 57, whose parliamentary district is in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg, was granted her doctorate in 1980; her dissertation was titled “Person and Conscience.” Despite that title, she was not shy about chastising Mr. Guttenberg, once an up-and-coming star from neighboring Bavaria, when his plagiarism scandal struck in 2011. One of her fellow cabinet member’s most prominent and outspoken critics, she told Süddeutsche Zeitung that she was “ashamed, and not just secretly,” about the charges against him. | |
| The accusations against Dr. Schavan surfaced the following year on a bare-bones, anonymous Web site. The accusations were particularly significant for Dr. Schavan because she led the federal Ministry of Education and Research. | The accusations against Dr. Schavan surfaced the following year on a bare-bones, anonymous Web site. The accusations were particularly significant for Dr. Schavan because she led the federal Ministry of Education and Research. |
| When Dr. Schavan’s doctorate was revoked, Ms. Merkel, who has a doctorate herself, said through a spokesman that she had “complete trust” in her. While that may have sounded like a show of support, it was also exactly the same phrase she used for Mr. Guttenberg, right before he had to resign for plagiarizing passages of his dissertation. | |
| Unlike Mr. Guttenberg, Dr. Schavan was widely known to be a friend and a confidante of Ms. Merkel’s, but few here expected that to save her job. The two women met privately on Friday evening to discuss the matter, announced at the chancellery building on a snowy Saturday afternoon. Ms. Merkel was unstinting in her praise for the departing minister but ultimately chose politics over personal ties. | |
| “A health minister doesn’t need to be a medical doctor, but if he is one, then he can’t have committed malpractice,” Dr. Rieble said. “An education minister doesn’t need to have a Ph.D., but if he does, then his dissertation cannot be plagiarized.” | “A health minister doesn’t need to be a medical doctor, but if he is one, then he can’t have committed malpractice,” Dr. Rieble said. “An education minister doesn’t need to have a Ph.D., but if he does, then his dissertation cannot be plagiarized.” |
Victor Homola contributed reporting. | Victor Homola contributed reporting. |