Germany: Defense minister faces plagiarism allegations

BERLIN

Germany’s defense minister is facing growing pressure over accusations that her PhD thesis contains plagiarism – a charge which previously cost two former Cabinet ministers their jobs.

Hannover Medical School is to open a formal investigation into the claims surrounding Ursula von der Leyen’s 1990 dissertation.

A five-member commission will now examine the PhD thesis, German press agency DPA reported on Monday.

Von der Leyen, one of the most senior figures in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, has dismissed the allegations. Her spokesman announced that the minister asked the university to review her work.

The 57-year-old conservative politician studied medicine at the university, and was awarded a doctorate in 1991.

The website VroniPlag Wiki, which examines the extent of borrowing in German doctoral theses, has recently claimed that it has found elements of plagiarism on 27 pages of the main body of von der Leyen’s PhD work.

The latest allegations follow the resignations of two former ministers, who worked with Chancellor Merkel in previous cabinets, over similar allegations of plagiarism in their doctoral theses.

The then defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg resigned in 2011, and former education minister Annette Schavan had to quit in 2013 amid mounting public pressure. Both were stripped of their doctorates.