FOR THREE years, German politicians have watched the rise and rise of defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg in jealous amazement.
Yesterday they dubbed him the “self-defence minister” after he conceded his doctoral thesis contained citation mistakes.
On Wednesday, an academic claimed Mr Guttenberg’s 2006 dissertation about constitutional development in the European Union and the United States contained texts from 24 sources including newspaper articles and think tank speeches.
By yesterday afternoon, the number of uncited sources had risen to more than 80; to complete his thesis, Mr Guttenberg appears to have helped himself to texts from the US embassy website, cabinet predecessors and a paper by a Berlin university student.
He denied yesterday that his dissertation was plagiarised, but admitted problems with his citations.
“For each of these mistakes I am the most unhappy of all . . . but at no time was there an attempt to consciously deceive or consciously disguise the authorship,” he said. “Should anyone feel injured by incorrect placement of one of 1,300 footnotes and 475 pages, then I am deeply sorry.”
The minister said he would “temporarily” renounce his doctor title until the matter is investigated by the University of Bayreuth, his alma mater, which gave him top marks for the thesis.
Rather than smooth things over, however, his two-minute statement before selected journalists at the defence ministry yesterday only made things worse.
Journalists attending the government press conference, taking place simultaneously across town, walked out in protest at not being invited.
They couriered a letter of protest to Mr Guttenberg, who couriered a letter of apology back.
Considering he rarely uses his title in public, this all could have been a storm in a teacup were it not for two points.
First, like no other, Mr Guttenberg has courted the media in his three-year rise from regional Bavarian politician to cabinet minister. The Guttenbergs – his wife Stefanie is the great-great-granddaughter of Otto von Bismarck – are the darlings of the gossip columns, bringing a touch of glamour to Germany’s drab society pages.
Under the tutelage of the editor of the Bildtabloid, the young baron has staged himself in the media as a dutiful, modest and honest broker in the political snakepit.
Now his critics suggest that lifting entire chunks from other people’s work does not fit with the image Germany’s most popular politician fashioned for himself.
Which leads to the second problem: Germany is a country where doctor and professor titles open the doors to high society, political office and supervisory boards. Cut-and-pasting your way to a title is almost as bad as buying one on the internet; wrongful use of an academic title in Germany is a criminal offence.
Chancellor Angela Merkel appeared to deliver the political kiss of death yesterday, saying the young minister enjoyed her “full confidence”.