![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
At the moment, Germany is having the BEST POLITICAL SCANDAL EVER. Pretty much every one left of the center is rubbing their hands in glee, but even if it wasn't a conservative politician, it would be slightly hilarious.
Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg (that's his full name) is the current minister of defence and star of the extremely conservative Christian Social Union (CSU). He's also a doctor of law. However, as it turns out, his doctoral thesis, handed in five years ago, is a masterwork of plagiarism. Last week, on my birthday actually, a professor of law from Bremen decided (allegedly simply out of interest) to check how good the thesis really was. He promptly discovered an instance of plagiarism - in the introduction. Aften seven more, he gave up and went public. Guttenberg denied everything. Chancellor Merkel backed him. But since then, the thesis has been investigated by pretty much everyone on the German-speaking internet. Numbers vary, but it seems that there is hardly a page of the thesis that doesn't contain misappropriated material. Guttenberg steals everywhere - student term papers, books, brochures, newspaper articles, he even abused his ministerial privileges to get government workers to write him dossiers he then plagiarized. It almost seems as if there was put more work into plagiarizing than most people put into creating a honest thesis.
My favourite theory is that Guttenberg didn't actually do the fake-thesis himself, he employed a ghostwriter, and this ghostwriter is a true mastermind. He created the most brazen piece of plagiarism anyone could conceive but did it well, so the thesis passed with excellent grades. Then five years later, when Guttenberg is in the middle of his rise to power, the ghostwriter lets it all go to hell by pointing that professor of law at the thesis. It's like a political assassination effected entirely through academia and the politician's own stupidity. If it's true, then Anonymous Ghostwriter is my new political hero.
Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg (that's his full name) is the current minister of defence and star of the extremely conservative Christian Social Union (CSU). He's also a doctor of law. However, as it turns out, his doctoral thesis, handed in five years ago, is a masterwork of plagiarism. Last week, on my birthday actually, a professor of law from Bremen decided (allegedly simply out of interest) to check how good the thesis really was. He promptly discovered an instance of plagiarism - in the introduction. Aften seven more, he gave up and went public. Guttenberg denied everything. Chancellor Merkel backed him. But since then, the thesis has been investigated by pretty much everyone on the German-speaking internet. Numbers vary, but it seems that there is hardly a page of the thesis that doesn't contain misappropriated material. Guttenberg steals everywhere - student term papers, books, brochures, newspaper articles, he even abused his ministerial privileges to get government workers to write him dossiers he then plagiarized. It almost seems as if there was put more work into plagiarizing than most people put into creating a honest thesis.
My favourite theory is that Guttenberg didn't actually do the fake-thesis himself, he employed a ghostwriter, and this ghostwriter is a true mastermind. He created the most brazen piece of plagiarism anyone could conceive but did it well, so the thesis passed with excellent grades. Then five years later, when Guttenberg is in the middle of his rise to power, the ghostwriter lets it all go to hell by pointing that professor of law at the thesis. It's like a political assassination effected entirely through academia and the politician's own stupidity. If it's true, then Anonymous Ghostwriter is my new political hero.
