Plagiarism dismissal deemed baseless by legal representatives
In a recent development, the constitutional court candidate for the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf, has been cleared of scientific misconduct allegations following a review. The short assessment, commissioned by Brosius-Gersdorf and her husband, found no evidence of scientific misconduct, despite earlier concerns and plagiarism accusations related to their academic works.
The allegations, made by Austrian plagiarism hunter Stefan Weber, were based on parallels between Brosius-Gersdorf's doctoral thesis and her husband Hubertus' habilitation thesis. Both theses, titled "German Federal Bank and the Principle of Democracy. A constitutional law study on the autonomy of the Federal Bank before and after the third stage of European monetary union" and "Public Enterprises in the Tension between Democracy and Efficiency Principles," respectively, were submitted in 1997 at the University of Hamburg.
The assessment, conducted by the Stuttgart-based law firm Quaas and Partners, is a preliminary one. It should be noted that neither earlier assessments nor the preliminary one by Michael Quaas and Peter Sieben of Quaas and Partners address the plagiarism allegations. A comprehensive legal evaluation may be conducted at a later date if necessary.
The election for a judge, which was planned to take place just before the allegations surfaced, was ultimately aborted. The lawyers stated in an accompanying letter that the allegations against Brosius-Gersdorf are unfounded and lack substance.
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Despite Stefan Weber's accusations of plagiarism, the preliminary assessment conducted by Quaas and Partners found no evidence of scientific misconduct in the academic works of Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf and her husband Hubertus. Other political developments have arisen from this situation, as the general-news suggests, as the election for a judge was aborted following the surfacing of the allegations, and the lawyers issued a letter stating the accusations against Brosius-Gersdorf are unfounded.
