Plagiarism Tracker Identifies 86 Pages of Infringement Against Brosius-Gersdorf
Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf, a German legal scholar and professor nominated for Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court, is embroiled in a controversial plagiarism scandal surrounding her doctoral thesis. The allegations centre on claims that large parts (86 pages) of the thesis were written by her husband, Hubertus Gersdorf, which she denies.
University Investigation and Legal Actions
Brosius-Gersdorf has denied the plagiarism allegations, rejecting the claim that her husband ghostwrote parts of her thesis. In response, she filed a libel lawsuit against Stefan Weber, Germany’s most prominent “plagiarism hunter,” demanding €40,000 in damages over his allegations. Weber, however, refused to pay even a minimal sum and continues to assert the plagiarism claims.
Despite the ongoing controversy, there is no public record of the University of Potsdam formally confirming plagiarism or completing a full investigation. Under political and media pressure, Brosius-Gersdorf temporarily suspended her teaching position at the university amid the controversy.
The allegations have contributed to the withdrawal of support from the CDU/CSU parliamentary leadership and delayed or prevented her appointment to the Federal Constitutional Court. Politically, the controversy occurred in a charged context, with accusations from right-wing populists and some CDU members aiming to portray her in an unflattering light, while the SPD defended her for a time but accepted her effective withdrawal following the allegations.
The Report and Its Implications
The report alleges that the plagiarism involves text passages with similarities between Brosius-Gersdorf's dissertation and writings that Hubertus Gersdorf published before she submitted her work. These text passages include formulations, footnotes, and citation errors from Hubertus Gersdorf's own dissertation.
The report does not rule out ghostwriting by Hubertus Gersdorf. It documents hundreds of text passages with similarities between the two works, dating back to 1997. However, Brosius-Gersdorf's lawyers have dismissed the allegations as "baseless" and "defamatory," and the cited literature in the report comes from generally accessible sources, according to her lawyers.
It's important to note that accessing the actual content of the report may involve sharing data with third-party providers. Moreover, Stefan Weber, the plagiarism expert, claims that if it was a joint work, it should have been marked as such but was not. Weber also accuses the University of Potsdam of colluding with political parties (SPD, Greens) and over 300 lawyers to cover up the suspected fraud.
The detailed justification of the report has been released, but its current placement on the source website is a placeholder content, requiring a click on a button to access the actual content. The outcome of any formal university investigation remains unclear in the publicly available sources.
- The report alleges that there are significant similarities between text passages in Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf's doctoral thesis and publications by her husband, Hubertus Gersdorf, raising questions about potential plagiarism in general-news and crime-and-justice circles.
- Despite the release of the detailed report, it is still not clear if the University of Potsdam has completed a formal investigation into the plagiarism claims involving Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf's doctoral thesis, a matter of significant interest in the realm of politics and academia.
