GERMAN EX-DOCTORS

The Germans take titles very seriously. It takes a lot to "dutzen", to say the informal you form to someone else. People can easily work with each other for 30 years and still say Sie ("they") to each other. It's not considered stiff or formal, just proper.

No title in Germany is taken more seriously than that of Doctor. People who have it expect to be addressed as Herr Doktor or Frau Doktor, even in situations which in other countries would be viewed as not so formal. So the discovery that someone has plagiarised their way to a doctorate is a very big deal indeed.

It happened a couple of years ago to Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, then Germany's Defence Minister and the star of the Government. He tried to hold onto his job, despite having his law doctorate removed because of plagiarism. The written indignation of 20,000 academics was a key factor which eventually caused him to fall on his sword.

One of those indignant academics was the federal Education Minister Annette Schavan, who was scathing in her denunciation of a fellow Cabinet Minister and Doktor. This week Ms. Schavan resigned, after Düsseldorf University decided to remove her own doctorate on the grounds of plagiarism. Ms. Schavan disputes the decision, and says that she will be taking legal action against the university. It is difficult to see her getting very far.

Both ex-doctors were caught out by the internet, which allows both the disinterested and the partisan to analyse, compare and inform in a way which would have been unthinkable when the doctoral theses in question had first been written. Critics say that this puts an impossible burden on the purity of intellectual research; supporters say that this is precisely what the prestigious title such as a doctorate is supposed to reward. Whatever the merits of the arguments, I suspect that there will be more German ex-doctors in the future.

Walter Blotscher