German education minister quits after university withdraws doctorate, months before election
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Germany's education minister has resigned after a university decided to withdraw her doctorate, finding that she plagiarized parts of her thesis — an embarrassment for Chancellor Angela Merkel's government months before national elections.
Merkel said Saturday that she had accepted minister Annette Schavan's resignation "with a very heavy heart."
On Tuesday, Duesseldorf's Heinrich Heine University decided to revoke Schavan's doctorate following a review of her 1980 thesis, which dealt with the formation of conscience. The review was undertaken after an anonymous blogger last year raised plagiarism allegations, which the minister has denied.
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Schavan's resignation comes two years after then-Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg lost his doctorate and quit when it emerged that he copied large parts of his doctoral thesis.