Martin Huber was introduced as the new Secretary General of the CSU on Friday. Now he is suspected of plagiarism. The politician is said to have written off his doctoral thesis. The Luxembourg journalist and plagiarism researcher Jochen Zenthöfer wants to have proven that. First reported the picture on sunday about the allegations.
Huber’s dissertation, presented in 2007, bears the title “The Influence of the CSU on the Western Policy of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1954 to 1969 with regard to Relations with France and the USA”. Zenthöfer says that the standards of good scientific work were not adhered to in the work. The errors went beyond individual citation errors. A stage has been reached at which the university must review the work. But the stage has not yet been reached at which one has to say: “The doctorate is definitely gone.” The CSU general himself now wants to have his doctoral thesis checked again by the Ludwig Maximilian University for reasons of transparency. However, he also says he wrote them “to the best of my knowledge and belief”.
As a journalist, Zenthöfer writes in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung about scientific plagiarism. His new book is scheduled for the end of May plagiarism in science published by Transcript-Verlag. While researching it, he is said to have come across inconsistencies in Huber’s doctoral thesis, but found it too insignificant to include it in his book. With Huber’s appointment as CSU general secretary, however, Zenthöfer apparently decided to make his discoveries public.
Martin Huber was introduced on Friday by party leader Markus Söder as the new CSU general secretary. The member of the state parliament from the district of Altötting succeeds Stephan Mayer, who resigned earlier this week. Officially for health reasons. But the resignation was also a quarrel with one Colorfuleditor who Mayer is said to have threatened to “destroy” him.
The FDP parliamentary group leader Martin Hagen asked Huber on Twitter to let his doctorate rest as long as the work was being examined by the university. Holm Putzke, CSU district chairman in Passau and professor of criminal law at the university there, accused Huber in one Post on Facebook indirectly a conflict of interest, as he worked from 2004 to 2007 in the public relations department of the CSU state leadership.
With material from the German Press Agency.