Short report: law firm: allegations against Brosius-Gersdorf unfounded

The SPD constitutional judge, Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf, is not accused of scientific misconduct after a short report commissioned by her and her husband. “The examination showed that the allegations are unfounded and have no substance,” explain the lawyers Michael Quaas and Peter Sieben from the law firm Quaas and Partner in a cover letter.

The Stuttgart law firm expressly provides a preliminary evaluation. “A detailed legal assessment should be made at a later date,” the short report said.

Shortly before the planned and ultimately burst judge election in the Bundestag last Friday, accusations of plagiarism against Brosius-Gersdorf had also become loud. The Austrian plagiarism searcher Stefan Weber published parallels between their doctoral thesis and the habilitation thesis of her husband.

The dissertation script of Brosius-Gersdorf and the habilitation thesis of her husband Hubertus were both submitted in 1997 at the University of Hamburg. The title of Brosius-Gersdorf’s doctoral thesis was “Deutsche Bundesbank and the principle of democracy. A constitutional study on the autonomy of the Bundesbarbar before and after the third stage of the European Monetary Union”. Her husband’s work was entitled “Public companies in the area of tension between democracy and economy principle”.

Law firm: similarities quantitative and qualitatively not significant

The law firm looked at similar footnotes, text passages and similarities in headings. “If, in terms of content, both authors relate to the usually limited number of publications, this does not affect your own scientific achievement,” writes the law firm on the subject of footnotes.

“Also interpreted the partially similar explanations in the texts, and so Dr. Weber, if necessary, is at best a mental exchange, but not that one of the participants from the or the other, without identifying this, would have taken over content.

In addition, it is only a few places, quantitatively and qualitatively, these were not significant. The habilitation thesis of her husband was later created than the doctoral thesis by Brosius-Gersdorf himself.