Saskia Ludwig under suspicion of plagiarism for doctoral thesis

This article was first published by NTV.

The German-Luxemburg plagiarism expert Jochen Zenthöfer found numerous violations of good scientific practice when the dissertation of the Department of Bundestag from the Bundestag MPs Saskia Ludwig from the CDU. The “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” (FAZ) reports. Ludwig had previously opposed the SPD candidate for the Federal Constitutional Court, Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf, and, among other things, alleged plagiarism in their doctoral thesis.

She wrote, for example, on X about Brosius-Gersdorf: “As long as the plagiarism against the professor from Potsdam is not completely cleared, you have to (sic!) Should be resting at the chair for public law at the University of Potsdam! President Prof. Günther should act immediately.”

According to the FAZ, Ludwig’s dissertation was accepted by the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Potsdam in December 2007. It is entitled “The task exposure to state companies in the state of Brandenburg and other selected federal states”.

“There are numerous unknown text takeovers at work,” said Zenthöfer of the FAZ. Ludwig used third parties without pointing out the source. Most of the time, the original source is mentioned in a later point, but only as a footnote that refers to a single sentence or even a word, the plagiarism expert continues.

The author calls the sources in the bibliography at one point or another, but undertook it with most of them, according to the expert. Zenthöfer speaks of so-called peasant victim quotes. So far, however, he had only viewed a almost third – 113 out of 368 pages. His intermediate conclusion: 86 not marked by Ludwig. Zenthöfer, who is a CDU member himself, explains to the FAZ that he acted on his own initiative and was not commissioned by anyone.

The FAZ asked Ludwig to comment on the allegations. She published this request on Thursday on X with the note: “Everyone can get their own picture!”. To do this, she linked her dissertation.

Zenthöfer receives support from the controversial, self -proclaimed plagiarism hunter Stefan Weber. So far, the Austrian has come to a similar result as Zenthöfer, he writes on X. After a quick analysis, he could not say anything about the true extent of the peasant victim quotes, according to Weber, and further: “It is certain that again not laying artis. In 2008, the work could have already run through plagiarism software. Again a failure of the University of Potsdam.”

According to the FAZ, the University of Potsdam has now confirmed the entrance of Zenthöfer’s suspicion. According to the newspaper, he points out that there are public interest in dealing with the matter. He mentions Ludwig’s statements about allegations of plagiarism – among others in the Brosius -Gersdorf case.

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