New allegations of plagiarism against Armin Laschet: In a book by the CDU and CSU candidate for chancellor, there are apparently other problematic passages of text, as reported by “Spiegel”.
Against the book “The Rising Republic” by Union Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet there are again allegations of plagiarism, according to “Spiegel”. The magazine reported on Friday in advance from its new edition that in addition to the previously publicly known text adoptions without sufficient source information, there were at least four other places in which Laschet adopted fragments from other authors without indicating the origin of these passages.
Laschet is said to have used the text of Salomon Korn, the former Vice President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and two Wikipedia articles in the book, which was published in 2009. He is also said to have adopted a sentence by the then EU Interior Commissioner Franco Frattini without marking the sentence as a quote and without naming the source.
Laschet’s office referred to the “Spiegel” that it had already started its own review of the book a week ago.
Reading deception? Plagiarism expert waves it away
The Munich law professor and plagiarism expert Volker Rieble considers the risk to be low that politicians’ books such as that of Laschet or that of the Green Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock are misleading. Because the expectations of such publications are low from the outset, the authors cannot do any harm with them. “The excitement about these politicians’ books is completely superfluous,” Rieble told the magazine.
The first allegations of plagiarism in connection with Laschet were made public at the end of July by the author Karsten Weitzenegger, who was made aware of the alleged adoption of Weitzenegger’s text passages by the well-known plagiarism hunter Martin Heidingsfelder. Laschet then admitted errors and announced that he would arrange for an examination of the entire book.
Then the Viennese media scientist Stefan Weber found a longer passage in Laschet’s book that conspicuously coincides with a text by political scientist Hans Maier, as Weber wrote on his blog.
Weber had previously accused Baerbock of several literal takeovers in her new book “Now. How we renew our country”.
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