Manja Schreiner moved from business to the Berlin Senate in 2023. After around a year as a member of the government, she is now losing her doctorate – and also her job.
Berlin’s Environment and Transport Senator Manja Schreiner is losing her doctorate due to errors in her dissertation and wants to resign because of this. The CDU politician announced this after a lengthy review process that she herself had asked the University of Rostock to do following allegations of plagiarism.
The university informed her that it would revoke the doctoral degree she was awarded in 2007, said Schreiner. That’s why she asked the governing mayor Kai Wegner (CDU) to be released from office. “I am doing this to prevent damage to the Berlin Senate.” According to the politician, she did not intentionally deceive at any point in her doctoral thesis.
Schreiner is a lawyer and has been a member of the black-red Berlin Senate since the end of April 2023. In the summer of 2023 there were reports of irregularities and possible plagiarism in her dissertation on the topic of “Employee consideration in takeover law”. Schreiner then announced at the beginning of August 2023 that she was having her doctoral thesis from 2007 reviewed by the university.
Schreiner’s work as an example
The case became public at the time through a specialist article in the “Neue Juristische Wochenschrift”. There, the Frankfurt law professor Roland Schimmel reported on so-called “pawn sacrifices” in academic papers and used Schreiner’s work as an example. The term plagiarism hunters means improperly marked copying of text from other works.
Schreiner studied law at the University of Rostock from 1996 to 2001. After her legal clerkship, she completed a master’s degree in international and European business law. From 2005 to 2007 she did her doctorate in Rostock.
She then worked, among other things, at the cruise company Aida Cruises, as a legal officer at the Federal Association of German Industries (BDI) and as head of the legal department at the Central Association of German Crafts. Before moving to the Berlin Senate, she worked as general manager of the Berlin and Brandenburg Construction Association.
Schreiner was also temporarily deputy state chairwoman of the Berlin CDU. She is considered a confidant of the party chairman and governing mayor Wegner, who brought her to the Senate in April 2023. As Senator for Mobility, Transport, Climate Protection and the Environment, critics from other parties accused her of reinstating a mobility policy for cars.
Source: Stern
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