BERLIN—Opposition lawmakers sought to entangle German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the plagiarism scandal embroiling her defense minister, even as the public seemed largely willing to forgive him for borrowing large sections of his doctoral thesis without attribution.
Meanwhile, the University of Bayreuth, where Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg received his doctoral degree in 2007, considered his scholarly transgressions serious enough that it revoked the doctorate Wednesday evening. University president Rüdiger Bormann said a panel of professors unanimously agreed "that Mr. zu Guttenberg violated his academic duty to a substantial degree."
Mr. zu Guttenberg, Germany's most popular politician, faced questions from incredulous lawmakers in parliament earlier in the day over revelations first levelled last week that his constitutional-law dissertation contains many passages lifted almost verbatim from newspapers and scholarly journals.
Many parliamentarians saved some of the harshest rebukes for Ms. Merkel, who has repeatedly affirmed her support for Mr. zu Guttenberg since the allegations first surfaced last week.
"There can't be any special rights for ministers in Germany," said Thomas Oppermann, a parliamentary leader for the Social Democrats, the main opponent to Ms. Merkel's Christian Democrat Union. "The chancellor has made a grave mistake. She sacrificed the truth for power, but she won't get away with it."
In parliament, Mr. zu Guttenberg said his "clearly faulty" dissertation sent a "poor signal" to academia, but didn't impair his ability to serve as defense minister. Amid the biggest overhaul of the German military since World War II, Mr. zu Guttenberg said he faces pressing duties "that I will continue to execute and fulfil with the sense of responsibility that I have up to now."
He was obliged to appear before lawmakers because, in addition to unattributed articles and journals, he is also accused of lifting work from parliament's research department, a potential abuse of office. The Bavarian baron said that he had used multiple parliamentary reports in his work as a lawmaker, and later included some of that material in the dissertation, but always with the proper attribution.
Though Ms. Merkel has stood by Mr. zu Guttenberg—as has Horst Seehofer, leader of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to Ms. Merkel's CDU—some corners of the conservative political elite appeared to be breaking rank. In a front-page editorial under the headline "Fired," the influential conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote that Mr. Guttenberg would do a service to himself and his party by offering to resign.
But heavy coverage of the scandal appears to have done little to turn an admiring public against him. In a poll released by Stern magazine Wednesday, 70% of respondents said the allegations hadn't changed their opinion of Mr. zu Guttenberg's trustworthiness, and 73% said he should remain in office—including a majority of respondents who identified themselves as members of the opposition SPD, Green and Left Parties.
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