A study that Health Minister Karl Lauterbach is said to have specified in an application cannot be found. There are questions about his resume.
There are said to be inconsistencies in the CV of Health Minister Karl Lauterbach. The focus is on his interest in a professorship at the University of Tübingen and a project that has apparently disappeared. The newspaper “Die Welt” reports that when Lauterbach applied for a job in Tübingen in 1995, there was apparently a lack of clarity about a research project that was said to be ongoing at the time. Information about this had previously been published by publisher Thomas Kubo on the “Background.de” website.
According to this, the SPD politician gave three examples of his current projects in his application letter, as can be seen from documents in the university archive. One dealt with “quality assurance in the prevention, diagnostics, therapy and aftercare of breast cancer”, the federal government is said to have funded it with two million Deutschmarks.
Ministry is the project apparently unknown
According to research by “Welt”, Lauterbach is said to have told the decision-makers at the university in a personal conversation that he could bring part of the third-party funds he had raised – i.e. project financing from outside the university – to Tübingen. That would at least have been a plus for the applicant, because universities are often dependent on such funds.
However, the Federal Ministry of Health apparently told the “Welt” that it knew nothing about the project, which is said to have been based at the Aachen Tumor Center. The researchers did not find anything in the Federal Archives either.
In addition, the head of the tumor center, Angela Spelsberg, was also unable to find any documents on this project. She referred the “world” to a similar study, but Lauterbach was not mentioned in it. Spelsberg was married to Lauterbach at the time.
Questions also about book funding
According to the report, further questions are also raised by a book that has the same title as the project allegedly given by Lauterbach, but in which the doctor is not mentioned. It is said to be in the Berlin City Library. The director of studies named therein told the “Welt” that he could remember Lauterbach, but did not want to say anything about his application in Tübingen.
The alleged carcinoma study is not the only unanswered question in the politician’s CV. He is said to have given the impression that he was involved in raising funds for a study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton (USA). The head of studies at the time contradicts this to the “world“. And there are also two slightly different versions of a book project: Lauterbach is said to have stated that he was funded by the Robert Bosch Foundation. According to the foundation, a promise was made, but the money was never paid out because the book was not completed.
The head of the press office of the Ministry of Health, Hanno Kautz, told “Welt” that the details of the studies mentioned could no longer be reconstructed. Lauterbach himself, who is otherwise very active on Twitter, has so far made no statement.
At that time, Tübingen decided in favor of Lauterbach, but the latter declined the call. Instead, he applied to Cologne and became a professor of health economics and clinical epidemiology. On the website of the Federal Ministry of Health, the call to Tübingen is also stated in the CV, but there is no information about jobs in Aachen.