Revoked doctorate – Berlin Transport Senator Manja Schreiner resigns
dpa/Christoph Soeder
Audio: rbb24 Inforadio | April 30, 2024 | Sabine Müller | Image: dpa/Christoph Soeder
The University of Rostock has reviewed Manja Schreiner’s doctoral thesis – and will revoke her title. Schreiner is now drawing conclusions from this – and is announcing her resignation as Berlin’s transport senator.
rbb24 special on resignation at 8:15 p.m. in the live stream and on rbb television
- In August 2023, the review of Manja Schreiner’s (CDU) doctoral thesis was initiated due to possible plagiarism
- The University of Rostock is now revoking the politician’s doctorate
- Schreiner announced her resignation on Tuesday
- She wants to privately challenge the university’s assessment
Berlin Transport Senator Manja Schreiner is resigning. In a short statement on Tuesday morning, the CDU politician said that the University of Rostock would revoke her doctorate. In order to prevent damage to the Berlin Senate, she asked the governing mayor Kai Wegner (CDU) for her dismissal.
“I do this with a very heavy heart,” said the Senator for Mobility, Transport, Climate Protection and the Environment, “I would have loved to use all my strength to further shape this city.” Schreiner emphasized that she had not intentionally deceived or cheated at any point in her dissertation. As a private individual, she will therefore lodge an objection against the decision.
About an hour later, Wegner announced that he was complying with Schreiner’s request. It is therefore not clear who will succeed her post. “Discussions will be held soon,” said the governing mayor.
Review after allegations of plagiarism against Schreiner’s doctoral thesis
Last summer, Manja Schreiner asked the University of Rostock to review her legal doctoral thesis from 2007. This was in response to reports of plagiarism in the work on the topic of “employee consideration in takeover law”.
The University of Rostock justified the withdrawal of the doctoral title with the extent of insufficiently marked text transfers in her dissertation. The quantity of errors and their qualitative weighting led the Faculty Council to come to the conclusion that the work did not meet the standards of a scientific work, the Faculty of Law committee announced on Tuesday: “Therefore, Ms. Schreiner should not have been awarded the doctoral degree. The Faculty Council has therefore unanimously decided to revoke the doctoral degree.”
The accusation first appeared in the specialist magazine “Neue Juristische Wochenschrift”. Frankfurt law professor Roland Schimmel cited Schreiner’s work as an example in an article about so-called “pawn sacrifices” in academic writings. “Pawn sacrifices” are text transfers from other works in which the source is named but, for example, it is not clearly marked to what extent the text was copied.
Experts then analyzed the doctoral thesis on the Vroni-Plag Wiki platform and, according to their own statements, found “numerous and extensive evidence of plagiarism”. The website states that more than two-thirds of the pages contained plagiarized text, and on 13 pages the problematic passages made up more than 75 percent of the text. Mainly it’s about “pawn sacrifices”, but sometimes it’s also about “complete plagiarism”.
Giffey also resigned after allegations of plagiarism
Schreiner himself had never publicly commented on the allegations until Tuesday. Those around her recently said that she had “a deep conviction that she had done nothing wrong.”
Manja Schreiner is not the first top Berlin politician to lose office after allegations of plagiarism. In 2021, current Economics Senator Franziska Giffey (SPD) resigned as Federal Minister for Family Affairs when it became apparent that the Free University would revoke her doctorate. A few months later, Giffey ran as the top candidate in the Berlin House of Representatives election and became governing mayor after the SPD election victory.
Despite losing his doctorate, the then CDU parliamentary group leader in the House of Representatives, Florian Graf, remained in office in 2012.
Schreiner met with criticism for her policies as transport senator
Schreiner is a lawyer and has been a member of the black-red Berlin Senate since the end of April 2023. From 1996 to 2001 she studied law at the University of Rostock. 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.
As Senator for Mobility, Transport, Climate Protection and the Environment, Schreiner encountered criticism from urban society for many of her decisions. Critics from other parties accused her of following the efforts of the previous red-green-red government ecological transport transition to make a mobility policy for cars more important again.
Recognition from the CDU, criticism from the opposition
“Anyone who has been deceived and abused privileges must draw consequences,” said Green Party leader Werner Graf on Tuesday, commenting on the resignation announcement. “Therefore, Manja Schreiner’s resignation after her doctorate was revoked was the only possible step.” Schreiner’s position, which has now become vacant, must be filled “quickly.” He criticized Schreiner’s work as transport senator as a “stop policy” and called for a “progressive, courageous and sustainable transport policy” for Berlin.
Governing Mayor Wegner emphasized in his statement that he had accepted the request to resign “with a heavy heart.” Wegner called Schreiner “a face and a voice for an urgently needed transport transition in our city that overcomes the ideology of recent years.” In the past twelve months, Schreiner has “set the right priorities and advocated for a transport policy that takes all road users into account.”
The Berlin CDU General Secretary Ottilie Klein paid her respects to Schreiner on X. “The turnaround towards fair mobility for all that began a year ago bears her signature.”
The chairwoman of the AfD parliamentary group in the House of Representatives, Kristin Brinker, praised the transport senator’s resignation as “political decency”. Schreiner was “as a transport senator a positive change from her purely ideologically motivated predecessors. She clearly made an effort to reconcile the diverse transport interests of Berliners instead of playing road users off against each other like her predecessors,” said Brinker.
Broadcast: rbb24 Inforadio, April 30, 2024, 11:30 a.m