Thursday, July 01, 2021
Request to plagiarism hunters
Was group planning anti-Baerbock campaign?
Green Chancellor candidate Bearbock is under criticism for allegations of plagiarism. According to a report, a group is said to have been looking for plagiarism experts as early as the beginning of May to examine Baerbock’s résumé. Their alleged goal: to send Habeck into the race after all.
Green Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock is currently confronted with allegations of plagiarism. The Austrian media scientist Stefan Weber accuses her of copying her book – which the Greens categorically reject. A Green spokesman described this as an “attempt at character assassination”. Baerbock’s book “Now. How We Renew our Land” was published on June 21st. Weber had already dealt with inaccuracies in Baerbock’s curriculum vitae since May.
According to the “VroniPlag” founder Martin Heidingsfelder, a group is said to have started looking for plagiarism hunters for an anti-Baerbock campaign as early as the beginning of May. At that time, he was contacted by a former social democrat in order to trace the resume of the green candidate for chancellor, as reported by “t-online”. Heidingsfelder said he had rejected the request. “I don’t give my reputation and name for something like that.”
He was told that he should understand if you talk to the media scientist Stefan Weber, said Heidingsfelder, according to the report. Weber therefore did not respond to an inquiry on Wednesday, but then issued a press release in which he raised new allegations against Baerbock and stated that he was acting “without a payment order”, as he emphasized. “I also have no client with whom it would have been agreed to claim exactly this: namely, that there was no order. I hereby declare that in lieu of oath.” It is therefore not known whether Weber was even contacted by the group that Heidingsfelder had asked.
“Rather from the right camp”
Heidingsfelder described “t-online” that, according to his impression, the group of alleged initiators came “more from the right-wing camp”, but could not be assigned to a party. It is about “people who can start campaigns”. According to the statement, it is not against the Greens per se, but about Annalena Baerbock. He had been told that it had to go quickly so that the party could still send co-party chairman Robert Habeck into the race. Heidingsfelder told the news portal that he was still in contact with the person who contacted him: “He wrote to me again on Wednesday: ‘Join us.'”
Baerbock’s book, against which Weber recently made allegations, is not an academic text for which strict standards of academic work apply. In the 240-page book, Baerbock spreads green political concepts and combines them with personal experiences. She does not use footnotes with which she could refer to sources. Weber also admits that. “A non-fiction book by a politician at Ullstein-Verlag is not a dissertation,” he writes. But: “Text plagiarism is not ethically correct and has already been rightly criticized in non-fiction books.”
Following Weber’s allegations of plagiarism, Baerbock has already brought in the lawyer Christian Schertz, who specializes in media law. In a statement sent by the Greens press office, he said: “I cannot begin to recognize a copyright infringement, since the few passages referred to are nothing more than the reproduction of generally known facts and political views.” The Ullstein-Verlag, which published the book, protested against the allegations and argued similarly.
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