"Text fraud" - New accusations against Thuringia's head of government

Core of the academic work affected?

After the university's decision became known, Voigt himself said that the passages objected to by the faculty related to 2.58 percent of the words in his work. He announced that he would take legal action before an administrative court if necessary. The scientific core of his work was not affected. At the presentation of the new report, Höcke said: "Yes, the scientific core of Mario Voigt's dissertation is affected by the allegations."

Weber expressed "the utmost doubt that the content analyses were ever carried out at all." Plagiarism runs through the entire work. Another serious accusation: there are nine plagiarized works that Voigt is said to have cited neither in the body text nor in the footnotes nor in the bibliography - including several Wikipedia articles.

First accusations during the election campaign

The first accusations of plagiarism against Mario Voigt arose in the middle of the hot phase of the election campaign, a few weeks before the 2024 state election. Even then, it was Weber who had examined Voigt's 2008 dissertation on a presidential election campaign in the USA. Weber reported the results to Chemnitz University of Technology in August 2024 - a new state parliament was elected in Thuringia on September 1.

Voigt's CDU already sensed a smear campaign at the time. Weber still does not reveal whether there was a client at the time, but assures that it was not the AfD. "The AfD parliamentary group in Thuringia did not commission me, either directly or indirectly, to review Mario Voigt's work in 2024."

Mario Voigt's doctoral thesis is one of a series of dissertations by prominent people that Weber has already examined.

Lengthy process

Voigt received his doctorate in 2008 with the thesis "The American presidential election campaign: George W. Bush versus John F. Kerry", which was largely written in the USA. His doctoral supervisor is the Chemnitz political scientist Eckhard Jesse, who became known for his controversial image of the horseshoe for left-wing and right-wing extremism.

According to Chemnitz University of Technology, the Faculty Council of the Faculty of Philosophy will decide on Voigt's appeal. In the event of a negative decision in the objection procedure, a complaint could be filed with the competent administrative court, the TU writes on request. The university did not provide any further information on the current status of the proceedings - due to "the strict confidentiality in examination matters".

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