German Defense Minister Karl- Theodor Zu Guttenberg cannot hold his doctoral degree any more in law, the University of Bayreuth announced late Wednesday, as the minister was suspected of plagiarizing large parts of his thesis.
"The University of Bayreuth has taken back Mr. Zu Guttenberg's Title of doctor," university president Ruediger Bormann said in a press conference.
He said that a committee of economics and law professors confirmed Guttenberg's thesis "was not the result of correct scientific work."
Bormann did not elaborate on the very problem of the thesis, adding that they have not qualified the paper as a plagiarism, and there was another commission responsible for defining the errors.
In Guttenberg's 475-page thesis on European Union constitution, some German law professors and plagiarism hunters have listed over 100 suspect parts that were copied or slightly altered without any acknowledgment in the footnotes.
They also said that a 5-page section matched almost word by word an article on Germany's famous Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper.
Earlier Wednesday, the 39-year-old minister, now dubbed "Dr. Googleberg" or " Cut-and- Paste Minister" by German media, faced sharp attacks from opposition parties in a four-hour-long session in the lower house of parliament in Berlin.
The Social Democratic (SPD) parliamentary whip Thomas Oppermann urged Guttenberg to resign due to his dishonesty. "You have cheated, you have deceived, and you have lied," he said. "I find it intolerable that the chancellor allowed an impostor and liar to still remain a position in the cabinet."
"Plagiarism assumes that one has consciously and deliberately cheated. In all my statements, I have clearly said that I consciously nor deliberately cheated, but that I did make severe mistakes," Guttenberg told law makers.
During his seven years of study for Ph.D., "I was so rash as to believe that I could handle my political enthusiasms and work with academic and intellectual challenges while raising a young family. Obviously it was overloading," the minister said.
He insisted that he would go on with his job in coming weeks or months "with delight and with enthusiasm."
Guttenberg on Monday announced that he decided to give up the doctorate title "permanently". However, the university said he has no authority to drop it until his alma mater made official decisions.
However, the plagiarism scandal seemed to have little effect on his popularity among German public. A poll, conducted by the Infratest dimap polling institute for ARD television, showed on Wednesday that 73 percent of people are satisfied with Guttenberg's political work, comparing with 68 percent before the row surfaced.
Some 72 percent of interviewees said he could stay his minister as he lost the Ph.D. title, while 24 percent believed he should resign.
In the two terms of Chancellor Angela Merkel's government, Guttenberg served as economy minister first and then defense minister. He was considered the most popular politician in Germany and was labelled as a possible future chancellor.
His grandfather, also named Karl-Theodor Zu Guttenberg, was a founder of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party of Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU).
On Monday, Merkel expressed her "full confidence" on his embattled minister. "I appointed Guttenberg as defense minister. I didn't appoint him as a research assistant or doctoral student," she said.