How Plagiarism Became a Theme For the 2021 German Election

 Over the past month, there's been a lot of hype in Germany over the Green Party's Chancellor candidate....Annalena Baerbock.  The slant of the story?  She wrote a book ("Jetzt"), and a fair sum of the material in the 200-odd pages were plagiarized.  For German intellectuals....it's a pretty dire thing to accept.  

So I noticed today....via 'The European', a plagiarism expert sat down and spent some time over Robert Habeck (the other top Green Party individual) and his book (printed in January of 2021).

His book, entitled 'Von hier an anders'.....was totally reviewed, and zero issues of plagiarism.  In fact, the expert noted that Habeck cited just about everything covered...in a precise way.

So 'The European' (piece written by Stefen Weber) goes to this detail....between all of the experts who have done the review on Baerbock's book....the figure is currently reaching fifty 'problems'.

What may have happened here?  If you go to the summer of 2020....Habeck was the leading person for the Green Party's Chancellor candidate.  I think he anticipated that and even projected that image from the fall period of 2019.  So he probably had ample time to write a book.....probably hire a good 'copy-person' who did the citation business, and ensured it was well-written.

Habeck's publisher probably had even a month or two in the process to do their own review.

Baerbock?  Her 'grab' onto the Chancellor candidate status came on suddenly....around December 2020.  The sales pitch was....Baerbock was more animated, while Habeck was 'wooden'.  The party itself wasn't given a chance to vote on this whole thing.....it was simply the executive committee who blessed the change-over and it was a done deal.

I think Baerbock went into some turbo-mode and 'Jetzt' was written in a hurried fashion....maybe by her....maybe by her husband...maybe by some 'friend'.  I don't think she hired a professional copy-person to write the draft or ensure citations were in the mix.  It was simply rushed out, and the publisher didn't do any real work over the review.  

If this had been a fictional work....a hot-lusty romance novel between Doctor Huns, Nurse Wanda, and the radiology technician Marvin....citations wouldn't matter.  But this was a non-fiction piece....telling people how to live a proper, clean, and environmentally-pure life.  Baerbock screwed up with the cut-and-paste function.  

Up until that point, Baerbock had this enormous chance to almost double the vote-count from 2017, and possibly take the Chancellor position.  Everything is called into question now, because of the stupid book and issues.