(Dr.) Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg readies himself
for "storms of steel" over a fraudulent academic title

CALL ME OLD-FASHIONED, but I can still remember a time when “role models” actually had to have taken some sort of risk or at least achieved something in life through good honest work. No more.

Yesterday, German defense minister (Dr.) Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg was compelled to face the Bundestag to answer questions about the dodgy dissertation he had plagiarized from a range of uncredited sources, including whole sections illegally ghostwritten by Federal employees at taxpayers' expense (a special Guttenberg-hunting website called GuttenPlag Wiki has identified over 3,000 plagiarized passages on seventy percent of its pages, amounting to twenty-one percent of the entire work - the longest section without plagiarized content is a mere five pages long). During the turbulent question-and-answer session, the unrepentant Baron told the assembled deputies that he had no intention of resigning over this egregious fraud and that he actually represented a “role model for having recognized and admitted errors.” And it’s true: Just the day before, (Dr.) zu Guttenberg admitted to a conservative party assembly that he had indeed written a "flawed" dissertation and grandly announced that he would renounce his title – a full twenty-four hours before the University of Bayreuth formally stripped it from him anyway. In politics, I guess, timing is everything.

Guttenberg’s strategy is now clear: Attack and concede no ground to the enemy. Much foe, much honor. His supporters, who are legion, have understood their marching orders. They all agree that Guttenberg is a victim of “the extreme left.” One of the most bizarre defences for the “self-defense minister” was presented by the 72-year-old conservative Bundestag deputy Norbert Geis on Sandra Maischberger’s TV talkshow: “[Guttenberg] is passing through a storm of steel,“ Geis claimed, referencing Ernst Jünger’s proto-fascist World War I memoir Storms of Steel (1920). “He is facing an unbelievable headwind every day. Not only him, but his whole family, his children too. And if he can hold out, if he does not capitulate and run away, then in my opinion this will have given him an outstanding qualification.”

                              

Now if admitting the obvious under massive public pressure makes a person a role model, a hero even, then the end really is near. I knew we were headed downhill in 2001 when President George W. Bush told the graduating class of Yale: "To those of you who received honors, awards and distinctions, I say, ‘Well done,’” he told Yale graduates before breaking into a grin. “To the ‘C’ students, I say, ‘You, too, can be president of the United States.’” Cute? Sure. But a role model? Somehow I don’t think so.  Not that Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize for, I guess, escalating the Afghan War is particularly encouraging either.

The upside of the all-consuming Guttenberg scandal is the sheer volume of jokes and satire it has generated.  One of them goes like this: A young intern in the Defense Ministry has been asked to assemble and photocopy a series of newspaper cuttings on the situation in North Africa.  With a folder full of clippings under her arm, she steps into an office and asks the secretary, “Where can I find the copier?” “I’m afraid you’re out of luck,” the secretary says, shaking her head. “He’s off to visit the troops in Afghanistan.” 

Many people are now calling him “Dr. Googleberg” for the shameless way he googled together his phony dissertation.  Bayreuth, the university that actually awarded him summa cum laude for this wretched excuse for a thesis, now goes by the name of "Buy-reuth" for the way Baron Guttenberg supposedly paid his way to academic honors (he has a personal fortune of some 600 million Euros). Earlier this week, the so-called “Guttenberg Song” went viral.  In it, a musician added a few lyrics to the popular Prinzen hit about plagiarism, Alles nur geklaut (I Stole It All), to devastating comic effect. (You can watch it here.) 

Guttenberg’s struggle to save his political skin is all the more pathetic when you consider that if the man actually cared what a real role model looks like all he would have to do is to step into the courtyard of his own Defense Ministry in Berlin, where a German nobleman of a different caliber, Count Claus von Stauffenberg, faced a firing squad in 1944 for organizing a failed attempt on Hitler's life. Stauffenberg had little hope of success and virtually no support among the wider population.  He only gained his current status as a hero many years after the war and against the resistance of much of the older generation, who still regarded him as a traitor. Unlike (Dr.) Guttenberg, Stauffenberg took his chances and did the right thing. We're all grateful to him today.  Some I can't imagine we'll be seeing many Guttenberg Schools or Guttenberg Streets any time soon. 

 
Monument to Count von Stauffenberg and
the conspirators of June 17, 1944 in the courtyard
of the Defense Ministry in Berlin

So will Guttenberg do the right thing after all and resign, if not put a bullet through his skull as many critics have said he must in order to restore his aristocratic honor? Last night, just as the University of Bayreuth was announcing its decision to strip the Baron of his degree and perhaps also investigate him for fraud, a snap telephone poll revealed that 25% of Germans want him to resign while 75% are begging him to stay in office and continue to embody their dreams of a better, more glamorous nation. While (Dr.) Guttenberg has clearly sullied his honor as a baron and a cabinet minister, he remains his country's king of hearts.  And with friends like that, who cares about enemies?