Andreas Scheuer

Andreas Scheuer (born 26 September 1974 in Passau) is a German politician and member of the CSU party. Since 15 December 2013 he has been Secretary General of the CSU. From 2009 to 2013 Scheuer was Parliamentary Secretary of State in the former Federal Ministry for Transport, Building and Urban Development in the Cabinet Merkel II. Scheuer has been a member of the German Bundestag since 2002. In 2016 he was also elected district chairman of CSU Lower Bavaria.

Scheuer completed high school in 1994 in Passau. In 1998 he completed his first state examination in teaching at junior high schools. After that he achieved a master's degree in political science, economics and sociology at the University of Passau in 2001. In 2004 he completed a PhDr at Charles University Prague.

This degree, also referred to as "little PhD", does not qualify to bear the title PhD or its German equivalent, Doktor. Instead, the title is classified as equivalent to a Master's degree according to the Bologna system. However, Scheuer has used the title Doktor repeatedly in 2004 and 2005, notably in the German federal elections 2005. German forbids such practice with the exception of Berlin and Bavaria, a peculiarity arising from the federal structure of the German educational system. This peculiarity is also the reason why an investigation has been abandoned in 2005. Scheuer did not change this practice until January 2014 after his appointment as Secretary General of the CSU lead to a significant media interest in his personal biography and his misleading usage of the PhD title was reported.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung also reported that his PhDr thesis features 3 long passages which have been copied word-for-word without any citation from a publication of the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, the public center for political education in Germany. According to the newspaper, his thesis resembles a "collage of only loosely connected term papers" . An investigation at Charles University Prague confirmed that Scheuer has plagiarized but did not consider these passages crucial to the thesis and did not deprive Scheuer of his PhDr title. Der Spiegel, a prominent German medium, referred to Scheuer as "Doktor Peinlich" (embarassing, PhD) pointing to his hawkish profile on immigration with his most prominent uttering: "Wer betrügt, der fliegt" (Who cheats will be deported) . Scheur then admitted his partial plagiarism and renounced the title voluntarily.

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