The ‘plagiarism hunter’ terrorizing the German-speaking world

They name him “the plagiarism hunter.” He calls himself “meticulous” and an “addict.”
However he’s characterised, in German-speaking nations the place titles are vital indicators of social standing, Stefan Weber is the undisputed terror of teachers, politicians, celebrities and a panoply of different potential culprits.
Weber, an Austrian communications professor, has ended the careers of a number of folks and made life troublesome for a lot of others. And what began as a pastime has now developed right into a enterprise with 5 freelance “collaborators”, as he calls them, working with him to disclose the misdoings of lazy, sloppy or downright sneaky writers.

His newest goal: Annalena Baerbock, the Green Party candidate to exchange Angela Merkel as German chancellor in elections this month.
Weber, 51, obtained began on what would turn into his life’s work in 2005, when he himself was plagiarized by a German theologian, Joachim Fels, who defined that his failure to acknowledge Weber’s work correctly in his doctoral dissertation was the results of an editorial mishap. He appeared to assume that may settle the matter, however he didn’t absolutely recognize whom he was coping with.
Weber’s public grievance finally triggered a college investigation revealing that 86% of the primary 100 pages of Fels’ dissertation was plagiarized from Weber’s work. The fraud was lined prominently in main information media retailers; trailed by a German TV crew, Weber even door-stepped a perplexed Fels, who was finally stripped of his doctorate.
In the intervening years, armed solely with industrial software program and a virtually photographic reminiscence, Weber has gone after quite a lot of outstanding figures, together with, most not too long ago, Baerbock.
Following allegations that she embellished her CV, Weber ran her newly revealed guide, “Now: How We Renew Our Country,” by Turnitin and different plagiarism-detection applications. It marked at the very least 12 passages as virtually equivalent with different sources.
“Willful deceit,” mentioned Weber, who as soon as labored as a tabloid journalist and who publicized his findings in his weblog and thru quite a few interviews with main information organizations in Germany and Austria.
As the difficulty performed out in front-page articles, consultants cautioned in opposition to making use of requirements for doctoral dissertations to a brief nonfiction guide by a politician. Many noticed a concerted marketing campaign to discredit a extremely completed girl, whereas others puzzled if the far-right had bankrolled Weber’s analysis. (He mentioned it didn’t.)
Still, the episode strengthened a way of Baerbock as “dubious and sloppy,” Weber mentioned. The variety of passages within the guide discovered to be cribbed from blogs, information columns, books and the Greens’ election program has since grown to greater than 100. She led the polls within the spring, and her help has since dropped to lower than 20 per cent, although the plagiarism scandal will not be the one issue.
Critics describe him as a persnickety crusader who takes pleasure in character assassination. Even his supporters acknowledge that his drive to carry writers, teachers and others to the very best requirements will be vexing.
“He always wants to be the best, and he also demands that of others,” mentioned Peter A. Bruck, a former professor on the University of Salzburg who was a tutorial mentor to Weber.
Invariably, those that fall wanting his expectations will hear about it. When he found that his youngsters’s after-school middle had plagiarized its “pedagogical concept,” he promptly chastised faculty officers.

“I know when I’m annoying people with my meticulousness,” Weber mentioned over lunch at an Italian restaurant close to his workplace in a scruffy industrial district on the outskirts of Salzburg, Austria. When he’s not fasting to stave off the diabetes his physician predicted a decade in the past, he sometimes enjoys pizza alla diavola, although on this event he settled all the way down to a pasta dish whereas explaining the enterprise facet of issues.
That consists of investigating teachers’ publications, courtroom consultants’ opinions and books, for which he payments as a lot as $400 an hour. But the majority of his purchasers sometimes fall into two classes: males looking for to discredit their ex-wives amid or after a divorce (however by no means vice versa) and other people making an attempt to undermine their neighbors’ credibility in nasty disputes over property traces.
He mentioned he now receives about 50 inquiries a month and that individuals have begun sending him recommendations on massive circumstances just like the one he mounted in opposition to Christine Aschbacher, the Austrian labor minister who stepped down in January after a plagiarism scandal.
“It’s a gold mine,” he mentioned of Austrians’ schadenfreude.
Weber took an odd life path to his present station. Born in Salzburg to a strict and controlling workplace clerk father who checked his faculty bag every night and a mom who labored as a homemaker, younger Stefan Weber confirmed early indicators of being a math prodigy.
“May you remain humble in triumph,” a trainer cautioned the 11-year-old Weber. He excelled in most topics, with bodily schooling being the clear exception. Even lately, when his present companion, Birgit Kolb, hikes within the Alps, Weber opts for the cable automotive for the climb to the highest.
As a scholar on the University of Salzburg, Weber realized that the triumph his trainer had foreseen way back was not going to be present in math. Despite his prodigious reminiscence, he was unable to comply with the college math professors and as a substitute turned to “the idiot degree everyone studies: communications.”
Communications was a breeze, and Weber went on to show at eight universities of utilized sciences in Austria and Germany, all the time vying for tenure. He by no means attained it.
At 37, Weber moved to Dresden, Germany, the place his companion on the time labored as a civil servant. While serving to to care for his or her two youngsters, Maximilian and Anna, he taught at universities and labored as a communications marketing consultant.
He additionally revealed books critiquing new media and continued to work with Bruck, who nonetheless lauds Weber’s mind and ambition however has little persistence for his new profession. “From a useful tracker, he transformed into an illegitimate detractor,” he wrote in a 2007 op-ed rebuking Weber for accusing Johannes Hahn, then Austria’s science minister, of plagiarism. (Hahn was ultimately cleared of the accusation.)
In 2014 Weber returned to Salzburg, splitting together with his former companion the next yr.
Most of these he has named and shamed have neither misplaced their titles nor jobs, Weber mentioned, pointing to Hahn, who went on to turn into a European Union commissioner. This yr, nevertheless, when he uncovered “plagiarism, wrong citations and poor knowledge of German” within the educational work of Aschbacher, she stepped down inside two days.
For greater than a decade, Weber promoted plagiarism as a self-discipline worthy of publicly funded analysis, but it surely was solely with the Aschbacher case that the federal government started to take discover. “Only since politics has been hit,” he mentioned, “has politics become interested.”
Now, with authorities funding, he’s evaluating how Austria’s universities deploy plagiarism-detection software program and is making a Wiki that’s to turn into the last word information to correct sourcing, quoting and referencing. Eventually, he mentioned, he needs to lift requirements so excessive that he places himself out of labor.
But for now, he must scan and digitize the dissertations of two high-ranking civil servants. Weber picked up the certain volumes from the passenger-side ground of his navy blue Volkswagen and famous that they have been written within the aughts, a time when plagiarism flourished.
“That’s already making me suspicious,” he mentioned with a mischievous grin.