( CNN ) -- Her doctoral thesis dealt with how we form our conscience . Turns out she plagiarized chunks of it . A university stripped Germany 's education minister of her Ph.D. on Tuesday , after a blogger caught the plagiarism and spent months vigilantly presenting the evidence to the public . Annette Schavan is the second minister in conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel 's cabinet who has this embarrassing distinction . Former defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg stepped down in May 2011 , after large passages of his dissertation were found to have been directly copied from other sources . At the time , Schavan sharply criticized Guttenberg publicly for his shortcomings , according to German media reports . Since April 2012 , the blog `` schavanplag '' ( for `` Schavan '' and `` plagiarism '' ) has compared passages of Schavan 's 1980 dissertation with sections of written works by other authors -- in multiple instances they match word for word , or nearly . The blog alleges Schavan did not properly source her work and claimed others ' work as her own . Schavan , who studied education , philosophy and Catholic theology , received her doctorate with highest honors , including for the verbal section of her dissertation . She has spent her career in education roles in the Catholic church . She denies wrongdoing and plans to sue the University of Dusseldorf for invalidating her degree , according to her lawyers . She has been fighting the blog 's allegations in public for months and has given no signs of stepping down as education minister . The board of the department that awarded her the degree said that there are just too many borrowed passages in her dissertation entitled : `` People and Conscience -- studies on the foundations , necessity and challenges in forming a conscience in our time . '' The board found that she had `` systematically and deliberately laid claim to intellectual achievements , which she in reality did not produce herself . ''
The university had awarded her the doctorate in 1980 with highest honors . She is the second minister who is accused of plagiarism . The German education minister has given no signal she will step down . A former student at a Berlin school where Merkel studied says he was told by his teacher that she plagiarized from him and other students.