In recent years, the CDU politician Diana Kinnert has published two books: in 2017 “I see black for the future: Plea for a modern conservatism” was published, last year “The new loneliness: And how we can overcome it as a society” . But the 31-year-old apparently published it rather than wrote it entirely herself. An analysis by the plagiarism expert Stefan Weber comes to the conclusion that Kinnert, who was most recently a member of the values commission of party leader Friedrich Merz, copied both books to a considerable extent.
In a statement, he writes that Kinnert “plagiarized in more than 200 passages, sometimes extensively,” in the two books. Accordingly, she wrote to WELT editor-in-chief Ulf Poschardt, “FAZ” editor Markus Wehner and the publicist Leander Scholz, among others, and she is said to have “also copied from Wikipedia without quoting”. In “For the future I see black” Weber found 22 plagiarized passages, in “The New Loneliness” even 203 on 448 pages.
The books contained bibliographies “which do not mention the sources of plagiarism”. While “For the future I see black” has “large-scale, almost literal takeovers”, the takeovers in “The New Loneliness” are smaller, but all the more numerous. In the case of many plagiarism sites, violations of the copyrights of the authors concerned can also be assumed.
According to the FAZ, Kinnert, who is regarded as a CDU hope for young talent, has since apologized for her plagiarism. When asked, she admitted that she had not worked carefully. However, according to Kinnert, she did this “not willfully”. “When researching, I may have mixed up bits of text, copied sources into draft files, assumed I had already paraphrased correctly.”
The hardcover and paperback editions of The New Solitude have been withdrawn from sale by Verlag Hoffmann und Campe.
