Document forgery at the University of Tübingen?
By Thomas Ziegner
Tübingen. Uncovering counterfeits is not only the task of the press, but also of science, to which one may, with some good will, count the discipline of general rhetoric cultivated in Tübingen. But now it seems that the seminar for general rhetoric, once headed by Walter Jens, is guilty of forgery. His first prize for the „Speech of the Year“, awarded in 1998 to Martin Walser by former chief rhetorician Gert Ueding in order to benefit vampiresk from the publicity of the Bubis-Walser controversy, is still shown on the seminar’s current website as correctly.
Although the honorable scientists know that there was no jury at that time, they provide their good names for the hoax, there was one. Is this now document forgery? Or just the usual corruption in the company? And would the guards have to interfere with the observance of scientific principles — the university has an IZEW, an International Center for Ethics in the Sciences — intervene or is it not so accurate with the rhetoricians anyway?
Maybe we know more next year. Now the rhetoricians are busy: Soon they will have chosen the „Speech of the Year 2017“.
Addition on 18.12., 1:30 pm: They managed to find a winner just an hour ago: Peter Strohschneider, President of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Among other things, they praise his „intellectual honesty“.