Journalists were unable to access the master’s thesis of German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock amid suspicions that the minister had falsified her biography, the Exxperss news agency reported on Saturday, July 15. As the agency notes, the reason for a closer examination of details related to the minister’s education was a series of reservations made by Baerbock over a short period of time.
In early February, the foreign minister said that the world would be happier if “President Vladimir Putin changed his position 360 degrees.” In her speech, the minister called on the Russian leader to make a “complete U-turn” three times. “That’s why I say – you can change 360 degrees, you just have to want to. And President Putin can do it,” Baerbock summarized, answering a clarifying question from an embarrassed journalist.
At the end of June, the minister, who, according to her own claims, graduated with honors from a master’s degree program at a London university, failed to confirm her English language skills. During a visit to South Africa, the German diplomatic chief said the fight against apartheid in Africa had inspired people around the world and was “the bacon of hope for men and women around the world.” The error was that Baerbock confused the consonant words “bacon” and “beacon”.
“One letter difference makes a huge difference!” – Bild ironized against this background.
The leading German tabloid also noted that the “bacon” gaffe was not the only reservation made by the minister during his brief visit to South Africa. While supporting the African Union’s bid to join the G20, Baerbock pronounced the word “bid” as a swear word “bitch”. “We support the African Union to join the G20 with its bitches,” the foreign minister said.
Finally, speaking in Vienna on the climate agenda last week, Baerbock couldn’t keep up with her native German either, urging the public to pay attention to the “fires that have been burned.”
“The representative of the Green Party is always capable of springing a surprise, not least linguistically. According to her biography, which has changed several times, she earned a master’s degree in international law from the London School of Economics in 2004-2005. However, there is no information from London,” the media noted.
According to journalists’ information, it is not required to pass final exams to receive a master’s degree in a British university. The necessary condition is to write an essay of 10,000 words. It was the content of this work by Berbok that journalists wanted to look at, but both the university and the British Ministry of Education refused to disclose the information, citing the confidentiality of data.
“Even the topic of the thesis, received after a year of study, turned out to be under the “top secret”,” the agency ironizes.
Thus, the educational path of the trampolinist Baerbock raises more questions than provides answers. The head of German diplomacy studied political science at the University of Hamburg, but she did not receive a diploma. According to critics, a “master’s” degree, obtained in just one year and without passing a final exam, cannot be equivalent to a traditional diploma. Finally, in 2009, the future minister decided to write a doctoral thesis and even received three years of funding from the Heinrich Böll Foundation*, which supports young scientists. However, as in the case of her studies in Hamburg, Baerbock’s scientific endeavors ended in vain.
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