Germany's education minister has come under mounting pressure to resign after her university stripped her of her doctorate after ruling that she had plagiarised chunks of the paper.

The ruling against Annette Schavan comes as a blow to Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, who is aiming to win a third term in office in federal elections this September.

A panel of academics from Düsseldorf University found that Ms Schavan had "systematically and deliberately" passed off the work of others as her own without sufficient sourcing in her 1980 thesis, entitled "Person and Conscience." The decision prompted immediate opposition calls for the head of Ms Schavan, who in her capacity as education minister is responsible for academic standards.

Andrea Nahles, general secretary of the opposition Social Democrats, said Ms Schavan must "face the consequences of her actions," while Green party leader Jurgen Trittin claimed that she no longer had any credibility as education minister and that her "position was no longer tenable."

Mrs Merkel has so far stood by her beleaguered minister. Steffen Seibert said the chancellor still had "full confidence" in Ms Schavan, and added that she was "in good contact" with the education minister who is on holiday in South Africa.
Mr Seibert added, however, that when Ms Schavan returns "the two will have an opportunity to talk in peace".

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The education minister has been one of Mrs Merkel's most popular cabinet members, but faced with growing calls for her to sack the minister, and aware of the need to nip any scandal in the bud well ahead of September's election, the chancellor may well have to jettison Ms Schavan.
She will also be eager to avoid a repeat of the damaging political fallout from an earlier plagiarism scandal in 2011 that forced Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the then defence minister, to quit.
With her political career hanging by a thread Ms Schavan vowed to fight on.