On 19 May 2021, Franziska Giffey resigned as federal minister for family affairs because of the plagiarism affair over her doctoral thesis. On 10 June 2021, the Free University of Berlin announced that it would withdraw her doctorate. On 21 December 2021, she was elected Governing Mayor of Berlin, with 84 of 139 votes.
The lost title cost her a federal ministry. It did not end her career.
In 2015, 38 percent of the board members of Germany’s largest listed companies, the DAX companies, held a doctorate. In 2026 the share had fallen to 28 percent, according to the executive search firm Odgers. The share with an MBA had risen to 24 percent. For lawyers on these boards, the doctorate still counts. Fifty-two percent of them hold one.
Ferdinand Porsche never enrolled at a university. He trained with his father, took evening courses at a state trade school, and attended lectures in Vienna without enrolling. In 1924 the Technical University of Stuttgart made him an honorary doctor of engineering. In 1931 he registered his design office as Dr. Ing. h. c. F. Porsche GmbH. The carmaker’s legal name today is still Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG.
His doctorate was honorary, earned by what he had built rather than by study. It still stands at the front of the company’s name.
August Oetker trained as a pharmacist and earned a doctorate in botany at the University of Freiburg in 1888. In 1891 he bought a pharmacy in Bielefeld. He sold a baking powder under the name Backin, with a Gelinggarantie, a guarantee that every cake would succeed. From 1899 he used the trademark Dr. Oetker. The brand still carries his title.
Dr. Stefan Frank – Der Arzt, dem die Frauen vertrauen. Dr. Stefan Frank, the doctor whom women trust. That was the full title of a medical drama made for RTL from 1995 to 2001. It ran for 104 episodes. It was based on a series of novels of the same name from the publisher Bastei.
The Schufa was founded in Berlin in 1927. It grew into a system for judging how people pay. Today it holds data on 67.9 million people. For 17 March 2026 it announced a new score on a scale from 100 to 999 points, based on twelve criteria. Payment problems are among them, and so is the age of a person’s oldest credit card. The consumer advice center of North Rhine-Westphalia welcomed the greater transparency but criticized parts of the new score. Younger consumers “haben gar nicht die Chance auf einen guten Wert,” said its legal expert Christine Steffen. They have no chance at all of a good score. They have not yet been able to prove themselves in economic life.
In German letters and e-mails, the salutation includes the academic title. Sehr geehrte Frau Dr. Freudenreich. Sehr geehrter Herr Professor Knodel. A person with several titles is addressed by the highest one only. In the address field, all titles appear, as in Professor Dr. Dr. Karl Meier. A guide for students at the University of Trier notes that many a chief physician would not accept it, even from a patient, if he were called only Herr Doktor instead of Herr Professor. It also notes that colleagues inside academia usually drop titles among themselves.
In everyday speech, the title has merged with one profession. Zum Doktor gehen, to go to the doctor, means to see a physician. In a hospital, a white coat is often enough to be called Herr Doktor or Frau Doktor.
Many German physicians write their doctoral thesis while they are still studying medicine. Critics mock the result as Dr. med. Dünnbrett-Bohrer, a doctor of medicine who drills through thin boards. Even the German Council of Science and Humanities recommends writing the thesis only after graduation. The medical doctorate is still the most common one. In 2025, 30 percent of all doctoral candidates in Germany were working toward a doctorate in human medicine or health sciences.
The title still opens doors, but Germans ask how much work stands behind it.
As a rule, anyone who wants to practice medicine in Germany needs the Approbation, the state license. Only a person with this license, or with a special permit, may use the professional title Arzt or Ärztin. The license requires a medical degree of at least 5,500 hours over at least six years. It also requires that the person has not behaved in a way that shows them to be unworthy of the profession or unreliable in it. If that condition lapses later, the license must be withdrawn.
A German judge or lawyer must be a Volljurist, a fully qualified lawyer. The Duden defines this as a lawyer who has passed the second state exam after a period of practical training. The German Judiciary Act requires a university law degree completed with the first exam, then a preparatory service completed with the second state exam. Only a person with this qualification may be admitted as a lawyer. The grade matters as well. To be hired by Bavaria’s ordinary courts, a candidate needs at least eight points in the second exam. Several states have lowered their thresholds in recent years.