Guttenberg took the step after resisting almost two weeks of media pressure and demands from academia as well as the political opposition to resign over plagiarism allegations.

While German Chancellor Angela Merkel had backed the 39-year-old defense minister until the end, support within his own party subsided this week, suggesting that his stay in Cabinet was becoming untenable.

"It's the most painful decision of my life," Guttenberg said at a news conference called in the Defense Ministry in Berlin. "I was always ready to fight but I have reached the limit of my resources."

Guttenberg said he resigned not only because of the allegations of plagiarism in his dissertation -- the University of Bayreuth last week stripped him of his doctorate -- but also to prevent damage to the German armed forces, the government and his party, the Christian Social Union, a Bavarian sister party to Merkel's Christian Democratic Union.

He added that the media frenzy hurt himself and his family and made Guttenberg the center of attention when the focus should have been on the German soldiers who are giving their lives to fight for Germany in Afghanistan.

"If it's only about myself, to the disadvantage of the soldiers, then I can no longer tolerate that," he said.

The resignation is a dramatic fall for Guttenberg, one of the country's most promising political stars.

A man with good looks, smart manners and a forte for rock music, Guttenberg in less than two years developed from a young parliamentarian into a realistic option as Germany's next chancellor. Over the past months, he was consistently voted Germany's most popular politician, outshining even his boss Merkel.

Heaved into the Economy Ministry brief by Merkel in February 2009, Guttenberg quickly rose through the ranks, becoming Defense Minister eight months later at a time when the German armed forces were in transition.

Guttenberg became popular with the Bundeswehr for his regular visits to Afghanistan, where some 5,000 German troops are stationed with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. This helped him launch a radical and controversial reform to turn the Bundeswehr into a smaller, more professional force. It included decisions to cut the defense budget by $11 billion until 2014, reduce the number of personnel from 250,000 to 150,000 and abolish conscription.

Yet the evidence of plagiarism and the gradually waning support from his party colleagues led him to take a step that had seemed inevitable for quite some time. More than one-fifth of his 393-page dissertation is fraudulent, media reports say. Critics tipped him "Dr. Googleberg" or "Minister of copy and paste."

His fall will likely damage Germany's conservatives and the chancellor at a time when key regional elections are imminent, Nils Diederich, a political expert with Berlin's Free University, told United Press International.

Guttenberg's way of resigning, Diederich said, came much too late and was handled unprofessionally.

"It reeked of self-pity and wasn't very statesmanlike," Diederich told UPI in a telephone interview. "And Ms. Merkel should have acted better through this whole affair, she should have realized it much earlier that Mr. Guttenberg had become unbearable."

Merkel will have a tough time finding a suitable successor for Guttenberg. Most of her senior party allies -- for example Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere -- are already in key posts.

There has been speculation that Merkel might give a young politician a chance at a big job, just as she did two years ago with Guttenberg. But finding a promising new candidate won't be easy.

"The problem is that the conservatives don't have many Guttenbergs within their ranks," Diederich said.

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News