Frank Schirrmacher
Several years later, Der Spiegel criticized him for self-plagiarism in his dissertation—asserting that most of the text had already been used as his magister thesis and in a Suhrkamp book publication—, as well as for other inconsistent statements about his biography.In his 2004 book Das Methusalem-Komplott, published in 14 languages and selling more than 1 million copies in Germany, Schirrmacher prognosticated the ageing of society as a result of low birth rates and calling for an "uprising of the old".The title refers to Schirrmacher's assertion that the family was dissolving as the smallest cell of society, resulting in diminution of social relationships to a minimum.Through a PR campaign which included publishing some passages in Der Spiegel and Bild-Zeitung, the book caused another media debate about the topic.Grass made the admission in a conversation about his new autobiography, Peeling the Onion, saying he had been drafted at the age of 17 into the Waffen-SS—the combat force of the SS—in the final months of World War II.