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Photo: The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

FILE - in this Dec. 13, 2012 file photo German Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, talks to Education Minister Annette Schavan during a session of the German parliament Bundestag in Berlin, Germany. (AP Photo/dpa, Rainer Jensen, File)

Germany's education minister says she will not resign after a university stripped her of her doctorate because of plagiarism, and vowed to fight the ruling.

Annette Schavan is the second minister in Chancellor Angela Merkel's Cabinet to lose a doctorate because of plagiarism. Former Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg resigned in 2011 after it emerged he copied large parts of his thesis.

Opposition politicians say Schavan is now in an untenable position as education minister and must step down.

Duesseldorf's Heinrich Heine University voted Tuesday to remove Schavan's doctorate after a thorough review of her 1980 thesis undertaken after an anonymous blogger raised plagiarism allegations.

Speaking on a trip to South Africa on Wednesday, Schavan said she "will not accept" the school's decision and would take legal action against it.