One or the Other

Bernd Ziegenhals is a former student who's fallen on hard times. When carrier-socialist Hohenberg, one of his former fellow students, offers him a research job (some literature work) he's by no means thrilled but takes the job as he needs the money and has nothing else to do anyway. This decision would change his life: when comparing different sources in the literature he discovers that Professor Kolczyk got his degree by cheating, by translating somebody else's work from English to German and presenting it as his own.