The University of Bayreuth decided that Mr Guttenberg had "violated scientific duties to a considerable extent".
Naturally Wolfgang rejects all talk of a Bayreuth crisis and in one sense he is right.
But more stimulating Wagner productions with casts as good as Bayreuth's are not hard to find these days.
The Bayreuth Festival has a new "Ring des Nibelungen" lined up for July.
The University of Bayreuth which awarded the doctorate has given the defence minister two weeks to respond the allegations.
An investigation by Bayreuth University found the 39-year-old had "grossly violated standard research practices and in so doing deliberately deceived".
The post also led him to conduct at the internationally renown Bayreuth music festival, dedicated to the works of Richard Wagner.
The University of Bayreuth, which had awarded him the doctorate, concluded that he had "violated scientific duties to a considerable extent".
European houses from Bayreuth on down grapple with Wagner in serious terms.
The identity of the company that supplied Wagner tubas for the first "Ring" cycle at the Bayreuth Festival a year later is uncertain.
WSJ: It Takes Brass to Play the Wagner Tuba | By Barbara Jepson | The Ring of the Nibelung
Klaus Florian Vogt, who replaced Marco Jentzsch as Lohengrin at the last minute, has sung the role everywhere from New York's Metropolitan Opera to Bayreuth's Festspielhaus.
WSJ: Review: High Note in Berlin | 'Lohengrin' at Deutsche Oper
During his career, Sawallisch also conducted at the Bayreuth Festival, La Scala in Milan and with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic and Tokyo's NHK Orchestra.
The University of Bayreuth, where he completed his PhD on constitutional developments in the US and EU, has given him a fortnight to respond to the allegations in writing.
BBC: German 'plagiarism' minister Guttenberg drops doctorate
Large parts of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg's 2006 legal dissertations were found by Bayreuth University to have been copied and he stood down before it issued its damning verdict in May 2011.
He appears regularly at the Salzburg and Bayreuth festivals and is in constant demand by the world's leading opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Vienna State Opera.
BBC: NEWS | UK | Scotland | Glasgow, Lanarkshire and West | Top conductor leads BBC orchestra
But this year, the cities of Leipzig, where Wagner was born, and Bayreuth, where he built his shrine (the Festspielhaus) and was laid to rest (notwithstanding his death in Venice), have joined forces to showcase them as a series.
Among the 26 additions for 2012 were the Lakes of Ounianga in Chad, Africa, the Chengjiang fossil site in the Yunnan province of China, the decorated farmhouses of Halsingland in Sweden and the Margravial Opera House at Bayreuth in Germany.
Mr Guttenberg, a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU) - the Bavarian sister party of Mrs Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) - was also stripped of his PhD by the University of Bayreuth last year after evidence of his plagiarism emerged.
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