Annette Schavan (born 10 June 1955 in Jüchen, district Grevenbroich) is a German politician (CDU). She was from 1995 to 2005 Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports in Baden-Württemberg and from 2005 to 2013 Federal Minister of Education and Research.

Since 1996 she has been on the Board of CDU state of Baden-Württemberg. From November 1998 to December 2012 Schavan was one of the deputy national chairman and member of the CDU Federal Board. In December 2002, she directed the Commission to develop a new statement of principles for the CDU in Baden-Wuerttemberg.

On 18 August 2012 Schavan announced after 14 years, she would not be up for election as deputy chairman of the CDU anymore.

In 2012, a blogger with the pseudonym Robert Schmidt who is a member of the research-network VroniPlag Wiki alleged he had found plagiarism in Schavan's PhD thesis, entitled "Character and conscience — Studies on the conditions, necessities, and demands on the development of conscience in the present day." The University of Düsseldorf conducted an investigation into the plagiarism charge. Investigators found paraphrasing of secondary literature without naming the source in over 60 cases in the dissertation and thereby on 5 February 2013 revoked her doctorate degree. On 9 February 2013, it was announced that Annette Schavan had offered to resign as minister, which was accepted by chancellor Angela Merkel. Schavan has denied any wrongdoing and indicated she would take legal action against the university.