[raphman]

> I'm not talking about Theses. I'm talking about "übungszettel".

Sorry for the confusion. While I mentioned theses in passing, my statements were about programming assignments in undergraduate courses where students were expected to turn in individual, original work.

> I'm aware of the fact that bavaria takes a bit of a harsher stance on this.

I'm actually not aware of this fact. In my experience, how cheating is addressed depends much more on the stance of the individual professor than on that of the university or federal state. Extrapolating from your experience at one department within one university to all universities in Germany seems audacious.