Georg Schreiber

Georg Schreiber (5 January 1882 – 24 February 1963) was a German politician (Catholic Centre party) and church historian. He spent fifteen years as a student which, even by the standards of Wilhelmine Germany,was exceptional. Following ordination he increasingly combined his student career with chaplaincy work. He nevertheless ended up with an unusually broad university-level education. He held a full "ordinary" professorship at the University of Münster between 1917 and 1935, and again between 1945 and 1951, also serving as University Rector during 1945/46. He served as a Member of Parliament, representing electoral district 19 – later 17 (Westphalia North) – between 1920 and 1933. Georg Schreiber was born in Rüdershausen, a small yet ancient village set in the wooded countryside to the north of Duderstadt (Göttingen). Franz Ignaz Schreiber (1835–87), his father worked in forestry. His grandfather, Ignaz Fromm Schreiber (1760–1846), is described as a manufacturer. He attended a church school at Duderstadt between 1885 and 1895, then moving on to the "Gymnasium Josefinum" (catholic secondary school) in Heidesheim till 1901 and then enrolled at the University of Münster where he studied Theology. In or around 1901 he joined the catholic student fraternity "Unitas Frisia". The next year he was elected to chair the university student committee. On 7 April 1905 Georg Schreiber was ordained into the priesthood at Heidesheim. He now broadened the scope of his university education, studying History and Germanistics. In 1906 he switched to the Friedrich Wilhelm University (as the Humboldt was known at that time) in Berlin where he combined his studies with chaplaincy work at the "Elisabeth-Stift" philanthropic-recuperative institution run by the "Grey sisters". He received his first doctorate from Berlin University on 26 June 1909, and then in 1911 - still at Berlin - switched to the study of Jurisprudence. Throughout this period, between 1909 and 1913, Schreiber was also undertaking priestly duties at the Royal St.