He was apprenticed to a tailor and worked as a journeyman before joining the Hanoverian cavalry in 1813 to fight against Napoleon in the German Campaign and took part in the 1815 Battle of Waterloo under command of Field Marshal Blücher.

Rese served in the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and in 1824 met with Edward Fenwick, first Bishop of Cincinnati, who had travelled to Rome to ask Pope Leo XII for support.

The Pope engaged Rese to assist him; once arrived in the United States, he became vicar general of the Cincinnati diocese, which included Detroit.

In 1838 he again travelled to Europe, where in Munich he reconciled the establishment of a Bavarian missionary association (Ludwig-Missionsverein) with King Louis I.

[7] He finally retired to a nursery home of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul in Hildesheim.