[1][2][3][4] Georg Schreiber was born in Rüdershausen, a small yet ancient village set in the wooded countryside to the north of Duderstadt (Göttingen).
[2] 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".
[9] He retained his professorship without a break till 1933, despite his election to the Reichstag (national parliament) in 1920,[1] and his church promotion to the (probably largely honorary) rank of Papal Domestic Prelate in 1924.
[4][9] Nevertheless, described later by his biographer Rudolf Morsey as a "worker bee of parliament" and a "key figure in the politics of culture and the arts at a national level", Schreiber needed a reliable deputy for his university teaching duties, a role undertaken by the church historian Ludwig Mohler (1883–1943).
[5] In 1927, with financial backing from the Foreign Ministry, Schreiber set up the university's research centre for "Auslandsdeutschtum und Auslandkunde" (German communities abroad).
For those involved in politics, the security services proved particularly assiduous in their persecution of known former Communists and Socialists, many of whom escaped abroad or were imprisoned by the government, and in some cases subsequently killed.
With the help of friends who still retained some influence in academic circles, notably Karl Haushofer and Ferdinand Sauerbruch, Schreiber was able to defer his transfer by taking an extended leave of absence from Münster.
In 1940 the prosecutor's office in Münster had launched a criminal investigation against Schreiber in respect of supposed violation of technical and administrative regulations at the institutes confiscated from him the previous year.
The party did not give up, however, and Schreiber was now placed under house arrest, while the security services continued to try and find reasons to reopen the case against him.
[5] Schreiber avoided capture in the aftermath of the assassination attempt, already aware that he was likely to be at heightened risk of detention, and having evidently received timely warnings from insiders.
[5] The senate had met under the chairmanship of the serving rector, the Pathology professor Herbert Siegmund who had been permitted by the British military authorities to retain his office in the immediate aftermath of the war despite his close National Socialist connections during the Hitler years.
He believed the integration of the proper spiritual dimension was fundamental to the operation of a modern society, and was able to call on his deep knowledge of the Medieval church and legal history in promoting his own visions for foreign and cultural policy.
[18] Between 15 February 1946 and 23 June 1962 he chaired the Westphalia Historical Commission, following which, during the final months of his life, he retained his link in his capacity as honorary chairman.
[19] Towards the end of 1918, with old certainties dissolving in the dismal aftermath of a catastrophic war, George Schreiber launched himself as a politician of the Centre Party, which was seen by many as the political manifestation of Catholic Germany.
He embarked on his political career by authoring a succession of newspaper articles, sometimes using the pseudonym "Richard Richardy", and by delivering speeches at party meetings.
A broadly sympathetic commentator implies unambiguously that Schreiber's "big ... speeches" could be a little too carefully prepared: when he improvised, the impact of his oratory was sometimes greater.
On 19 November 1918 he published an article in the widely read (in the region) Kölnische Volkszeitung (newspaper) calling for a "strong political coming together" of the formerly Prussian provinces of Westphalia and Rhineland into a new German federal state.
This campaign was ended in 1919 when the Weimar National Assembly (pre-parliament) produced a new constitution that provided for the establishment of new federal states through the roguish device of a referendum, but it had significantly helped raise Schreiber's public profile in the regions concerned.
At the same time he tried to reduce what he saw as an unnecessary distancing between Centre Party and the universities establishment, to stand up for the interests of "intellectual and spiritual workers", and to reconcile the traditionalist church community with the new republican order.
[2] He was keen to sustain the empire tradition, despite recent evisceration by foreign armies and internal fissures, but still a "great power spiritually, culturally and scientifically".
[b][23] Schreiber was centrally engaged, virtually throughout the 1920s, in the extensive preparatory work for the so-called Prussian Concordat signed in 1929 and designed to place the relationship between the German republic and the Holy See on a regular legal footing.
Most of the provisions of the concordat – which was given effect by means of papal bull in 1930, remain in force as part of the instrument regulating relations between the church and modern Germany today.
It was widely believed that it was only on account of political division on the left and centre that in 1933 post-democratic populist street politicians had been able to take power in Germany.