[1][2] Hermann Greive was born in Walstedde, a small town in the Warendorf district, a short distance to the east of Münster.
He received his doctorate in theology in 1967 and his habilitation (higher academic qualification) from Cologne University.
[4] By 1973 he was teaching as a professor at Cologne University's Martin Buber Institute for Jewish studies,[5] where most of the students were actually, like him, non-Jewish.
[6] On 25 January 1984, while Greive was holding a seminar with eleven students, the door opened and Sabine S. Gehlhaar entered the room with an old-fashioned pistol and shot him in the head.
[6] A younger colleague, Hans-Georg von Mutius [de], alerted by the shot, ran across from a nearby seminar room to investigate.