[2][3] Konrad Repgen was born in 1923 at Friedrich-Wilhelms-Hütte,[4] part of the conurbation of Troisdorf a short distance to the south-east of Cologne.
In January 1933, a régime change heralded a rapid switch to single-party government, and Repgen's father, identified as an activist member of one of the "wrong" parties, lost his teaching job the same year.
[5] Release came in time to enable him to enroll for the winter semester at Bonn University where over the next five years he studied History, Germanistics, Philosophy and Latin.
A significant landmark followed in 1958 when he received his habilitation for a piece of work entitled "The Roman Curia and the Peace of Westphalia.
He rejected the sociological-political historical prism favoured by the so-called Bielefeld School, and is regarded as a conservative among historians.
For many years he headed up the long-running "Acta Pacis Westphalicae" project which publishes archive material covering the succession of congresses that eventually, in 1648, came up with what became known as the Peace of Westphalia.
In addition, between 1976 and 1997, he was in charge of the Archive Section at the Reich Chancellery covering the twelve years of the Hitler government.