[1][2][3] Franz Johannes Wilhelm Weskamm was born in Helsen near Arolsen, roughly 175 km (110 miles) north of Frankfurt.

In 1943 he was appointed priest with the title of "provost" at St, Sabastian's Cathedral in Magdeburg, and made the episcopal commissar for the Saxon (eastern) portion of the vast Archbishopric of Paderborn, at the same time appointed a non-resident canon of Paderborn,[4] still based in Mageburg.

[1] In 1949 the pope appointed him to the titular episcopate of Rhandus, while he simultaneously became an Auxiliary bishop in the Paderborn diocese.

1949 was also the year in which Germany's postwar military occupation zones were replaced with two separate German states, and it was becoming apparent that for practical purposes administration of the part of the Paderborn arch-diocese in the former Soviet occupation zone - from now East Germany - from beyond the east-west divide would become increasingly difficult.

In June 1951, shortly after Weskamm's sixtieth birthday, he was appointed Bishop of Berlin[2] in succession to Cardinal von Preysing who had died the previous year.