Georg Schreiber (5 January 1882 – 24 February 1963) was a German politician (Catholic Centre party) and church historian. He spent fifteen years as a student which, even by the standards of Wilhelmine Germany, was exceptional. Following ordination he increasingly combined his student career with chaplaincy work. He nevertheless ended up with an unusually broad university-level education. He held a full "ordinary" professorship at the University of Münster between 1917 and 1935, and again between 1945 and 1951, also serving as University Rector during 1945/46. He served as a Member of Parliament, representing electoral district 19 – later 17 (Westphalia North) – between 1920 and 1933.
Life and works Provenance and early years Georg Schreiber was born in Rüdershausen, a small yet ancient village set in the wooded countryside to the north of Duderstadt (Göttingen). Franz Ignaz Schreiber (1835–87), his father worked in forestry. His grandfather, Ignaz Fromm Schreiber (1760–1846), is described as a manufacturer. He attended a church school at Duderstadt between 1885 and 1895, then moving on to the "Gymnasium Josefinum" (catholic secondary school) in Heidesheim till 1901 and then enrolled at the University of Münster where he studied Theology. In or around 1901 he joined the catholic student fraternity "Unitas Frisia". The next year he was elected to chair the university student committee.Ludwig Freibüter: Georg Schreiber. In: Wolfgang Burr (compiler): Unitas Handbuch. vol 2. Verlag Franz Schmitt, Siegburg 1996, p. 242. On 7 April 1905 Georg Schreiber was ordained into the priesthood at Heidesheim. He now broadened the scope of his university education, studying History and Germanistics. 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". He received his first doctorate from Berlin University on 26 June 1909, and then in 1911 - still at Berlin - switched to the study of Jurisprudence. Throughout this period, between 1909 and 1913, Schreiber was also undertaking priestly duties at the Royal St. Joseph Hospital in Potsdam. On 29 November 1913 he received his Doctorate in Theology from the University of Freiburg. The qualification was provided in return for work on "the use of language in the Medieval Oblation System: a contribution to the History of the Church Taxation System and Church Law". Unusually, he submitted his dissertation and received his Theology doctorate at Freiburg University despite never having enrolled as a student there or studied there. Then of 1 April 1915 he received his Habilitation (higher degree) in Church History from the University of Münster, thereby opening the way for a lifelong career in the universities sector.
Professor Between 1915 and 1917 he taught as a full-time associate professor at the Royal Lyceum (later relaunched as the Regensburg Philosophical-Theological Academy) in Regensburg, teaching church law, as well as (Bavarian) state and administrative law. During this period he developed an interest in religious folklore, a topic which he would later research more systematically. In 1917 he returned to Münster, accepting a full professorship in Church History and of Church Charity and Virtue ("Caritas"). He retained his professorship without a break till 1933, despite his election to the Reichstag (national parliament) in 1920, and his church promotion to the (probably largely honorary) rank of Papal Domestic Prelate in 1924. 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).
In 1927, with financial backing from the Foreign Ministry, Schreiber set up the university's research centre for "Auslandsdeutschtum und Auslandkunde" (German communities abroad). That was followed up in 1929 with the establishment of an "Emigration Advice Centre", also at Münster. In March 1933 he founded a "Deutsche Institut für Volkskunde e.V" (German Folklore Institute), closely linked to the "Auslandsdeutschtum und Auslandkunde" research centre.
Under National Socialism Meanwhile, in January 1933 the Hitler government had taken power. The National Socialists lost no time in transforming Germany into a post-democratic one- party dictatorship. 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. Those from the political centre, such as Georg Schreiber, were not in such immediate peril, but as a Member of Parliament (till its dissolution during 1933) who had never shown any interest in backing Hitler, Schreiber quickly became a focus of government suspicion. During 1933 the university came under pressure to dismiss him. They held out for nearly two years, but on 2 March 1935 the government had Schreiber forcibly appointed to a full professorship in Medieval and Modern Church History at the Collegium Hosianum in Braunsberg, not far from Königsberg, but a very long way from Berlin (and a very long way down in the rankings of university-level educational institutions after Münster). The government plan was for a simple job swap with Joseph Lortz who had held the Braunsberg job since 1929. 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. Then, in 1936, he was able to take early retirement "due to illness". Lortz had by that time already taken over his professorship at Münster the previous year, though he did resign his party membership a couple of years later.Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2nd rev. ed., Frankfurt am Main 2005, , p. 381
Schreiber remained under intense government surveillance. In 1939 the Institutes for "Auslandsdeutschtum und Auslandkunde" (German communities abroad) and "German folklore" were "confiscated", their roles reconfigured and taken over by replacement organisations controlled more directly by the party.
After 1942 the prospect of the promised easy military victory receded. Despite government efforts to control the information flow, rumours of industrial scale killings of Jews and government opponents in death camps began to emerge among those able and willing to ask the right questions in the right places and listen to the answers. By 1944, with military defeat looming on the horizon, the mood was increasingly one of despair: the government was becoming unpopular. A high-profile assassination attempt in July 1944 left the leader seriously injured and sent the government into a protracted spasm of enhanced paranoia. Thousands were arrested overnight on 22/23 August. It is clear from the list of addresses visited at that time by police, Nazi paramilitaries and Gestapo officers that the government's list of people to be rounded up was heavily dependent on (by now increasingly outdated) lists of politicians who had served the country before 1933.
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. Embezzlement was alleged. Many details of the case remain unclear, as are the circumstances under which it was dropped, probably for lack of evidence, on 9 May 1942. 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. 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. There are references to security service reports describing him as "passionately opposed to Nazism" (though it is not clear precisely what he might have done to attract such comments). In any event, during the second half of the summer in 1944 he fled south, taking refuge initially in Osterhofen and nearby Arbing. It seems reasonable to suppose that his choice of location was connected with the still dominant role of the church in the district. In January 1945 he found a more permanent place of refuge, hiding for the rest of the war with the Benedictines in the monastery at Ottobeuren.
Münster after the war In July 1945 Schreiber was able to return to Münster. The southern part of Germany in which he had been hiding for more than six months had been part of the US occupation zone since May 1945, and his return was mediated through the intervention of the US News agency across the Swiss frontier in Bern. His home in Münster had been badly damaged by Anglo-American aerial bombing, and he lived for the time being in a seminary in the Cathedral Square. It was only when he got back to Münster that he discovered that he had been elected University Rector earlier in the month, at a meeting of a hastily convened "emergency" University Senate, held on 16 July 1945. 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. The other members of the emergency senate were university professors who had all been determined to be "unencumbered" (in the phrase used at the time) by Nazi links. Following election by the university professors, Schreiber's appointment as rector was confirmed by Rudolf Amelunxen who had been installed as First President of the newly reconstituted Province of Westphalia, though Amelunxen written confirmation came through only on 26 October 1945, following formal agreement from the British military administrators. Meanwhile, the university authorities had already, in August 1945, restored his professorship.
His term as rector lasted a year. Sources report the unstinting commitment with which he launched the massive reconstruction process necessary. More broadly he dedicated his energies to restoring the relationship of mutual respect and collaboration between the church, society and the world of politics which had existed before 1933. 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. Georg Schreiber eventually retired on 1 April 1951, a couple of months after celebrating his seventieth birthday. In the formal letter releasing him from his professorial duties, the minister paid warm tribute in respect of his work and achievements. There are indications that he remained closely involved with the University of Münster for the rest of his life.
He also joined the boards of a number of academic institutions, working to rebuild German academic tradition in the western part of the now divided country. Between 1951 and his death in 1963 he was an academic member of the Heidelberg-based Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law. 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.
Politics