William Kreiten

Who was William Kreiten?

William Kreiten was a literary critic and poet.

At the age of sixteen he entered the Jesuit novitiate of Friedrichsburg in Münster. After receiving his classical education at Münster and Amiens, he began his philosophical and theological studies at Maria Laach Abbey in 1868, but was compelled to interrupt them the following year on account of ill-health. From 1869 to 1871 he pursued literary studies at Münster. When the Jesuits were expelled from Germany, in 1872, Kreiten was sent to Aix-en-Provence, where he completed his theological studies and was ordained priest on 8 June 1873. From 1870 to 1878 he was on the editorial staff of Stimmen aus Maria Laach in Tervuren near Brussels. In 1878 ill-heath compelled him to retire to Kerkrade, where he spent the remaining twenty-three years of his life in literary pursuits. He was one of the chief workers on Stimmen aus Maria Laach, to which he contributed numerous essays on literary subjects and most of the reviews of contemporary Catholic literature from 1874 to 1902.