He grew up in Munich and Trossingen and was educated at the Jesuit college Kolleg St. Blasien, about which he wrote in connection with sexual harassment in the Catholic Church in Der Spiegel.
A group of Franciscan brothers from Saxony purchased the land from the owner of a castle in the southern Limburg region of the Netherlands.
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The campus is near the villages of Vlodrop-station and Vlodrop in Limburg, the Netherlands, adjacent to the Dutch-German border and the defunct Iron Rhine railroad, and is surrounded by Meinweg National Park.
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The college was named after Saint Louis of Toulouse, a saint who was an heir to the throne of Napoli, but who renounced the throne and gave it to his younger brother, and himself became a Franciscan monk, took all the Franciscan vows and served the poor, the sick and the hungry.