Werner Freitag was born in 1955. He studied history in Bielefeld and economics in Hagen, completing his diploma examination in Hagen in 1985 and his master's examination in Bielefeld in 1986. From 1986 to 1988, he served as the town historian in Spenge. He earned his doctorate in Bielefeld in 1989 and worked as a (senior) assistant in the field of early modern history until March 1997. He completed his habilitation in 1995 and was appointed to the professorship for the regional history of Saxony-Anhalt at the Institute of History at Martin Luther University in Halle in December 1996. Since 2004, he has been a professor of Westphalian and comparative regional history in Münster and the managing director of the Institute for Comparative Urban History. Werner Freitag is the second chairman of the Historical Commission for Westphalia and a member of the Historical Commission for Saxony-Anhalt, the Folklore Commission for Westphalia, and the committee of the Working Group on Regional History in the Association of German Historians (VHD).