Goossens, first rector

Historian and priest Th.J.A.J. (Thomas) Goossens (1882-1970) is the founder of the Roman Catholic Business School, serving as its first Rector Magnificus from 1927-1930, and subsequently from 1934-1935 and 1940-1941. Goossens was a history student at the University of Amsterdam, where he went on to obtain his cum laude doctorate with a thesis entitled Franciscus Sonnius in the Pamphlets. Up until 1921, he taught history and Dutch language at the Minor Seminary in Sint-Michielsgestel. In 1922, he succeeded Hendrik Moller as the Rector of the Catholic College, the Tilburg teacher training college for secondary education, which was somewhat undersized in Brabant at the time.

Professor and manager

When Nijmegen got a Catholic University in 1923, Goossens stepped up his efforts to secure the establishment of a higher-education commercial sciences institute for Tilburg. After a great deal of difficulty, this then led to the foundation of the Roman Catholic Business School, the legal predecessor of Tilburg University. Goossens was to become the institution’s Rector Magnificus, Professor of Medieval History and financial manager. This last capacity earned him the reputation of being tight-fisted, despite the fact that the economic crisis in the thirties and the Second World War obviously called for austerity to make ends meet in those first few decades. In 1942, Goossens was imprisoned in the Haaren internment camp for ten weeks by the German occupiers.