	He quickly established close contacts with the venerable Bishop Bornewasser of Trier. Within in a couple of months the two of them had agreed denazification measures for those priests identified as being in need. He also teamed up with Bornewasser to promote the credentials of Trier as a university city. (The University of Trier had been closed in 1798, when - as between 1945 and 1951 - the city had been under French military control.) There were rival bids for university investment from Speyer and Mainz, but the bishop and Hettier de Boislambert were able to insist on the superior strategic position of Trier in relation to Cologne, Frankfurt am Main, Koblenz, Luxembourg and the economically (and politically) vital Saarland. In the end Trier lost out to Mainz, although a few decades later, in 1970, the University of Trier would indeed be re-established. In 1948 Hettier de Boislambert delivered the formal Catholics' Day greeting to General Kœnig, the French army commander in the occupation zone. Both men were close political allies of Général de Gaulle, and although he had by this time resigned the French presidency, The General remained a formidable focus of political power. Hettier de Boislambert took the opportunity of the greeting to General Kœnig, which took place in Mainz, to deliver a shamelessly Gaullist speech setting out a vision for a future Europe united in Christian faith.