Moses Schreiber was born in Frankfurt in 1763. He was the most gifted pupil of the rabbis teaching in Frankfurt at the time, including chief rabbi Pinchas Hirsch Isch Horowitz. He followed his teacher Nathan Adler to Boskowitz in Moravia, where he became a rabbi at the age of nineteen. In 1803 he went to Bratislava, where he founded a world famous yeshiva. His rulings on religious law bore the title "Chatam Sofer", meaning "Schreiber has put his seal to it". This became the name he used in Jewish literature, under which he won a worldwide reputation as a Talmudic author. Chatam Sofer was a dogged opponent of the Jewish Reform Movement, and stood for the values of strict Jewish orthodoxy. In his will he forbade his children to read the works of Moses Mendelssohn or similar texts. He always signed his letters and Responsa "Moses Sofer of Frankfurt". In 1839 he died in Bratislava. His grave soon became a place of pilgrimage, and is today the site of the Chatam-Sofer Mausoleum.