In 1932 Weskamm relocated to Merseburg near Halle he became the priest in charge at Church of St Norbert. Having grown up and been educated in the Catholic western part of Germany, for the rest of his life he would be based in Germany's Lutheran heartland, and living after 1933 in a post democratic and increasingly secular version of the German state. In 1941 he was transferred from Merseburg, becoming a regional dean for Halle. In 1943 he was appointed priest with the title of "provost" at in Magdeburg, and made the episcopal commissar for the Saxon (eastern) portion of the vast Archbishopric of Paderborn, at the same time appointed a non-resident canon of Paderborn, still based in Mageburg. In 1949 the pope appointed him to the titular episcopate of , while he simultaneously became an Auxiliary bishop in the Paderborn diocese. He was consecrated by Archbishop Jaeger of Paderborn. 1949 was also the year in which Germany's postwar military occupation zones were replaced with two separate German states, and it was becoming apparent that for practical purposes administration of the part of the Paderborn arch-diocese in the former Soviet occupation zone - from now East Germany - from beyond the east-west divide would become increasingly difficult.