PADERBORN (Lat. Paderae Fontes, i.e. the springs of the Pader), a town and episcopal see of Germany, in the Prussian province of Westphalia, 63 m. N.E. from Dortmund on the railway to Berlin via Altenbeken. Pop. (1905), 26,468, of whom about 80% are Roman Catholics. It derives its name from the springs of the Pader, a small affluent of the Lippe, which rise in the town under the cathedral to the number of nearly 200, and with such force as to drive several mills within a few yards of their source. A large part of the town has been rebuilt since a great fire of 1875. The most prominent of half-a-dozen churches is the Roman Catholic cathedral, the western part of which dates from the nth, the central part from the 12th, and the eastern part from the 13th century; it was restored in 1891–1893. Among other treasures it contains the silver coffin of St Liborius, a substitute for one which was coined into dollars in 1622 by Christian of Brunswick, the celebrated freebooter. The chapel of St Bartholomew, although externally insignificant, dates from the earlier part of the 11th century, and is counted among the most interesting buildings in Westphalia; it was restored in 1852. The Jesuit church and the Protestant Abdinghofkirche are also interesting. The town hall is a picturesque edifice of the 13th century; it was partly rebuilt in the 16th, and was restored in the 19th century. Paderborn formerly possessed a university, founded in 1614, with faculties of theology and philosophy, but this was closed in 1819. The manufactures of the town include railway plant, glass, soap, tobacco and beer; and there is a trade in grain, cattle, fruit and wool.
Paderborn owes its early development to Charlemagne, who held a diet here in 777 and made it the seat of a bishop a few years later. The Saxon emperors also held diets in the city, which about the year 1000 was surrounded with walls. It joined the Hanseatic League, obtained many of the privileges of a free Imperial town, and endeavoured to assert its independence of the bishop. The citizens gladly accepted the reformed doctrines, but the supremacy of the older faith was restored in 1604 by Bishop Theodore von Fürstenberg, who forcibly took possession of the city. It underwent the same fate at the hands of Christian of Brunswick during the Thirty Years' War. The bishopric of Paderborn formed part of the arch-diocese of Mainz, and its bishop became a prince of the empire about 1100. Some of the bishops were men of great activity, and the bishopric attained a certain measure of importance in North Germany, in spite of ravages during the Thirty Years' War and the Seven Years’ War. It was secularized in 1803 and was given to Prussia, and after losing it for a few years that country regained it by the settlement of 1815. The last bishop was Franz Egon von Fürstenberg (d. 1825). The bishopric had an area of nearly 1000 sq. m. and a population of about 100,000. A new bishopric of Paderborn, with ecclesiastical authority only, was established in 1821.
See W. Richter, Geschichte der Stadt Paderborn (Paderborn, 1899–1903); A. Hübinger, Die Verfassung der Stadt Paderborn im Mittelalter (Münster, 1899); and J. Freisen, Die Universität Paderborn (Paderborn, 1898). For the history of the bishopric see W. F. Giefers, Die Anfänge des Bistums Paderborn (Paderborn, 1860); L. A. T. Holscher, Die ältere Diozese Paderborn (Paderborn, 1886); the Urkunden des Bistums Paderborn, edited by R. Wilmans (Münster 1874–1880); and W. Richter, Studien und Quellen zur Paderborner Geschichte (Paderborn, 1893).