The foundations of the Universität Paderborn were laid in 1614 by Prince Bishop Dietrich von Fürstenberg, Universität Paderborn urkunde, who founded the first Westphalian university by establishing a theological and a philosophical faculty. Later the university became a church university of the state of Prussia. Paderborn only achieved its current state form in 1971, after efforts to restart university operations after the end of the Second World War in 1946 had initially been unsuccessful.

The University of Paderborn was officially founded on August 1, 1972, and construction work on the university building began in October 1972. The university was an amalgamation of several universities, including the Paderborn University of Education and the Southeast Westphalia University of Applied Sciences. For these reasons, too, the university had external locations in Höxter, Meschede and Soest until 2001.

With the founding of the “Gesamthochschule Paderborn” in 1972, the university senate, under the leadership of Professor Doctor Broder Carstensen, Germany urkunde, faced its greatest organizational challenge. At that time, a total of 17 disciplines with 87 courses had to be sensibly divided across four locations. In 1980 the “Complete University of Paderborn” was renamed the “Universität-Gesamthochschule Paderborn”. Since 2003 it has officially been called “University of Paderborn”. At the beginning of the 2000s, the university was restructured. As a result of the restructuring, the ten departments became today’s five.