Life
Degenhardt grew up in Hagen, where he attended the humanistic Albrecht Dürer Gymnasium. He belonged to the Catholic youth group, Bund Neudeutschland. As a member of this youth organisation, which was banned by the Nazis, he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1941, when he co-organised a demonstration of young people to show loyalty to the new spiritual leader, Lorenz Jaeger, on the day of his consecration as the Bishop of Paderborn. Degenhardt had already been suspected by the Gestapo for some time, since he had risked his life by secretly circulating the sermons of the Münster Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen. He was held in solitary confinement for several weeks in the Dortmund Gestapo headquarters, imprisoned in a 3 x 1.5 m cell, beaten by the guards and not released until Christmas of 1941, with the warning that he would be sent to a concentration camp if he said anything about his imprisonment. After his release, he was expelled from the Gymnasium. During the Second World War, he was conscripted as an aid in the Luftwaffe and was taken as a prisoner of war, from which he was released in 1946. After the War, he completed secondary school and studied philosophy and theology in Paderborn and Munich. On 6 August 1952 he was ordained as a priest by Archbishop Lorenz Jaeger in the Paderborn Cathedral.
He was a curate in Brackwede for five years after that. As of 1957, he was administrator of the priest's office there, and then temporary substitute for the priest until he was appointed as a prefect of the archiepiscopal Collegium Leonium in Paderborn by Archbishop Jaeger.
On 28 January 1964 he received his doctorate degree in theology from Professor Rudolf Schnackenburg, and then worked as an assistant professor at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. In 1965, Degenhardt became university chaplain at the Pädagogischen Hochschule Westfalen/Lippe in Paderborn and then in February of the same year, he became diocese representative of the Katholisches Bibelwerk.
On 18 March 1968 Pope Paul VI named Degenhardt as auxiliary bishop in Paderborn and titular bishop of Vicus Pacati. The motto of Degenhardt was Surrexit Dominus vere (The Lord has truly risen, from the Easter liturgy). Cardinal Lorenz Jaeger, Archbishop of Paderborn, had Degenhardt consecrated as bishop on 1 May 1968. The consecrators were Ruhr Bishop Franz Hengsbach and Auxiliary Bishop Paul Nordhues.
Cardinal Jaeger resigned from his office as archbishop at the beginning of 1973. The cathedral chapter of the archdiocese of Paderborn then elected Degenhardt as vicar capitular, and Pope Paul VI named him as the new archbishop of Paderborn in April 1974. In 1999, he celebrated his 25th anniversary in that office at the Liborifest, a traditional Paderborn celebration in honor of St. Liborius of Le Mans.
On 8 October 1991 Archbishop Degenhardt withdrew ecclesiastical teaching authorization from the priest and university teacher, Eugen Drewermann, after he refused to retract certain statements which were not in agreement with Catholic teachings. Among other things, Drewermann had questioned the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection of Jesus. On 26 March 1992 Drewermann was also suspended from the priesthood.
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