Eberhard Bethge (theologian)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Eberhard Bethge (born August 28, 1909 in Warchau , district of Jerichow II , Province of Saxony , Prussia ; † March 18, 2000 in Wachtberg , Rhein-Sieg district ) was a Protestant pastor and theologian. He is best known for his tireless efforts to bring the theological work of his friend Dietrich Bonhoeffer to the wider public.

Life

Bethge was born in Warsaw and grew up in the neighboring town of Zitz , where he was also confirmed. He studied Protestant theology in Königsberg , Berlin , Vienna , Tübingen and Halle (Saale) and, alongside Albrecht Schönherr , later chairman of the Federation of Evangelical Churches in the GDR , became one of the first vicars in the Finkenwalde seminary , the Bonhoeffer on behalf of the Confessing Church directed. Subsequently, Bonhoeffer made him the study inspector of one of the collective vicariates, so that he experienced Bonhoeffer's training activities for five years almost without interruption. Bethge thus became a close friend of Bonhoeffer and maintained a lively correspondence with him, even when Bonhoeffer was finally imprisoned and before he was executed by the German Nazi judiciary in the last days of the war. In May 1943 he married the seventeen year old Renate Schleicher, a daughter of Bonhoeffer's oldest sister Ursula and her husband Rüdiger Schleicher .

Detention book of the Lehrter Strasse prison

In the war years from 1943, Bethge was a clerk in a defense force in Italy; In 1944 he was arrested in connection with July 20, 1944 and held in the Lehrter Strasse cell prison in Berlin . Here he was released on April 25, 1945.

After the war, Bethge first worked as a student pastor and advisor to the Evangelical Bishop in Berlin and then for several years was pastor in the German-speaking congregation in London where Bonhoeffer had worked from 1933 to 1935.

Above all, however, he began to publish the work of his friend Bonhoeffer, including the previously unknown fragments of a book on theological ethics ( Ethik , 1949), as well as the very personal and theologically immensely influential letters from imprisonment ( Resistance and Surrender , 1951) . In the 1960s he began to write a large-scale and comprehensive biography about Bonhoeffer, which he completed in 1966.

From 1962 to 1976 Bethge headed the pastoral college of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland , which was then in Rengsdorf . From 1969 on, he was also an honorary professor in the Protestant Theological Faculty at the University of Bonn .

Awards

Works

  • Eberhard Bethge: Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Theologian - Christian - Contemporary. A biography. 8th edition. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2004, ISBN 3-579-02272-5 .
  • Eberhard Bethge, Renate Bethge, Christian Gremmels: Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Pictures from his life. 2nd edition, Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2005, ISBN 3-579-02273-3 .
  • Eberhard Bethge: Dietrich Bonhoeffer. New edition. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2006, ISBN 3-499-50684-X .
  • Eberhard Bethge: At the given place. Essays and speeches 1970–1979. Kaiser, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-459-01217-X (with detailed bibliography)

biography

  • John de Gruchy: Eberhard Bethge - Dietrich Bonhoeffer's friend. A life story ; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2007; ISBN 978-3-579-07134-3 (English: Daring, Trusting Spirit: Bonhoeffer's Friend Eberhard Bethge ; London: SCM, 2005)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eric Pace in The New York Times : Eberhard Bethge, 90, Writer, Theologian and Biographer, April 18, 2000, accessed March 28, 2016
  2. ↑ In 2014 a memorial plaque for Bethge was attached to the church in Zitz.
  3. ^ Obituary, in: Monthly Issues for Evangelical Church History of the Rhineland 60 (2011), p. 351
personal data
SURNAME Bethge, Eberhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant pastor and theologian
DATE OF BIRTH August 28, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Warsaw
DATE OF DEATH March 18, 2000
Place of death Wachtberg