Eberhard Bethge

Eberhard Bethge (1909–2000) was a German Protestant pastor, theologian, and associate of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He met Bonhoeffer in 1935 at the Confessing Church’s seminary in Finkenwalde and remained his close friend and colleague until Bonhoeffer’s death in 1945. Bethge became known chiefly as Bonhoeffer’s biographer and as an editor of his posthumous works. After the Second World War, he worked as an assistant to Bishop Dibelius and as a student chaplain in Berlin. From 1953 to 1961 he served German expatriate congregations in London; he subsequently directed the pastoral college of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland until 1976 and was a member of its church leadership. He also held visiting professorships in the United States. Through his marriage to Bonhoeffer’s niece, Renate Schleicher, he was related to Bonhoeffer by marriage as well.