Bethel Institution

The Bethel Institution (officially in German: v. Bodelschwinghsche Stiftungen Bethel as of 2009, i.e. v. Bodelschwinghian Foundations of Bethel, before v. Bodelschwinghsche Anstalten Bethel) is a diaconal (i.e. Protestant charitable) hospital for the mentally ill founded and seated in Bethel, today a neighbourhood of Bielefeld, Germany.

The Bethel Institution was founded in 1867 as Evangelische Heil- und Pflegeanstalt für Epileptische (Protestant institute of healing and care for epileptics) in Gadderbaum, today a locality of Bielefeld. In 1872 Pastor Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, Senior, a proponent of the inner mission within the then Evangelical State Church in Prussia became its director. He massively strengthened and extended the institution, with more premises also for the poor and at other locations, and renamed it after Bethel in 1874. The name Bethel was also started being used for the neighbourhood, which developed outside the hospital. Later Bodelschwingh's name was compounded to the institution's name. In 1910 Bodelschwingh, Senior, died and the leadership passed on to his son Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, Junior, who led the institution until his death in 1946.

During the Nazi Germany era in August 1933, some six months after Hitler had become Reich Chancellor, Pastor Bodelschwingh, Junior, met with Dietrich Bonhoeffer and a few others to draft a new confession of faith, clarifying the grounds for resisting the Nazification of Germany. The resulting document, called the Bethel Declaration (Betheler Bekenntnis), was an early form of resistance to Hitler, a rejection of Christian anti-Judaism and racist anti-Semitism, though in practical terms it did nothing to impede the Nazis.

During the state-directed murder of the handicapped (T-4 Euthanasia Program) the staff at the institution were mainly in opposition to that crime of the National Socialist party. In 1940, Adolf Hitler ordered the gassing of all mental patients. The director of the hospital, pastor Bodelschwingh, Junior, resisted.

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