Friedrich von Bodelschwingh

Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, Junior (14 August 1877, Bethel – 4 January 1946, Bethel) was a German theologian and public health advocate. His father was Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, Senior (6 March 1831, Tecklenburg – 2 April 1910, Bethel), founder of the Bodelschwinghsche Anstalten Bethel charitable foundations.

Public health activities

Friedrich was the son of Reverend Friedrich von Bodelschwingh and his wife Frieda. He is sometimes known as Friedrich von Bodelschwingh the Younger to distinguish him from his father. Reverend Friedrich von Bodelschwingh began and operated the von Bodelschwingh Bethel Institution, which offered health care and other advantages to the poor, for many years. Upon the death of his father in 1910, Bodelschwingh the younger took over their operation. Both he and his father were close friends and colleagues of Ernst von Dobschütz. In 1921 he expanded the services of the Institute to care for orphaned children; boys who did not know their birthdate were given March 6, in honor of Reverend von Bodelschwingh, and girls were given February 20 in honor of Frieda von Bodelschwingh.

Both Bodelschwinghs were concerned with inherited defects, and expressed distress at the increasing number of handicapped persons in Germany. In a speech on 29 January 1929 he referred to the "catastrophic development" of "the increasing number of weak ones in body and spirit." On May 27, 1933, von Bodelschwingh was appointed Reichsbishop but resigned only a month later, before the appointment became effective, in protest against the actions of the Deutsche Christen.

Opposition to Nazi policies

Bodelschwingh discussed both euthanasia and enforced sterilization as possible solutions to the problem but concluded by firmly rejecting euthanasia as a viable option which put him at odds with the Nazi regime. Although he took the oath of loyalty to Hitler in 1938, an unusual step for a minister not of the Deutsche Christen church, he made no secret of his vigorous opposition to the Nazi's sterilization and euthanasia policies. The Gestapo closed the Bethel Theological School in March 1939 and in April 1940 ordered institutions and homes to begin relocation of their patients in collective shipments without notification of next-of-kin.

In May 1940 Pastor Paul Braune, Vice President of the Central Board for Interior Missions of the German Lutheran Church and head of the Hoffnungstaler Institutions, met with von Bodelschwingh at Bethel to discuss the Nazi "green forms" which he had been instructed to fill out, authorizing the transfer of "feebleminded" girls from the Hoffnungstaler Institution. The two men were deeply alarmed over disturbing reports of deaths of former patients who were shipped off and strange obituaries which had appeared. In February 1941 when a physician's commission arrived at Bethel to force von Bodelschwingh to fill out the green forms, he refused. Staff members expressed their willingness to forcibly resist any attempted transportation of sick persons by force and the commission eventually departed. A month later the Nazi regime banned the institute press.

Death and posthumous recognitions

After the war, von Bodelschwingh and the Bethel Institute set up the Bethel Search Service to help locate missing family members. Von Bodelschwingh died in December 1945.

Friedrich von Bodelschwingh appeared three times on German postage stamps: in 1967 when the German post office commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Bethel hospitals, in 1977 to commemorate von Bodelschwingh's 100th birthday, and in 1996 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his death.

Von Bodelschwingh Institutes today

The von Bodelschwingh Bethel Institutes are still in operation, helping more than 14,000 persons in clinics, homes, schools, kindergartens, live-in groups, work therapy facilities and shops for the disabled.

External links

* [http://www.bethel.de/bethel_en/about_us/index.php Bethel Institutes website (English)]

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