I had an e-mail exchange yesterday re the recent death of Renate Bethge. Renate was Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s niece and married to his closest friend Eberhard Bethge. The e-mail exchange was with a friend who has for many years been a co-director of the Holocaust Museum in DC and has also been on the editorial board for the translation into English of several Bonhoeffer writings. I met her through her brother who is on the administrative staff of WashU’s School of Medicine.
From: a friend
To: DB
Subject: death of Renate Bethge
I don't know whether you've received this news, but Renate Bethge passed away on July 8 in Bremen (where she was in a nursing home). She was 93. A longtime friend of the Bethges who knew Renate very well, wrote this "In Memoriam" –
https://www.thebonhoeffercenter.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=203:in-memoriam-renate-bethge&catid=12&Itemid=208
From: DB
To: a friend
Subject: re notification of Renate Bethge’s death
Good afternoon. Thank you for the notification and also for the link to the beautifully worded reflections. I apologize for the delay in responding to your e-mail. I returned late last night from two weeks overseas with limited internet service. For the past few years, I routinely checked for an obituary (a bit hopefully I will admit to you, based on numerous end-of-life conversations with her re my annual two-week research trips to Holland 1992-2006 tracking a cohort of Dutch physicians’ experience with euthanasia/assisted dying cases – I always included a few days with the Bethges on these research trips). I remember so vividly/sadly the last visit with Renate and her daughter who was staying with her since it had become evident to her three children that Renate could no longer live independently – in 2008, I think – a visit I cut short once I saw that distant/vacant look in Renate’s eyes. The tribute refreshed so many similar experiences I had with Renate, beginning with the surprising opportunity in 1993 to meet with Renate and Eberhard for a private introductory breakfast in Boston. We had moved to Vermont the year before. I learned that Eberhard was scheduled to be a featured speaker for a Boston University symposium on friendship. He said it was the first time he had given a lecture based on his friendship with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Renate had been invited to give a lecture the day before the symposium on the women in the Bonhoeffer family. In a letter I sent to the Bethges prior to the symposium, I had specifically asked them if I might be able to speak with them for a few minutes, hoping they could assess my use of Bonhoeffer’s 1939-forward decisions and evolving/emerging ideas as a point of reference during my transition into the medical education/practice sphere. The symposium coordinator said there was simply no possibility. Thus the shock to learn from the Bethges directly about meeting them for breakfast! They were welcoming, intrigued, encouraging. My wife and I had already planned a trip to Europe later in the year (to distract her a bit as she turned 40!). The Bethges invited us to spend several days with them. We quickly revised our itinerary to do so. With Renate’s passing, is there anyone left with intimate familiarity re Dietrich and the Bonhoeffer family of the war years? Perhaps her younger sister? One anecdote in this regard. Renate and I met in Berlin in 2003 for a few days of tracing throughout the city her upbringing, the years of Hitler’s rise to power, the war, etc. We spent an hour or so at the Bonhoeffer parents’ home where Dietrich had an upper room and where next door Renate’s family lived. As we stood together in Bonhoeffer’s room which in so many ways seemed unchanged, I asked Renate what was missing. She responded quickly and with a chuckle – “All the cigarette smoke!” The tribute’s author spoke for so many when she closed – “I miss her”.
