Bethel - Research

Research

Bethel has supported academic research into its history for many decades. The subject areas range from diaconal and social history to church history and the history of medicine and care. The historical collections in Bethel's main archive provide a good source basis for historical research. Monographs, essays, research papers and specialised works on various aspects of the past are regularly produced. Major multi-year research projects are presented below.

The bibliography on Bethel's history provides an overview of the academic literature.

Files in the main archive

Archiving Residential Children's Homes

The research project "Back to the Future: Archiving Residential Children's Homes in Scotland and Germany (ARCH)", funded by the German Research Foundation and the Arts&Humanities Reserach Council, is currently underway. Prof Dr Florian Eßer, Dr Maximilian Schäfer and Jelena Wagner B.A. from the Social Pedagogy working group at the Institute of Educational Science at Osnabrück University are researching the documentation of the lives of children and young people in state care and the social potential of the records. This also includes examining the historical practice of archiving events and memories in the everyday lives of children and young people in residential care in the Federal Republic of Germany, which will be analysed primarily using the example of Freistatt.

Women in the Groß-Bethel nursing home, 1937

Everyday life in Bethel between 1924 and 1949

Under the direction of Dr Uwe Kaminsky (Ruhr University Bochum), the German Research Foundation project "Patients in the 'large-scale operation of mercy' - The v. Bodelschwingh Institutions Bethel 1924 to 1949" was launched in September 2017. The aim is to provide as comprehensive a history as possible of the everyday lives of patients in the v. Bodelschwingh Institutions and to make more precise statements about medical care and the importance of work during a stay in an institution. More than 2.000 patient files from the Bethel main archives form the source basis for this project. Patient files from the Provinzial hospital Gütersloh are analysed as a comparative sample for a state institution.

Deaconesses with children from Bethsaida House, late 1950s

Drug trials on minors

The interdisciplinary research project "Drug trials on minors in long-term care at the Bethel Foundation between 1949 and 1975" is investigating the extent to which and under what circumstances drugs that were not yet authorised in Germany during this period (newly developed West German drugs and imported non-West German drugs) were used on children and adolescents at Bethel. The medical historian and psychiatrist Prof. Dr Maike Rotzoll/Heidelberg, the paediatric neurologist Prof. Dr Dietz Rating/Heidelberg and the historian Dr Niklas Lenhard-Schramm/Münster worked intensively on the study over a period of two and a half years. Analysing patient files from the Bethel main archive played a key role in this. The research results were published on the Internet in 2020, and a summary is also available.

Literature:

Niklas Lenhard-Schramm, Dietz Rating, Maike Rotzoll, Divine illness, ecclesiastical institution, secular means. Drug trials on minors in the long-term care centre of the Bethel Foundation between 1949 and 1975, Bielefeld 2022.

Women with epilepsy visiting the Kunsthalle, 1975

Living conditions in Bethel from 1960 to 1980

Published in 2018, the book "Departures and upheavals. Living conditions and circumstances of disabled people in the v. Bodelschwingh institutions Bethel from the 1960s to the 1980s" by the two historians Prof. Dr Hans-Walter Schmuhl and Dr Ulrike Winkler deals with everyday life and living conditions in the v. Bodelschwingh Institutions Bethel at the time. The main focus is on the development from a "total institution" to "normalisation", towards a self-determined life for the residents in the institution. The final product is the result of archival research in the main Bethel archive, the evaluation of records from the Protestant Association for Work with the Disabled in Berlin and around 40 interviews conducted with former employees and residents.

Literature:

Schmuhl, Hans-Walter/ Winkler, Ulrike, Aufbrüche und Umbrüche. Lebensbedingungen und Lebenslagen behinderter Menschen in den v. Bodelschwinghschen Anstalten Bethel von den 1960er bis zu den 1980er Jahren, (= Schriften des Instituts für Diakonie- und Sozialgeschichte an derKirchlichen Hochschule Wuppertal/Bethel; 29), Bielefeld 2018.

Sonnenschein Children's Hospital, around 1930

The Children's Hospital Sonnenschein

A scientific study on Children's Hospital Sonnenschein between 1929 and 1950 has been available since 2016. After the author Barbara Degen made the accusation in a publication entitled "Bethel in the Nazi Era" (2014) that the mortality rate among acutely ill children at Children's Hospital Sonnenschein was indicative of "child euthanasia" without any evidence or sources, Bethel commissioned the historian Dr Karsten Wilke (now at Hanover Medical School) to research all sources. The causes of mortality in a children's hospital were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. The result was a 70-page study that neither refers to deliberate killings nor conclusively categorises the mortality rate as high.

Literature:

Wilke, Karsten, Das Betheler Kinderkrankenhaus 'Sonnenschein' 1929-1950. Approaching the history of a hospital in the context of National Socialism and war, in: Matthias Benad/ Hans-Walter Schmuhl/ Kerstin Stockhecke, Bethels Mission (4). Contributions from the time of National Socialism to the psychiatric reform (= Beiträge zur Westfälischen Kirchengeschichte; 44), Bielefeld 2016, pp. 45-116.To the PDF

Young people at work in the moor, 1954

Welfare education in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1950s and 1960s

Under the title "Final Destination Freistatt", a historical investigation into the welfare upbringing in a diaconal institution was published for the first time in 2009. The anthology, edited by Matthias Benad, Hans-Walter Schmuhl and Kerstin Stockhecke, is the result of two years of research into the history of the Freistatt children's home. In addition to the academic analysis of the sources, the book also includes the statements of former victims.

The feature film "Freistatt" (2015) shows the fate of a 14-year-old in the 1960s care programme and is based on real conditions at the time. The historic "Moorhort" building, one of the locations for the film, houses a permanent exhibition on the history of welfare education in Freistatt.

Literature:

Benad, Matthias/ Schmuhl, Hans-Walter/ Stockhecke, Kerstin (eds.), Endstation Freistatt - Fürsorgeerziehung in den v. Bodelschwinghschen Anstalten Bethel bis in die 1970er Jahre (= Schriften des Instituts für Diakonie- und Sozialgeschichte an der Kirchlichen Hochschule Wuppertal/Bethel; 16), Bielefeld 2009/2011.

From 1939, forced labourers were also deployed on the large estates in Eckardtsheim

Forced labourers and prisoners of war in Bethel

With the anthology "Zwangsverpflichtet. Prisoners of war and civilian forced labourers in Bethel and Lobetal 1939 - 1945", the editors Matthias Benad and Regina Mentner focus on the v. Bodelschwingh institutions Bethel and their relationship to National Socialism. The use of civilian forced labourers and prisoners of war in the various institutions and localities of the institution is explained. Forced labourers and prisoners of war were mainly used in the agricultural sector. With the publication of this book, Bethel was the first diaconal institution to face up to this part of its past.

Literature:

Benad, Matthias/ Mentner, Regina (ed.), Zwangsverpflichtet. Prisoners of war and civilian forced labourers in Bethel and Lobetal 1939-1945, Bielefeld. 2002.