Bethau is a village and a former municipality in the Wittenberg district in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.

Bethau lies in the lowlands on the east bank of the Elbe west of the Annaburg Heath.

They were settled in the area by Wichmann von Seeburg, Archbishop of Magdeburg, and Albert the Bear.

Before his exile to Switzerland then emigration to the US, 19th-century communist Friedrich Sorge had been a resident of Bethau where he was born in 1828.

After World War II, Bethau was incorporated into the Province (since 1947, State) of Saxony-Anhalt from 1945 to 1952 and the Bezirk Cottbus of East Germany from 1952 to 1990.