[2] The healthcare foundation was established 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.

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 Bethel Confession (Betheler Bekenntnis).

[4] The resulting document, the Barmen Declaration, was an early form of resistance to Hitler, a rejection of Christian anti-Judaism and racist anti-Semitism,[4] though in practical terms it did nothing to impede the Nazis.

[5] During the course of the T-4 Euthanasia Program, which ran in 1940 and 1941 and was aimed at exterminating physically and mentally disabled people, the staff at the institution were mainly in opposition to that crime of the National Socialist party.