[1] Adolf von Harnack, Otto Pfleiderer, and Wilhelm Dilthey supervised Beth's studies at the University of Berlin, where he earned a doctorate in 1898 for his dissertation Die Grundanschauungen Schleiermachers in seinem ersten Entwurf der philosophischen Sittenlehre.
Shortly afterwards, he toured Christian communities in the Greek and Turkish parts of the Mediterranean, where he gathered material for his book Die orientalische Christenheit der Mittelmeerlander.
[2] In 1906, Beth moved to the Protestant Theological Faculty at the University of Vienna,[3] and in the same year married Marianne Weisl.
[2] He taught systematic theology and, partly influenced by Johannes Reinke and Carl Nägeli proposed a Neo-vitalist view.
[6] After the 1938 Anschluss in which Germany annexed Austria, Beth's wife Marianne (a lawyer from a Jewish family who had converted to Christianity on marrying) was unable to continue practicing law.