Renate Bethge, Eberhard’s wife and Dietrich’s niece, has said that “when Bonhoeffer and his close friend Franz Hildebrandt met they invariably talked theology, but when Bonhoeffer and [Eberhard] Bethge met they invariably made music.”67 Is it possible that the reason Bonhoeffer and Hildebrandt “invariably talked theology” was because, as Eberhard Bethge himself said, Hildebrandt was indeed Bonhoeffer’s “closest and most like-minded friend”—perhaps especially in relation to matters of theological ethics? And that Bethge was a different sort of friend, a friend with whom he enjoyed life, a
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