- published: 11 May 2012
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Bettelheim is a surname and Jewish family.
The first bearer of the Bettelheim name is said to have lived toward the second half of the 18th century, in Pressburg (Pozsony, today Bratislava). To account for its origin, the following episode is related in the family records:
There was a Jewish merchant in Bratislava (now in Slovakia) (before Pozsony), whose modest demeanor gained for him the esteem of his fellow-townsmen. He was popularly called "Ein ehrlich Jud" (honest Jew). His wife was a woman of surpassing beauty, and many magnates of the country, hearing of her charms, traveled to Pozsony to see her. Count Bethlen was particularly persistent, and, failing to attract her attention, he decided to abduct her. Mounted on his charger, he appeared one day in the open market, where the virtuous woman was making purchases, and in the sight of hundreds of spectators, lifted her on his horse, and heedless of her cries of entreaty, was about to gallop off with her, when her husband appeared on the scene and, after a fierce personal combat, succeeded in rescuing her.
Charles Bettelheim (20 November 1913, Paris – 20 July 2006, Paris) was a French Marxian economist and historian, founder of the Center for the Study of Modes of Industrialization (CEMI : Centre pour l'Étude des Modes d'Industrialisation) at the EHESS, economic advisor to the governments of several developing countries during the period of decolonization. He was very influential in France's New Left, and considered one of "the most visible Marxists in the capitalist world" (Le Monde, 4 April 1972), in France as well as in Spain, Italy, Latin America, and India.
Henri Bettelheim, the father of Charles Bettelheim, was a Viennese Austrian of Jewish origin, and a representative of a Swiss bank in Paris. The family had to leave France after the beginning of the First World War in 1914. The Bettelheims lived in Switzerland then in Egypt. In 1922, Charles Bettelheim returned to Paris with his French mother, during which time his father, who was living in Egypt, committed suicide.