Bethge Hamburg

Bethge traces to 1977, when Waltraud Bethge opened a small screen-printing workshop and adjoining shop in Hamburg's Eppendorf district, producing greeting cards, wrapping paper and fine office stationery. Screen printing, used to decorate paper goods and later leather pieces, remained part of the operation as it grew, and the company still describes its in-house printing atelier as central to its identity, calling itself a "Manufaktur" rather than a retailer of bought-in goods.

Over the following decades the range expanded from paper products into leather accessories, bags, desk goods, wallets and travel pieces, produced to Bethge's specifications in small workshops. One recurring item, a moon-phase calendar reissued in a new design every year, has been part of the collection for close to three decades. By around 2017, roughly forty years after its founding, the company had grown from its single Eppendorf shop into a small multi-city retailer, with stores in Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt and Munich alongside an online shop.

Leadership passed out of the founding generation when Kathleen Nufer, who had known the Hamburg store for about twenty years as a customer, was asked by its founder to take over as managing director, a transition she describes as continuing a house where, in her words, manufacturing "is not a buzzword" but a daily practice.