in
Haifa, 1875.
Templer Colony in Haifa On 6 August 1868, the founders of the Templers,
Christoph Hoffmann and
Georg David Hardegg, their families and a group of fellow Templers, left Germany for Palestine, landing in Haifa on 30 October. They had already come to the conclusion that basing themselves in Jerusalem wouldn't be practical, planning to settle nearby, close to
Nazareth, but during their journey they were advised that Haifa would be more suitable, having a good harbor and climate. Hoffmann and Hardegg purchased land at the foot of
Mount Carmel and established
a colony there in 1868. At the time,
Haifa had a population of 4,000. The Templers are credited today with promoting the development of the city. The colonists built an attractive main street that was much admired by the locals. It was 30 meters wide and planted with trees on both sides. The houses, designed by architect
Jacob Schumacher, were built of stone, with red-shingled roofs, instead of the flat or domed roofs common in the region. Hard work, the harsh climate and epidemics claimed the lives of many before the colony became self-sustaining. Hardegg stayed in Haifa, while Hoffmann moved on to establish other colonies. In the same year,
Bahá'u'lláh, the prophet-founder of the
Baháʼí Faith, arrived in the Haifa-Akka region as a prisoner of the
Ottoman Empire. Years later, after his release from strict confinement, he visited the Templer Colony on Mount Carmel several times and wrote a letter to Hardegg. He asked his son, ‘Abdu’l-Baha, to build, on the alignment of the Templer Colony road (Carmel Avenue) with the
shrine to the forerunner of the religion, known as "the Bab," halfway up the mountain. The conjunction of the Templer buildings and the Shrine have become the most significant landmark in the modern city of Haifa.
The Templer Cemetery Haifa In the Haifa cemetery are mainly buried the dead of the nearby "German Colony" (established in 1868) as well as the dead of the daughter colony "Carmelheim" (today the Carmel Center). The cemetery began operating in 1869. From the main path (east-west) a path branches off on a north-south axis, which divides the Templer complex in two and leads to a large monument in memory of the German dead from Haifa who fell in
WWI.
Jaffa colony Hoffman established
a German colony in
Jaffa (today part of
Tel Aviv-Yafo) in 1869. It was built at the site of a former settlement by United States Christians, which had been abandoned by then, for which reason the area is known today as the
American-Germany colony of Tel Aviv. A Protestant church –
Immanuel Church – and a
German Consulate were built in the colony by the local German Templer residents. is a historic building made of wood and stone in the American-German colony in Jaffa, which currently stands at 10 Auerbach Street. The colony's oranges were the first to carry a "
Jaffa" label, one of the better known agricultural brands* in Europe, used to market Israeli oranges to this day. • "The “Jaffa Oranges” brand now enjoys explicit and specific protection under a joint global and local legal regime. But its origins emerged under a complex economic-legal setting saturated with commercial and national rivalries."
Sarona and Jerusalem in
HaKirya,
Tel Aviv In 1871, a third colony was set up in
Sarona, as the Templers' first agricultural colony, on the road from Jaffa to
Nablus. In 1873 a fourth colony was established in the
Valley of Refaim outside
Jerusalem's Old City. The Templers established a regular coach service between Haifa and the other cities, promoting the country's tourist industry, and made an important contribution to road construction.
Kaiser Wilhelm visit and the founding of Wilhelma, Walhalla, Bethlehem of Galilee and Waldheim ,
Jerusalem After the 1898 visit of Kaiser
Wilhelm II of Germany, one of his traveling companions, Colonel
Joseph von Ellrichshausen, initiated the formation of a society for the advancement of the German settlements in Palestine, named the
Gesellschaft zur Förderung der deutschen Ansiedlungen in Palästina, in
Stuttgart. It enabled the settlers to acquire land for new settlements by offering them low interest loans. A second wave of pioneer settlers founded
Wilhelma (now
Bnei Atarot) in 1902 near
Lod,
Walhalla (1903) near the original
Jaffa colony, followed by
Bethlehem of Galilee (1906). The German Settlement Society successfully encouraged some of the Templers to return into the official, national Protestant Church. The non-Templer colony of
Waldheim (now
Alonei Abba) was subsequently founded next to Bethlehem of Galilee in 1907 by proselytized Templers now affiliated with the
Old-Prussian State Church.
WWI internment In July and August 1918 the British authorities sent 850 Templers to an internment camp at
Helwan near
Cairo in
Egypt. In April 1920, 350 of these internees were deported to Germany. All the property of the Templers of enemy nationality (thus except of that of a few US citizens among them) was taken into public custodianship. With the establishment of a regular British administration in 1918
Edward Keith-Roach became the
Public Custodian of Enemy Property in Palestine, who rented out the property and collected the rents. In April 1920 the Allies convened at the
Conference of San Remo and agreed on the British rule in Palestine, followed by the official establishment of the civil administration on 1 July 1920. From that date on Keith-Roach transferred the collected rents for property in custodianship to the actual proprietors. The
League of Nations legitimised the British administration and custodianship by granting a
mandate to Britain in 1922, which
Turkey, the Ottoman successor, finally ratified by the
Treaty of Lausanne, signed on 24 July 1923 and becoming effective on 5 August 1925. Thus the public custodianship ended in the same year and the prior holders achieved the fully protected legal position as proprietors. The
Mandate government and the Public Custodian of Enemy Property paid them 50% restitution for war losses of livestock and other property. The
Bank of the Temple Society, formed in 1925 with its head office in Jaffa and branches in Haifa and Jerusalem, became one of the leading credit institutions in Palestine.
Nazi influence After the
Nazi takeover in Germany the new Reich's government streamlined foreign policy according to Nazi ideals, imposed and regulated financially. The Nazi emphasis was on creating the image that Germany and Germanness were equal to
Nazism. Thus, all non-Nazi aspects of German culture and identity were discriminated against as un-German. All international schools of German language subsidised or fully financed by government funds were obliged to redraw their educational programs and to solely employ teachers aligned to the
Nazi Party. The teachers in Bethlehem were financed by the Reich government, so Nazi teachers also took over there. In 1933 Templer functionaries and other Germans living in Palestine appealed to
Paul von Hindenburg and the Foreign Office not to use
swastika symbols for German institutions, though without success. Some German Gentiles from Palestine pleaded with the Reich government to drop its plan to boycott Jewish owned shops, in April 1933. Some Templers enlisted in the German Army. By 1938, 17% of the Templers in Palestine were members of the Nazi Party. According to historian
Yossi Ben-Artzi, "The members of the younger generation to some extent broke away from naive religious belief, and were more receptive to the Nazi German nationalism. The older ones tried to fight it."
Internment, deportation and exchanges At the beginning of
World War II colonists with German citizenship were rounded up by the British authorities and sent, together with Italian and Hungarian enemy aliens, to internment camps in
Waldheim and
Bethlehem of Galilee. On 31 July 1941, 661 Templers and other Germans in Palestine were deported to Australia via Egypt, leaving behind 345 in Palestine. Likewise the
British authorities declared the Templers
enemy nationals, arresting and deporting many of them to
Australia.
Assassinations On 12 March 1946 a team from the Zionist
Haganah assassinated the leader of the community, Gotthilf Wagner, considered by Palestinian Jews to be an ardent member of the Nazi Party, although his family and the wider Templer community argued otherwise. Later four more members of the sect were murdered in order to drive the group from Palestine. The former Templer colonies were re-settled by Jews.
Creation of Israel After its foundation, the
State of Israel—with the fresh memory of the
Holocaust—was adamant in not permitting any ethnic Germans of a community which had expressed pro-Nazi sympathies to remain in or return to its territory. In 1962 the
State of Israel paid
DM54 million in compensation to property owners whose assets were nationalized., becoming a pedestrian shopping and entertainment area. ==Timeline==