Templars

TEMPLARS

German evangelical settlers in Palestine in the late nineteenth century.

The Temple Society (Tempelgesellschaft) was founded in the mid-nineteenth century in the Kingdom of Württemberg. Pietistic Evangelicals, the Templars criticized the church and decided at first to settle and found colonies and, later, to improve the land in Palestine as they awaited the imminent Kingdom of Heaven. They established a colony in Haifa in 1868 and brought modern European methods of agriculture. They also established the carriage trade from Jaffa to Jerusalem, exported wine, and established settlements in Jaffa, Haifa, Sarone (part of modern Tel Aviv), Jerusalem, Wilhelma, Galilen Bethlehem, and Waldheim. Individuals settled in Jerusalem and founded a German colony there that, although denied official support by the German government, numbered some 1,200 people by 1914.

Deported as enemy aliens by the British from 1917 to 1918, as German nationals they kept a low profile after they were permitted to return during the Palestine Mandate. Their religious fervor had decreased by the third generation and, as Germans, many were receptive to National Socialism, even though there was no official advocacy of support for the Nazi Party. Many sympathetic members were allowed to join the party; they also enlisted their children in the Nazi Youth and disseminated Nazi propaganda. With the outbreak of World War II, there were approximately 1,500 Germans of Templar origin who were interned, and afterward they were repatriated to Germany in exchange for Palestinians who had fallen into German hands. Some were deported to Australia. In 1948 their property was taken over by the Israeli government and placed under the Guardian of German Property; it was later taken into account during the negotiations over Nazi Holocaust reparations conducted by the World Jewish Congress and the West German government.

see also germany and the middle east; haifa; jaffa; jerusalem; west german reparations agreement.

Bibliography

Carmel, Alex. "The German Settlers in Palestine and Their Relations with the Local Arab Population and the Jewish Community, 1868–1918." In Studies on Palestine during the Ottoman Empire, edited by Moshe Maʾoz. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1975.

Thalmann, Naftali. "Introducing Modern Agriculture into Nineteenth Century Palestine: The German Templers." In The Land that Became Israel: Studies in Historical Geography, edited by Ruth Kark. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990.

Yazbak, Mahmoud. "Templars as 'Proto-Zionists': The 'German Colony' in Late Ottoman Haifa." Journal of Palestine Studies xx, no. 112 (Summer 1999): 40–45.

reeva s. simon
updated by michael r. fischbach