The documents in this collection were handed over by the Carmel Foundation to the Main State Archives in 2004. Content and evaluation Copies of documents about the Templar community and other Christian communities active in Palestine, compilations about individual persons, documents of the Foreign Office, copies of books and magazines of the 19th and 20th centuries with reference to Palestine, travel descriptions. The temple society is a Christian-chiliastic religious community that originated around 1850 in the Kingdom of Württemberg. On 19 and 20 June 1861 the representatives of the German synods of the "Jerusalem Friends" gathered. The decision was made to leave the church as a group. At the same time the "German Temple" was founded as an independent religious movement, since "none of the existing churches aspired to the production of man as the temple of God and the production of the sanctuary for all peoples in Jerusalem" (according to the founding declaration). Thus the aims of the German temple movement were clearly presented in this founding document. By "observing the law, the gospel, and the prophecy," the members were to make themselves a temple. In addition, the community moved to Palestine. It was certain that the end times were near. In Württemberg and the other German countries about 3000 people joined. In addition, there were trailers from Switzerland, Russia and North America. Christoph Hoffmann and Georg David Hardegg, who had meanwhile fallen out, left for Palestine with their families in 1868 and arrived in Haifa on 30 October 1868. Haifa was selected on the advice of the German consul Weber and a missionary named Huber. At that time Haifa was still an insignificant city of about 4000 inhabitants. In the spring of 1869, the two officially founded the Temple of Haifa as an outpost and reception station. Haifa In January 1869, the German settlers succeeded in acquiring land outside the city walls through the mediation of a citizen of the city. In the period from May to June 1869, three representatives of the "Temple" visited Haifa on behalf of the Board. After their return they advised to accept Hardegg's ideas for the Haifa colony. Hardegg planned to build a road along the already acquired plots, which were located 15 minutes outside the previous town. First, five houses were to be built on each side of the street. In order to provide shade for the settlers during the summer, trees should also be planted along the street. By 1870, the colony already had 14 houses and 120 settlers. Initially, the settlers were mainly engaged in agriculture and viticulture. However, the need to expand the infrastructure and the opportunities it offered were quickly recognised. Thus it was the Templars living in Haifa who set up a carriage service between Haifa and Akko and, with the support of the Latin monastery of Nazareth and some Arab landowners, extended the connection between Haifa and Nazareth and made it passable for carriages. In 1875 the road was finished and the Templars set up a lucrative carriage service that brought tourists and pilgrims to Nazareth. The Karmelhotel was the first modern hotel in Haifa to be built according to the ideas of the time. But one of the most important decisions of the Haifa temple community was made in 1872. A pier was to be built as an extension of the road in the Templar colony. Until then, Jaffa was the only port in Palestine. Since large ships, such as passenger ships, could not enter the port, all passengers had to be transferred in small fishing boats. It was a profitable business for the local population. Friedrich Keller was Imperial Vice Consul in Haifa from 1878 to 1908. His main merit was that after a long dispute with the Ottoman authorities and the Carmelite monks, the German settlement was allowed to be extended to Mount Carmel. Jaffa Only three months after the foundation of the Haifa temple church, there was already the opportunity to plant a church in Jaffa. Five buildings of a former American Adventist colony were acquired through the mediation of the merchant Peter Martin Metzler. Since the buildings included the Hotel Jerusalem with 19 rooms, a hospital with pharmacy and a steam mill, the colonists in Jaffa could quickly offer services to the local population and pilgrims. Next to the Hotel Jerusalem the Hotel du Parc of Baron Plato of Ustinov was opened. By the end of 1870 the Templar colony already had 110 inhabitants in Jaffa. At the beginning, the hotel was an essential source of income for the Templars of Jaffa. Jaffa was then the most important port in Palestine and almost all pilgrims disembarked in Jaffa to continue their journey inland. The carriage rides from the port of Jaffa to Jerusalem and the transport of fruit from their own plantations to the port were therefore important sources of income. The profitability of passenger transport is shown by the fact that in 1875 a separate company was founded for passenger transport. This company concluded a contract with the Cook agency in the same year. Then the Templars should make all the journeys for Cook. With the expansion of transport, the construction and repair of wagons also experienced an upswing. Arabs, too, recognised the opportunities for earning money through transport and founded their own companies. They bought their carriages and wagons in Germany. The Templar Hotel was extended and a department store was built, where wealthy Arabs, among others, bought goods. In 1886 the first settlement was extended by the northern settlement Walhalla. There an important small industry formed around the iron foundry and machine factory of the Wagner brothers from Mägerkingen. Another industrial enterprise was the cement production of the Wieland brothers from Bodelshausen. In 1904 the Immanuelkirche was consecrated, which was designed by the architect Paul Ferdinand Groth. Sarona On 18 August 1871, the Templar Society near the river Jarkon acquired land. The first settler families came to Sarona in 1872. But malaria prevented a rapid expansion of the colony. In 1873 malaria was considered to have been defeated in the surrounding area. The settlers had planted eucalyptus trees and drained the surrounding swamps. But the disease had claimed many victims up to that point. In 1875 there were only 80 settlers in Sarona. Sarona's main source of income was agriculture. Few found work at the passenger transport company of the colony Jaffa. After the expulsion of the Templar Germans from the new state of Israel in 1950, Sarona Hakirya, from 1948 to 1955, became Israel's first seat of government and today a residential district of Tel Aviv. Some of the buildings are still accessible; they are located on Kaplan Street just before it joins Petah-Tiqvah Road. The largest part of the former Templar settlement lay for decades in the restricted area of the Ministry of Defence. The second official seat of the head of government is still located in one of the twelve of about one hundred former Templar houses. Jerusalem Already at the beginning of the 1870s some Templars moved to Jerusalem. Jerusalem, however, was far from becoming a Templar colony. The acquisition of land outside the old town at the upper end of the Rafaiter plain in 1873 and the following years did not change this. Also the considerations of the temple leadership at this time to transfer the leadership of the society to Jerusalem had no effect. There were about 100 Templars in Jerusalem in 1875. A "colony" could not yet be spoken of at this time, although the aim of emigration was to build a spiritual temple in Jerusalem. In 1878 the management of the Temple Society and the seat of the Temple Monastery, a training centre for young Templars, was moved from Jaffa to Jerusalem. This attracted many Templar families to Jerusalem, so that a colony could establish itself. This step towards Jerusalem marked the first completion of the first phase of the Templar occupation of Palestine. Wilhelma, Bethlehem Galilee, Waldheim The Wilhelma colony was established near Jaffa in 1902. In 1906, land for settlement was acquired in Galilee near Nazareth and the Bethlehem-Galilee colony, today Beit Lehem HaGlilit, was built on it. Both settlements, first Wilhelma, which is now called Bnei Atarot, and later also Bethlehem, which was developed only hesitantly, developed into model agricultural settlements. Mennonite Templars from southern Russia settled in Wilhelma next to the Templars. A third settlement, Waldheim, located in the immediate vicinity of Bethlehem in Württemberg, was founded by the German Protestant congregation of Haifa, which had split off from the temple society; it received help from the Society for the Promotion of German Settlements in Palestine m.b.H., based in Stuttgart. The collection documents the history of the German settlers in Palestine as well as the political conflicts in the settlement area in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The inventory comprises 144 units of description with approx. 3.5 linear metres. In April 2016 Peter Bohl
