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At a recent opening ceremony for its latest exhibition, "War of the Languages: Founding of the Technion/Technikum," the Haifa City Museum also celebrated the inauguration of its new wing, a historic Templer schoolhouse building in the city's German Colony.
The renovated schoolhouse is tucked behind the museum's main wing on Sderot Ben-Gurion, a wide, treelined boulevard stretching from the sea to the foot of Mount Carmel.
Both the museum's buildings were constructed by German Templers and are of great historical significance, says Svetlana Reingold, curator of "War of the Languages."
"What is now the museum's main wing was the first ever building the Templers built in Palestine," she explains.
"They built it in 1869, and it served as the German colony's community center."
Founded in 1861 by Christoph Hoffmann and Georg David Hardegg, the Templers were a Protestant messianic sect.
At the core of their belief lay the idea that the Second Coming of Jesus would be expedited if they settled and developed the Holy Land.
In 1868, Hoffmann and Hardegg led a group of 72 Templers from Germany to what was then Ottoman Palestine. They purchased land in Haifa, at the foot of Mount Carmel, and established a small colony.
As they waited for the Second Coming, the Templers set about making significant and innovative contributions to Haifa's infrastructure.
Their legacy includes roads, stone houses, a bank, stores and a cement factory that used the latest German...