Historical background

The Templars are members of a Protestant religious group founded in Germany in the middle of the 19th century . According to their belief, the coming of the Messiah will only be after living and doing manual labor in the Land of Israel - the Holy Land.

In light of this belief, the members of the group traveled to Israel and settled in several places:
In the fall of 1868, Christoff Hoffman and Georg David Hardeg, the heads of the association, went to Eretz Israel and founded near Haifa the first German colony. A year later (1869) the second colony was established in Jaffa (in the place where the American colony was) .
In 1871 the Sarona colony (Tel Aviv) was established, which was based on agricultural work. Most of its people were members of the Templar community who lived in nearby Jaffa , . The agricultural character of Sarona can be seen from the following buildings that were erected there: Shetler’s farmhouse , the barn , the cloth house
In 1873 a colony was established in Jerusalem - the German colony
Another push for the Templar settlement was given by the visit of Emperor Wilhelm II to Israel in 1898 .
His wife Augusta Victoria founded an association that supported the Templars. As a result of this support, in 1903 a second colony was established in Jaffa "Walhala", the colony "Wilhelma" (named after the emperor) Established in 1902, in the place where the Bnei Atarot settlement is today , Bethlehem of Galilee in 1906 and in 1907 Waldheim (Aloni Abba)

World War II, some of the Templars identified with the Nazi authorities . Some of them left for Germany and enlisted in the army. Those who remained in Israel were defined by the British government as enemy citizens, and were placed in detention camps. The colony of Sarona was taken over by the British military forces and there they established their headquarters
In the years 1941-1942, some of the Templars who were in Israel were deported, some to Australia and some to Germany.
During the war, the German Templars were replaced by Jews.