Summary
The millennialist Temple Society from Württemberg, the most prominent Christian settler group in Ottoman Palestine, whose seven communities (first at Haifa in 1868, including four agricultural settlements) Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine uses, through Otto Warburg’s Altneuland writings, as the comparison and projected minority counterpart for Zionist colonization (PDF p.183-184).
Details
- Ruppin is cited that the influence of their agricultural colonies was far greater than their number of inhabitants would suggest (PDF p.184).
- Altneuland comparisons criticised Jewish colonization methods against the Templars: Petach-Tikva’s vicinity to Sarona and Wilhelmina was hoped to improve the Jewish worker, and Aaron Aaronson and Selig Soskin blamed JCA underachievement against the Templars on neglected infrastructure (PDF p.185).
- Warburg held the Templars had filled their historical role and were ready to be superseded by Jewish settlers; in a Jewish-majority Palestine they would become a prosperous commercial minority — a role reversal of Jews in Germany — pushed from agriculture but retaining urban hotel, tourism and trade positions and a unique connection to Christian Europe (PDF p.186, p.188).
- Warburg argued, racially, that Germans had evolved for a moderate Central European climate, that Palestine’s climate degenerated the Templars, and that, their ethics prohibiting intermarriage with local Arabs, their colonization would not endure without permanent influx from Germany; he also held they had Judaified by transculturation, standing close to the Jewish religion except ceremonial acts, yet could not match Jewish oriental authenticity (PDF p.187-188).
Related pages
Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, Otto Warburg, Altneuland (journal), Aaron Aaronson