Immanuel Church (, Knesiyat Immanu'el; ; ) is a Protestant church in the American–German Colony neighbourhood of Tel Aviv Israel.
The church was built in 1904 for the German Evangelical community, which used it until its dissolution at the onset of World War II in 1940. In 1955 the Lutheran World Federation transferred control of the church building to the , and a new congregation used it. The church is used by Protestant denominations, including the Messianic movement.
Historical background George Adams and Abraham McKenzie, colonists from Maine arrived in Jaffa on 22 September 1866. They founded the American Colony in Jaffa, now part of Tel Aviv-Yafo municipality. They erected their wooden houses from prefabricated segments they had brought with them. Many settlers contracted cholera, and about a third of them died.Eisler 1999, pp. 44 and לו. Most returned to America. In 1869, newly arriving settlers from the Kingdom of Württemberg led by Georg David Hardegg (1812–1879) and Christoph Hoffmann (1815–1885), members of the Temple Society, replaced them.Carmel 1973, p. 102.
However, in June 1874 the Temple denomination underwent a schism. Temple leader Hardegg and about a third of the Templers seceded from the Temple Society, after personal and substantial quarrels with Christoph Hoffmann.Eisler 1997, p. 113.
First congregation (1899-1948) History Establishment In 1885 Pastor Carl Schlicht of the started to proselytise among the schismatics and succeeded in forming Evangelical congregations.Eisler 1997, pp. 113seq., also footnote 479. In 1889 former Templers, Protestant German and Swiss expatriates, and domestic and foreign proselytes established the Evangelical congregation of Jaffa. Johann Georg Kappus sen. (1826–1905) became the first chairman of the congregation, seconded and later followed by his son Johann Georg Kappus jun. (1855–1928).Eisler 1997, p. 114.
Sponsorship and pastors until 1914 Among the parishioners were wealthy members such as Plato von Ustinov and Wilhelm Friedrich Faber (1863–1923), president of the Deutsche Palästina-Bank, who moved to Jaffa in 1899 when the bank opened its branch there.Eisler 1997, p. 128. Ustinov offered the new congregation the hall of his Hôtel du Parc in Jaffa for services.Eisler 1997, p. 133.
Starting in 1890 granted Jaffa's Evangelical congregation financial subsidies.Eisler 1998, p. 88. The pupils of apostate families had been excluded from the Templer school since 1874.ʿAbd-ar-Raʿūf Sinnū (Abdel-Raouf Sinno, عبد الرؤوف سنّو), Deutsche Interessen in Syrien und Palästina, 1841 – 1898: Aktivitäten religiöser Institutionen, wirtschaftliche und politische Einflüsse, Berlin: Baalbek, 1982, (Studien zum modernen islamischen Orient; vol. 3), p. 131. The German government generally co-financed the schools of German language in the Holy Land with about a quarter of their annual budgets since 1880.Carmel 1973, p. 131.
The Jerusalem's Association and the Lutheran Evangelical State Church in Württemberg agreed to pay the salary of a professional pastor for the Jaffa congregation.Foerster 1991, pp. 81 and 118. They hired Albert Eugen Schlaich from Korntal, a theologian and educator.Eisler 1997, pp. 129seq. He arrived on 10 March 1897 and stayed at Ustinov's hotel until he and his wife found suitable accommodations.Eisler 1997, p. 129seq. The congregation rented the local chapel of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews for an annual payment of 100 francs of the Latin Monetary Union for its services. Schlaich introduced some Lutheran traditions from Württemberg's state church.Foerster 1991, p. 82. In 1900 ca. 30–40 congregants attended services on Sundays in the chapel of the London Jews Missionary Society.Eisler 1998, p. 92.
In 1905 Schlaich accused the German Vice Consul Dr. Eugen Büge (1859–1936) in Jaffa to be breaking consular secrets in return for gifts.Eisler 1997, pp. 138seq. So Büge was transferred for disciplinary reasons to Aleppo, however, the German Foreign Office urged also Schlaich's transfer, since it considered Schlaich and not Büge to have damaged its reputation abroad. The , the executive board of the Prussian state church, pressurised Jerusalem's Association to release Schlaich from his office in Jaffa, thus he was appointed for another pastorate in Germany.Eisler 1997, pp. 139. The Jaffa congregation gave Schlaich a farewell on 25 December 1905, and Georg Johannes Egger (1842) thanked Schlaich and his wife for 9 years of successful pastoral work.Eisler 1997, p. 139.
Between 1906 and 1912 the Jerusalem's Association and Evangelical State Church of Württemberg financed Pastor Wilhelm Georg Albert Zeller.Foerster 1991, p. 118. He considered the growing Jewish immigration a threat to the Gentile German colonists, reporting their fears, that they could be expelled in the end, and thus recommended their emigration to a German, less populated colony in Africa.Carmel 1973, p. 283. Cf. Zeller's article: "Auswanderungspläne der deutschen Kolonisten in Palästina (nach Afrika)". He was followed by the charismatic pastor Dr. , again supported by Stuttgart-based sponsors.
On 6 April 1910 Prince Eitel Friedrich of Prussia and his wife Sophie Charlotte of Oldenburg visited Jaffa and Immanuel Church, where they were received by Pastor Zeller.Eisler 1997, pp. 142.
World War I (1914-1917) After the outbreak of World War I the Sublime Porte de facto abolished the personal exterritoriality and consular jurisdiction for foreigners according to Capitulations of the Ottoman Empire on 7 September 1914.Foerster 1991, p. 124. Many young male parishioners left Jaffa to join the German Imperial Army.Foerster 1991, pp. 125seq. Rabenau accompanied them to serve as military chaplain. The Prussian Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council ordered his return in October.Foerster 1991, p. 126.
The Ottoman authorities forced all enemy missionary institutions to close in October 1914 and many missionary pupils then joined the joint Evangelical-Templer school of Jaffa. Their premises were confiscated for military purposes. In November 1914 the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed V declared in his function as Caliph the Jihad, which aroused fear for anti-Christian atrocities among the parishioners.
The war years were characterised by an increasing inflation of the Ottoman banknotes, causing Jerusalem's Association severe transfer losses at remitting salaries to its collaborators in the Holy Land, since the association had to purchase – in return for marks – foreign exchange denominated in inflationary Ottoman banknotes, which had to be sold again in Jaffa for less inflated Ottoman hard coins at a rate far below par.Foerster 1991, p. 130. Until 1916 the Ottoman banknotes had dropped to a ¼, later to of their pre-war rate in mark, which was inflated itself. The war-related scarcity of goods further caused a dearness of most products so Jerusalem's Association had to increase its transfers to the Holy Land.Foerster 1991, p. 129.
British rule until 1931 On 17 November 1917 Britons captured Jaffa and most male parishioners of Austrian, German or Ottoman nationality from Jaffa and Sarona, including Rabenau, were interned in Wilhelma as enemy nationals.Foerster 1991, pp. 134, 136. In 1918 the interned men were deported to a camp south of Gaza, while the parishioners remaining in Jaffa were subjected to strict police control.Foerster 1991, p. 137. In August 1918 the internees were relocated to Sidi Bishr and Helwan near Alexandria in Egypt.Löffler 2001, p. 193. Rabenau and the internees built up congregational life in their Egyptian exile, lasting three years.Foerster 1991, p. 139. With the Treaty of Versailles becoming effective on 10 January 1920 the Egyptian camps were dissolved and Rabenau became the internees' coordinator of the closedown.Foerster 1991, p. 143. Most internees returned to the Holy Land, except of those banned by a British black list, such as D. Dr. Friedrich Jeremias, Provost of Jerusalem.Löffler 2001, p. 196. Rabenau went to Germany to reunite with his family, the Britons refused his return to Jaffa in July 1920.Foerster 1991, p. 144. In April 1921 the Prussian Evangelical Supreme Ecclesiastical Council appointed Gustaf Dalman, formerly head of the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology in Jerusalem as Provost at the Evangelical Church of the Redeemer until Albrecht Alt arrived.
In April 1926 Jerusalem's Association appointed Ernst Paetzold as auxiliary pastor for Jaffa.Foerster 1991, p. 152. In September 1928 he held a lecture at the annual conference of Levantine Protestant pastors titled "Our congregations in their position towards other groups of German culture".Löffler 2001, p. 205. In the German original: "Unsere Gemeinden in ihrer Stellung zu den anderen Gruppen des Deutschtums" By 1930 the German Jews made up the biggest group of Germans in the Holy Land, however a minority among all Palestinians, the Templers amounted to 1,300, and the remaining 400 Germans were – except of few Catholics (mostly clergyBesides the clergy in 1900 there lived three German Catholic families in Jerusalem, two in Tabgha, one in Jaffa and some in Haifa. Cf. ʿAbd-ar-Raʿūf Sinnū (Abdel-Raouf Sinno, عبد الرؤوف سنّو), Deutsche Interessen in Syrien und Palästina, 1841 – 1898: Aktivitäten religiöser Institutionen, wirtschaftliche und politische Einflüsse, Berlin: Baalbek, 1982, (Studien zum modernen islamischen Orient; vol. 3), p. 222. ) and few irreligionists – prevailingly Protestant, among them 160 parishioners (as of 1927) of the Jaffa congregation.Foerster 1991, p. 177.
In April 1931 Paetzold returned to Germany, and the pastorate remained unstaffed due to financial constraints in the Great Depression.Foerster 1991, p. 162.
Pre-WWII position vs. the Nazis
On October 18–20, 1933 the German Protestant missionary endowments within Deutscher Evangelischer Missionsbund (DEMB) convened in Barmen and rejected the attempt to subject the missionary societies – in the course of the pervasive Gleichschaltung of all civic organisations – to the Nazi-submissive German Evangelical Church. Jerusalem's Association retained its legal independence, successfully rejected the application of the so-called Aryan paragraph for its own employees and the new appointment of its executive board with a majority of two thirds for German Christians.Foerster 1991, p. 170.
However, the Nazi-submissive German Christians, holding crucial positions in the bureaucracy of the official Protestant church bodies, found other ways to pressurise the missionary societies. Foreign exchange assigned at non-market rates was exclusively to be disbursed for salaries of German nationals, thus salaries of Palestinian citizens (e.g. Arab Protestants) became very difficult to organise, Jerusalem's Association had to incur debts in Palestine pounds with Deutsche Palästina-Bank, which again had to be permitted by the Nazi government, which submitted any foreign indebtedness of German legal entities to its agreement as part of its austerity policy.Foerster 1991, p. 178. Between 1934 and 1937 the Bank der Tempelgesellschaft carried out the foreign exchange transfers for Jerusalem's Association.