Established during the ninetieth century by German Templers, the German Colony – in Hebrew, HaMoshava HaGermanit or simply HaMoshava – is an illuminating gem in the nation’s capital. Replete with picturesque old refurbished homes nestled in leafy lanes, old historical buildings, and a main street lined with trendy shops, restaurants and cafés, it is well worth a visit – day or night.
Perched high along Jabotinsky Street is a scenic lookout in memory of the late Yehuda Amachai, considered to be Israel’s greatest modern poet. It overlooks the German Colony and is a picturious as much a poetic point to begin a walking tour. With spectacular views including of the Old City, the words from Amichai’s ‘Poems of Jerusalem’ inscribed at the Lookout resonate:
“Jerusalem is a port city on the shore of eternity.”
On the Lookout. The Yehuda Amichai obervation lookout above the entrance to the German Colony.
If man’s journey through time would feel unconsummated without ‘dropping anchor’ at some stage in Jerusalem, then so too would such a visit to Israel’s capital be incomplete without a tour of its German Colony.
A short downhill stroll from the Amichai Lookout brings one to the beginning of Emek Refaim – the main avenue that bisects the ‘Moshava’. It takes its name from the biblical ‘Valley of Rephaim’, translated as the ‘Valley of the Giants’ or ‘Valley of the Ghosts’. If there was something frightening about this area in biblical times, today it is one of the city’s friendliest and attractive areas alluring all to explore and enjoy its special charms. It is most certainly one of the liveliest areas of Jerusalem at night, attracting both locals and tourists to its many restaurants, pubs and cafés.
T
he colorful and sometimes turbulent history of the German Colony is illustrated by the mix of its diverse architectural styles from Swabian-style homes through late provincial Ottoman architecture to British Art Deco from the Mandatory period. Examples of British architecture are the Scottish Hospice and St. Andrews Church built in 1927 and decorated with Armenian ceramic tiles. Some of the old Templer homes still have biblical inscriptions in German on their lintels. Interwoven with the architecture is the exuberant and colorful variety of trees, flowers, hedges and creepers inviting the wondering visitor to follow one street after another. Even the street names tell a story adding to the German Colony’s mystique.
Streetwise
Many of the side streets are named after non-Jewish supporters of Zionism and the Jewish people. Apart from the French author Émile Zola, Czech president Tomas Masaryk, and South African Prime Minister Jan Christiaan Smuts, there are those streets named after Britons, such as the Liberal Prime Minister David Lloyd George, British Labour Party leader Josiah Wedgewood, Colonel John Henry Patterson, commander of the Jewish Legion in World War I and the pro-Zionist British general, Wyndham Deeds. Walking these streets and piecing together why these particular personalities of the past were so honored to have streets named after them, offers the curious visitor a history lesson on the history of modern Israel.
For South Africans, the naming of a street after its former WWII Prime Minister is most illuminating. Jan Smuts was an avowed Christian Zionist who firmly believed in the right of the Jewish people to their homeland in Palestine and played an influential role in the drafting of the 1917 Balfour Declaration. During this period, he also became a firm friend of Zionist leader, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first Sate president.
“United Nations”
Situated up until 1948 on the border between Jordan-held Jerusalem and Israel, the adjacent neighbourhood of Baka, like its sister German Colony, is also well-known for its quant cafés and leafy lanes.
Hebrew is only one of many languages you hear today in this area – the most common could even be English. As a metaphor of the area’s rich cosmopolitan atmosphere, local resident and estate agent, Corrine Devar, draws the writer’s attention to a residential development – a complex with majestic arches and internal garden walkways, running from Derech Beit Lechem in Baka to Emek Refaim in the German Colony. “There are residents here from the UK, USA, Canada, South Africa, Holland, Denmark, France and of course, Israelis,” she says and poignantly refers to the complex as the “United Nations”. Where in the early days, overseas people used to purchase property as holiday residences, “today most buy to settle here. It’s such a wonderful area, well located and has everything to offer.” Devar says many of her clients today are children of earlier clients and “looks forward to selling to their grandchildren.”
Residents today include bankers, investment consultants, international lawyers, hi-tech visionaries and many in academia and the arts.
Culture Oasis
“The area,” says Devar, “prides itself as being a cultural hub and it comes as no surprise that top writers and journalists chose to live here.”
Preserving its cultural heritage did not come without a fight as typified in the ‘Save the Smadar’ campaign. After 80 years as a place of entertainment, the famed and iconic Art Deco style Smadar Theater on Lloyd George Street was destined to make way for another luxury residential complex. Given the theatre’s mythological place in the City’s cultural history, signatures and shekels counter-attacked in an epic battle worthy of a blockbuster to grace its own movie screen. A favorite theater for locals with its art-house cinema atmosphere, café and quant location, the Smadar also boasted being the only theater in Jerusalem where patrons could bring in beer from the bar, along with a carton of popcorn.
Embedded into local culture no less than the characteristic rock of this hilly and holy city, the Smadar not surprisingly appears in one of 
Yehuda Amichai’s poems, ‘Tichye Reviit’. The Smadar was a symbol of pluralism in Jerusalem and was the first theater to stay open on Shabbat, offering a Sabbath alternative for secular Jerusalemites.
And so, the Smadar Theater that was first patronised by the British soldiers during the Mandate period before opening to the general public in 1935 as the ‘Orient’, survived. It stands as a landmark, not only architecturally but as testimony to the power of the people to preserve cultural icons. “It screens mostly arty movies,” says Devar “but adding to its attraction are its café and bar situated in its lobby.” It’s well worth a visit whether to take in a movie, admire the architecture or enjoy a cup of coffee at its popular café.
Reside and Ruminate
Numbering amongst the many local residential literati is Saul Singer, an American-Israel journalist and author who co-wrote with Dan Senor, the international bestseller, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle. The journalist and author Hirsch Goodman, a former South African, lives in nearby Talpiot but finds the atmosphere of the German Colony so “cerebrally inspiring”, that he chose to rent an office on Emek Refaim when writing his 2010 book – ‘The Anatomy of Israel’s Survival’. “A friend of mine’s secretary in his company’s office overlooking the popular municipal pool, took maternity leave, so I rented the space and gave birth to my book.” His ‘offspring’, “which took less than nine months” won the National Jewish Book Award in the history category for 2011.
Garden of Eden. A typical home with leafy garden in the German Colony.
Goodman says he used to enjoy walking to and from work each day. “It’s such an exquisite area, full of old-world charm, character and colour; so many different types of people, languages and what a choice of restaurants and cafés to satiate the body apart from the mind.”
The net result, confesses the former editor of The Jerusalem Post:
“I had way too much coffee!”
Genesis
Clearly the first residents of the German Colony would hardly have approved of today’s vibrant, cosmopolitan atmosphere. The Templers, who settled in the area in 1873, were Christians who had broken away from the Protestant church and encouraged their members to settle in the Holy Land to prepare for Messianic salvation. Their homes, built in a style to which they were accustomed to in Germany – farmhouses of one or two stories, with slanted roofs, shuttered window and built of stone rather than wood and bricks – ran along two parallel streets that would become Emek Rafaim and Bethlehem Road. Their wait for the Messiah ended abruptly during the World War II, when the British Mandatory government deported the Templers to Australia. It was not only that as Germans, they were declared by the British as “enemy aliens”, but they made little effort to disguise their support for Nazism.
While National Socialism caught the imagination of many of the younger, less religious Templers, it met resistance from the older generation.
“The older Templers were afraid that the Fuehrer would overtake Jesus ideologically,” says David Kroyanker, author of ‘The German Colony and Emek Refaim Street’.
“Many of the young people were easily influenced by Nazism – there were many young Templers who studied in Germany at the time… and when they came back they were very excited about Nazism.”
At first, there was disagreement between the older and younger generations, but “in the end the newer generation won the battle.”
A teacher at one of the Templer schools, Ludwig Buchhalter, became the local party chief and led efforts to ensure Nazism permeated all aspects of German life. The British Boy Scouts and Girl Guides which operated in the German Colony were replaced by the Hitler Youth and League of German Maidens. Workers joined the Nazi Labour Organisation and party members greeted each other in the street with “Heil Hitler” and a Nazi salute.
Under pressure from Buchhalter, some Germans boycotted Jewish businesses in Jerusalem.
Buchhalter’s house, today the site of a luxury apartment block on Emmanuel Noah Street, served as the Nazi party headquarters and Buchhalter himself drove with swastika pennants attached to his car.
In a macabre twist of fate, David Kroyanker writes that in 1978, a box containing a uniform, dagger and other Nazi artefacts was discovered hidden in the roof-space of a house belonging to an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor in Emek Refaim.
Taking over from the Templers who were transferred to Australia, the next residents were Christian Arabs. They were attracted by its location between Bethlehem and the developing neighborhoods of Katamon, Talbiya and Baka, populated by some of Jerusalem’s wealthiest Arabs. Like the Templers too, their residency too came to a climatic end through war. However, the upheaval of 1948 was not an existential strife a world away, but an eruption on their doorstep.
In the wake of the fierce battles during Israel’s War of Independence of 1948, the Arab residents of the German Colony and Baka fled, abandoning their homes. These abodes were soon taken over by Jews “exiled from the Old City,” says local resident Dennis Diamond, another former South African. “It was in a way a population exchange. A large percentage of these people were Sephardim of generational Jerusalemites and they established in the German Colony an echo community of their life in the Old City. Over the ensuing years, the area attracted young Israeli families as the housing was affordable. The population was mixed and interesting, and when I arrived in the mid-1970s there was this sense of continuity as most of the original residents from 1948 were still living here. It was wonderful being part of this community – exuding an ambiance of romanticism and familiarity – characteristics that endure to this day.”
Diamond, originally from Johannesburg and one of the earlier pioneers of English-speakers to this area, has made a significant contribution through his involvement in project management and interior design in preserving the architectural legacy of the area. He recalls how in the early days “I was so agitated about changing features in a building that had been doing fine for nearly a century before I came along.”
For this reason, he reveals with a smile that “in my own home, we lived for many winters with drafty wooden windows because I could not bring myself to change them.”
Anyway, continues Diamond, “From the late 1980s, architects designed with greater sensitivity when modernizing old buildings.” He credits Jerusalem’s illustrious former mayor, Teddy Kolek for “this new direction.”
Preserving the Past
On Track. Section of the 7 km long Train Track Park situated along the old Turkish tracks than links the metropolitan Jerusalem Park with Jerusalem’s cultural mile.
The eighties in Jerusalem, says Diamond, were plagued with a huge spate of high-rise building out of sync with the character of the city. “Teddy assembled a team of international people – all lovers of Jerusalem – who he inspired in the physical tapestry of the city and who in turn advised him to appoint an international team of architects and urban developers to monitor future building. They were not necessarily Jewish, but all prominent in their field and whose advice he solicited and heeded. They had no authority but exercised influence because Teddy listened. The new trend was soon apparent when for example the design for the then new Hyatt Hotel – planned as a multi-storied tower complex – was sent back to the drawing board. The end result instead was a layered structure on the side of the mountain in a typical Yerushalmi or Middle Eastern style. Similarly, the original grandiose plans for the nearby Inbal Hotel was modified creating the poignantly sensitive structure you have today, in keeping with Jerusalem’s landscape.”
The new mindset impacted on the German Colony’s structural future. “Preservation laws were enforced and so when homes were renovated from the 1980s, they did not lose their character; most certainly the ones I was involved in. My approach to modernizing was to interfere minimally.”
Diamond believes that what generally transpired was “that the more sensitive new architects joined forces with the stronger old guard of the profession who had wanted to preserve more strongly the character of the city. The result is that new buildings have been developed emulating the style of the old German Colony buildings. They are characteristically in keeping with the neighbourhood’s physical legacy.”
All in all, says Diamond, “it’s been very exciting architecturally to live in this neighborhood.”
Diamond says he is moved when he looks out from his balcony and sees tourists standing below on the pavement, staring up at his double-storied home. “The tour groups are forever stopping below with their guides gesticulating towards my property then the adjacent one and followed by homes across the street. Once the preserve of mainly locals, today the German Colony attracts tourists and enthusiasts in architecture in their multitudes daily.”
A walking tour of the German Colony is well worth it. Who knows?
You may even be inspired thereafter to read the poetry of Yehuda Amichai!
“A man doesn’t have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn’t have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose.
Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.”
Amichai was right about Jerusalem. Take time to discover and embrace it.
The worst thing that might happen is like the writer Hirsch Goodman, you could end up drinking “way too much coffee!”
Café life in Emek Refaim street in the German Colony
